Will Microsoft Lists replace Planner for anyone here?

Steel Contributor

The more I look at what MS Lists can do, the more I think it may be a more accessible Task/Project Management tool than Planner.  For context, I deliver training for clients new to M365 products (such as Teams, Planner and SharePoint), so I'm always looking for angles and use-case opportunities within M365 to help solve their problems.

 

Out of the box, there seems to be a whole lot more you can do with MS Lists out of the box, and a whole lot more potential.  Here are some things that I'm looking forward to in Lists that Planner simply cannot do for [reasons]:

 

  1. Audit Historyassuming this is carried over from SharePoint, users will have a great tool to track progress and changes made to project plans though an actual audit history.  Why doesn't Planner have this yet?
  2. Custom Configuration; Something that I'm really looking forward to is creating Project Management lists that can be customized with granular user permissions.  Don't want people editing certain fields?  Lock & hide them!  Prefer a Card view?  Go ahead and customize your cards to look exactly the way you want them to.
  3. Rules and Conditional Formatting; This will enable teams to create notifications that work for them.  IMO, the current state of notifications in Planner are lacking at best, and disruptive at their worst.
  4. Potentially easier to adopt than Planner; We've all likely seen our share of teams that manage projects in an Excel spreadsheet because it's all they've known.  In my experience, teaching users how to use Planner is quite a mental jump that it can be difficult to see how it's better/worse than a spreadsheet.  

As much as I want to preach Planner, there are so many things it's still missing that make it a difficult recommendation for clients.  For example, it's always awkward to explain to people how you cannot prohibit users from editing/deleting items from a project, and that there is NO WAY to recover that data.  

 

Lastly, I'm mildly concerned about the future for Planner.  The road map literally has nothing in development, and I'm not sure what direction it's going in. 

 

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So that's my mini rant/thoughts on Planner vs. MS Lists.  What about you?  

 

2 Replies

@atrain204  I think you are right you have covered some good points there, but let's see and wait once Microsoft Lists are available for usage may be the use case is totally different or maybe it could be the replacement for MS planner but don't see anything on the roadmap for it.

@PDostiyar agreed - I don't want to put the horse in front of the carriage, but it's hard to not get excited about some new opportunities for project & task management