Connecting tasks experiences across Microsoft 365
In this new normal, Microsoft’s vision for a unified tasks experience, which we first announced at Ignite last year, is more relevant than ever. Since then, we’ve made significant progress in creating a coherent, integrated, and intelligent experience to help you stay organized. Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Planner, Microsoft To Do, and Office—specifically, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint—all play a role in the Microsoft 365 tasks experience.
Tasks in Microsoft 365 - our vision for a unified experience.
The presence of tasks in Microsoft 365 is extensive and growing, most recently with the announcement of Tasks in Teams. We’re excited to share our broader vision around task integrations across the Microsoft stack, and how we're working to bring a connected, contextual task-management experience to end users (wherever they prefer to get their work done) and support workflow integration for organizations.
New infographic: Explaining Office 365 Groups
On a user level, Office 365 Groups are one of the biggest selling points for moving to Office 365. They provide quick, easy access to an online workspace for communicating with colleagues and collaborating on documents and files. There’s little-to-no learning curve: get in and start working. But they’re also one of the most confusing new things in Office 365. Below is my take on how Groups (and Yammer and Teams!) works from an everyday user's perspective. Use it for training, for explaining, and as a go-to resource when Groups confuses you. Below is just a small part of http://icsh.pt/O365groups. Read that in full and share with your colleagues!The new Microsoft Planner: Meet the Makers and learn what’s coming next
Join us for two special events where our Planner product team shares what is coming to the new Microsoft Planner. In our Meet the Makers virtual event on April 3 rd , leaders from the Planner product team will talk about the latest on the future of task and work management for Microsoft 365. They will explain how the new Microsoft Planner brings together the simplicity of Microsoft To Do, the collaboration of Microsoft Planner, the power of Microsoft Project for the web - with the intelligence of Microsoft Copilot - into a simple, familiar experience. Our experts will showcase some of the key new capabilities and improvements of the new experience, including demonstrations on how to leverage Copilot in Planner to create plans, tasks, and goals and get Copilot to answer questions on progress, priorities, workload and more. On April 4, we will host a special Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA). During the AMA session members of the Planner product team will answer questions directly from the community. This is a great opportunity to get answers to any questions you may have from the recent Meet the Makers event. Agenda + Experts (all times listed in the Pacific Time Zone (PT): Wednesday, April 3 Meet the Makers Kickoff [MC: @Karuana Gatimu] 10:05 – 10:40 am – Meet the Makers | Planner Experts: @Howard Crow & @Roberto_Bojorquez Leaders from the Planner product team will talk about the evolution and vision for Microsoft’s tasks and work management offerings. They will showcase some of their favorite new features that will help individuals, teams, and large organizations manage their tasks, plans and projects more effectively, and demonstrate how to leverage Copilot in Planner to create plans, tasks, and goals. Thursday, April 4 Ask Microsoft Anything 10:00 am Kickoff 10:05 – 11:30 am -- AMA | Planner Experts: Session Description: Bring your questions for members of the Planner product team about the new Microsoft Planner. Please share any questions that you would like our experts to address in the comments below.
Template and automation for To-do and Planner tasks
I really want to take advantage of Microsoft 365 To-do and Planner for my workflow, after months of using these two apps I found them have a lot of potential but fell short of being practical due to the poor-sighted UX design, lack of automation support, and weak integration with other 365 apps, Outlook in particular. Lack of template support (To-do, Planner): This is a crucial flaw of both To-do and Planner. For repetitive work flow, I want the ability to have a template of tasks and subtasks. Currently I'm making template by creating tasks or plans, name them "[Template]", and manually clone them. This is tacky as my "Template" tasks and plans kept populated under suggestions for things to do. Lack of automation (To-do, Planner): I want the ability to easily generate a particular template of task or plan from an Outlook email. This would speed up my work flow tremendously. Currently the best Microsoft offer in term of automation is to create a task with the email name and a link to that email. No subtasks nor planner integration whatsoever. Lack of bulk actions (To-do, Planner): This is specifically frustrating for Planner, I have to manually assign each task under a plan to myself, there is no option to assign tasks in bulk. Microsoft offers integration between To-do and Planner where Planner tasks can show up in my To-do list but only if it's assigned to me, what good does this integration do if the amount of manual work overtake the convenience? No archive option for Planner: Once a plan is completed, there is no option to archive it, user have to delete the plan or have it remains on UI forever, even the delete button is well-hidden. The lack of archive option means I cannot go back to previously completed plans and see the date each tasks is completed. Last but not least, it felt like these two apps don't get any attention from Microsoft. They rarely get updates, it's quite unsettling to use theses feeling like it's being abandoned by the company.
