The slow evolution of Planner compared to other Office 365 apps

[Tony Redmond]

Microsoft Planner added the ability to assign multiple people to a task. It’s a good step, but it’s the first new feature in nine months. That’s curious when you compare to the development cadence of other Office 365 applications.

https://www.petri.com/planner-moves-forward-slowly

[#2]

Couldnt agree with you more. I find my use of it limited since there are no mobile apps. I would use this over trello ANYDAY since its now importable into Teams. I wonder why there is such a slow develoment cycle. Lastly, I wish these could be imported into word or excel as well.

[#3]

I'm fully onboard with you on this one @Tony Redmond! I harass @Dave Heller on the regular about this. We're all getting spoiled by great communication and rapid fire releases from the SharePoint team and the Teams team, etc. The Planner team seems to be falling behind, and I can't figure out why.

I wouldn't even be writing this message if I didn't see the potential for Planner, but I think we all do so the slow cycle hurts that much more.

We all just want more features so we can tell people what to do in an organized way! :)

[#4]

Task management is really the one thing that is keeping Groups adoption from taking off in my organization. Being able to schedule and organize work between departments and projects is so critical to everything we do. Planner looks so good, it's so close, but it's just a couple of last little details that are holding us back. Namely notifications and mobile apps. That's really what's so frustrating to me. It's so close! But when I see things like email notifications and alert options having been "started" for over a year (!) with no tangible progress, it's a little disheartening.

[#5]

Agree in general, but I'm optimistic it is close. (but I also wonder if we've been spoiled by the rapid rate of changes in the other services).

I suspect alot of focus was redirected to make it work nicely with Teams as opposed to focusing on the service features over the past several months.

Our users are super excited about Planner (its way better than the SharePoint Tasks/Action Items we've been using for years), and they are actually hoping for Planner to become a "Personal Tool" as well instead of just a Group tool. Maybe one day...