Trello vs. Planner - whats missing in Planner and what would make it better than Trello

Brass Contributor

Hi Everyone, 

So as a user of Trello (but an enterprise user of 365) I am constantly fighting the battle to migrate over to Planner from Trello (I want to migrate). The following elements are what we see as what is missing:

- Full Integration with Outlook task management

- Ability to export plans from project and create a new plan in Planner

- The ability to move tasks with assignments, attachments and comment history's between plans - I get the fact around plan members but we need to be innovative about how to resolve this. 

- Desktop version or added fully to Teams and/or Outlook

- Ability to create an executive summary board by enabling the ability to sync the same task on multiple boards without giving access to the assigned person

- Ability to @tag someone in comments and send a notification to them

- The ability to see all the tasks across all the cards at the Hub level (similar the calendar feature in Trello)

- Be able to set recurring tasks and assign the bucket and plan they appear in

- When copying a list from other office apps it adds one line per checklist item

- Ability to set hotkeys 

- PowerBI link to complement current reporting 

- Gantt chart view with dependencies and resources 

- Configurable notifications i.e. if I am syncing with an external tool e.g. unito I would like the ability to not get thousands of notifications each time it syncs. 

- The ability to change the order of plans in the favourites area 

- Change the background colour and design to each Plan 

- Ability to watch tasks

- Ability to copy a board

- Ability to set a time as well as a deadline date

- Ability to print a board

- Voting

- How to use this board notes area which allows pictures and info graphics 

 

What would make it better than Trello:

- The ability to assign a priority to a task personally I use the Franklin Covey method of ABC and 1,2,3 but any 2 level prioritisation would be fine

- Once a priority assigned for that task to be priority ordered in the bucket(s) it exists

- Stickers and the ability to filter against them

- Configurable Progress categories

- Email to task/ bucket/ plan

- ability to assign a checklist item and due date to someone not necessarily on that plan

- set dependencies against other tasks

- Different template designs e.g. agile, 7 habits etc.

- Ability to set an alert against a task

- Custom fields

- List views

- Add 'live' power bi tiles and show on card e.g. simple KPI tracker 

- The ability for the board admin to fix cards into position preventing members from moving them 

 

and finally further develop links to other software e.g. Mindjet Mindmapper, zoho, salesforce, etc.  

 

Its a long list I know but welcome anyone else to add to this

14 Replies

Hi @Mike Curtis, That's a good comparison. Some of the features you have mentioned is listed in Planner uservoice and MSFT will be working on those. But few features like Gantt chart, reporting, connecting with PowerBI and few more, you have to go for third party apps. 

Hi Santhosh
So which third party apps and where can I access them ?
Mike

@Santhosh Balakrishnan

There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that "MSFT will be working on those.".

 

Most of the uservoice updates are months old, and there seems to be very little useful feedback from Microsoft Planner team in Uservoice  (or here).
So, for those of us that really WANT to use Planner, rather than Trello, there is no evidence to show that the planner team is intending to implement any of the features noted above by @Mike Curtis

Hi Mike!

 

We are working on some of those items. We do maintain and update our UserVoice as soon as we have updates on the features we're shipping. I'd recommend checking out planner.uservoice.com for a status on the items you've listed (and create a new thread for any you don't find). 

 

If you have questions about any features in particular, feel free to reach out/ask on this thread!

 

Thanks, 

 

Joanna Parkhurst

PM, Microsoft Planner

@Joanna Parkhurst

The challenge with the Planner uservoice forum is that it isn't updated on a timely basis.

For example:

https://planner.uservoice.com/forums/330525-microsoft-planner-feedback-forum/suggestions/14744172-ab...

 

Last update for this was 9 months ago.  Surely SOME progress has been made in 9 months?!

This is just one example.  

I would love to see updates.  That would be quite helpful and refreshing.

I know this seems negative, but it it VERY frustrating to keep hearing "coming soon" and then not having updates.

 

Hey Luis, 

 

I understand that the lack of updates on UserVoice are frustrating - especially for highly anticipated/voted for features like Copy plan.

 

As soon as we have an update on a feature, UserVoice is one of the first (is not the first) external channels to be updated. Our UserVoice is maintained and updated by our engineering team ourselves - I would love to share more frequent and detailed updates on all of our features that are 'in the works', but often we're very busy trying to ship the features themselves! 

 

We do appreciate your patience and feedback - I will personally make an effort to make more time to update UserVoice on a regular basis.

 

Thank you, 

 

Joanna Parkhurst

PM, Microsoft Planner

Thank you Mike, yours is a really excellent list.  It well captures the frustrations I had trying to move my org to Planner (I gave up for now).  At mentions, notifications, lack of history, and poor or no integration with the other products in O365 were the weakest part of the system, for us.

 

A couple of my own peevs to add to the list:

  • Per-bucket sort choices (sticky).
  • Ability to config system to add new task to bottom rather than top of bucket (I actually wish there was a right-click menu with an "add task here" function).
  • "Move to top" function for faster prioritizing.
  • Custom filters and views.
  • Complete and automatic history/activity log, on each task and globally.

 

Great list. My company is evaluating if we should use Trello or Planner and I found your post. Can you give any feedback on the progress MS has made, in the over a year and a half, since you posted? Are you guys still using Trello? @Mike Curtis 

Found this thread as a Trello user looking to move the team over to Planner:
- Drag and drop attachments to task
- Paste from clipboard attachment to task
- Set an attached image as the "cover" of a task
- Sync tasks between plans, but for users of the other plans who do not have access to the origin plan, only grant access to the title, no ability to click into the task.
- More than one checklist per task and each checklist can be named
- With one click, create a task and assign a label, or add notes, comments or a checklist, instead of create, click Add task, another task gets created even though you didn't want a second task, task jumps to a different place in the list, find it, click on it again and THEN assign notes or label.
Hello,
You can read further about the limitations Trello vs Planner have on this article:
https://altosio.com/trello-to-planner-migration-limitations/
Altosio offers a complete SAAS tool that allows you to do a seamless Trello to planner migration. Please visit https://altosio.com for more information.

@Mike Curtis 

 

About this point:

 


@Mike Curtis wrote:

What would make it better than Trello:

- Email to task/ bucket/ plan


There is an add-in for Microsoft Outlook with wich you can directly create task, files, etc. in several third party systems. This also includes Trello and Planner. You can try it out for free at https://www.mailissa.com/en

 

Best regards

 

Mika

@Mike Curtis 

 

I would simply like to see the date fields be datetimestamp along with the addition of a field called "Completion Date" (also datetimestamp)

 

Planner is simple enough for a business team to utilize and a technical team to manage work but for auditing time spent for budgetary purposes it lacks this one field.