Microsoft Planner new feature announcements

Oct 3 2017

Hey, finally the Planner team has revealed the new features coming up in Planner in next few months and their vision for long term plans including integration with other apps in Office 365 eco system. Here are the glimpse of those announcements from Microsoft Ignite 2017.

What to expect in near term?

The Microsoft Planner team is listening to user voice portal and have started addressing few from the most requested features. Below are those.

Planner Limitations

This is one of the notable announcement from Ignite 2017. Finally Microsoft announced that all the Planner limitations listed below will be removed with the help of the refreshed Planner UI. This helps organisations to adopt Planner across their entire organisation.

250 Active tasks per plan
250 assigned tasks per user irrespective of plans
1500 tasks can be created by an user irrespective of plans

Copy tasks

This feature allows uses to copy and paste task with the same plan. While copying the task you can decide which task field needs (Assignment, Progress, Date, Description, Checklists, Attachment, Labels) to be copied.

iCalendar feed for Plan

Now users can easily subscribe to the iCalendar feed which brings all the plan tasks that are assigned to the user to their Outlook. Thus it simplifies the users to view Planner tasks from Outlook calendar itself.

First the user need to click on the eclipse icon next to their plan name and click 'Add plan to Outlook calendar'. Now the iCalendar feed will be displayed for the respective plan and user need to click on 'Add to Outlook' button. Now a new window gets opened asking for confirmation to save the calendar subscription. Click on Save button now.

Due date reminders

This is one of the most significant top requested feature in user voice. This feature will add more meaning to Planner in terms of this usage and adoption. Users will get email reminders for the tasks with the link to the specific tasks that helps them to stay on top of it.

Schedule view

Now users can see the tasks in Schedule view. All the tasks without dates set are listed on the right pane and users need to just drag and drop the tasks to the respective dates. Now the due date is set. Users can double click on a task item to edit the task.

Planner web part for SharePoint

This web part allows you to get overview of the what's going on in your team from SharePoint team site home page which helps for great collaboration.

These are the features which are expected to rollout in upcoming months. Now let's see the long term goals for Planner.

Multiple Plan per Group

Currently Microsoft Teams allows you to create multiple plan per group. The similar experience will also available from Planner.

External user access

Office 365 Groups now supports external user access. Following this, Planner will support users to invite external users (Ex: Vendors, customers) for a Plan to collaborate and work with them.

Plan templates

You can define Plan templates at organizational level which allows users to create new plans easily.

New features coming in Planner Mobile

Below listed are the features we can expect in Planner Mobile experience.

Intune Mobile Application Management integration
Single Sign-in
Push notifications
○ Users will receive push notifications on their mobile when a new task is assigned to them.
Universal Windows App
○ This app helps users to get desktop notifications about the task changes which helps them to stay updated.
iPad app.

Integration with Microsoft Teams

Teams Plans in Planner hub

Currently plans crated from Teams is not listed in Planner hub. Soon you will find those plans available in Planner itself.

My tasks app

This is the new app available in Microsoft teams which helps them to see all planner tasks assigned to them from a single place.

Bell Notifications

Soon Teams users will get Bell notifications for task changes that are assigned to them.

Planner Bot

This helps users to do simple changes to task details from Teams

Chart view & Schedule view

Currently users can see card view of tasks from teams. Soon Chart and Schedule view will be available as in Planner.

Microsoft Ignite 2017 session recording on this topic is available here.

Interesting questions and answers

Below listed are some of the interesting Q&A discussed during Ignite 2017.

1. Is it possible to create task dependencies from Planner?

No. Microsoft does not have near team plans for this feature. It is recommend to use Microsoft Project for such features.

2. Will Cortana integration be available for Planner?

Yes, Cortana will help you to create tasks and set reminders for those tasks. There is no ETA for this feature.

3. What are the different options by which users notified about their tasks?

Currently via email. Soon you will be have Bell notification in Teams and Push notifications for mobile.