What’s Good About Microsoft Planner So Far (and What’s Still Missing)

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RobOK wrote:

Is Planner dead? Is there anything happening? Does anyone from Microsoft comment on features coming?

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Plenty of roadmap items, but yes, curiously slow development.

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Lee Quinn wrote:

All nice to have the problem is how far it will step onto the toes of MS Project?

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Far points but I also think most of my critiques are not entirely new features, more like improvements to existing features and basic quality of user experience stuff. None of them really make Planner more suited to the type of complex projects management where Project itself fits in, but would make Planner more of a joy to use instead of an app with frustrating rough edges.

I think Denis brings up THE key point.

Look, I'm a big Office365 proponent. Hell, I'm even a Dynamics365 fan boy. I use Windows Phone and have an Xbox sitting at home. I'm a Microsoft fan.

With that said, what the hell is up with Planner??? MS abandoned Sharepoint tasks and were going to build something new. We waited. Along (after a couple of years) came Planner.

I participated in Planner Yamjams, gave feedback on this board, wrote suggestions on uservoice. I started using it a little bit.

Then we rolled it out to a small team during the beta, but it was just not very good. Then we added Apps4.pro. A HUGE step forward. It plugs some wholes and makes the product usable. Still, as someone said, we expect their functionality in the standard product. Period. Or we will use something else. Todoist works just fine, someone else mentioned SmartSheet, we use that today as well.

So is today's product good? I am yet to hear about ONE company who thinks this is great product that does not lack a lot of functionality. Give me one evangelic customer who says Planner has  significantly impacted their business... one.

But it is not the lack of features that is the biggest problem. It is the lack of progress as Denis points out. Planner was introduced in a blog post 2016-09-22. More than a year ago. On user voice there are more than 1 000 suggestions. Microsoft has updated the status on 17 of them. They are thinking about 5, planned 2, started 8 and completed 2. Completed 2 in a year. Two. Additionally, the user voice site is just so lame and feels dead from MS side. A lot of user input but just poorly managed from MS side.

This is just not acceptable. I am sad to say that we, being a Microsoft super fan and having waited eagerly several years for planner, completely discard the idea of using it. I would like, almost expect, an excuse from someone on the Planner team for having such a bad track record.

So to me it feels like MS is winding this product down. If you're not going forwards you are going backwards. The roadmap is totally uninspiring. If I do not hear from any other member of the team, we will use the many other great Office365 services instead.