#MICROSOFT OFFICE TASK MANAGER UPDATE#

Planner is available as part of the following Office 365 subscriptions: E1-E5, Business Essentials, Business Premium and Education. “It is also a more flexible tool and therefore can address a wide range of use cases,” he said. “Hardcore Microsoft Project users won’t want to, or be able to, give up the granularity of Project for the relatively basic, more visual day-to-day workflow ,” said Kurtzman.Ĥ51 Research senior analyst Raul Castañón-Martínez said Planner is better suited to less complex projects that require a collaborative approach. Planner sits somewhere in between note-taking and list apps such as Microsoft’s To-Do software. “The challenges come with more complex workflows, and enterprise reporting is still evolving.” “On the surface, Planner is a good, albeit simple workflow product for Office 365 users,” said Kurtzman. This is by design: Microsoft already has a fully featured project management tool in Project. It is also integrated with Office365 Groups, making conversations available in Outlook.Īlongside the Office 365 integrations, another of Planner’s strengths is its ease of use, though it can get in the way of more in-depth management of team projects. Shared files are stored in SharePoint for easy access and each board is connected to a OneNote Notebook for team members to view. This allows a project manager to offload the management of a task to a colleague using Planner. For example, it is possible to link a Project Online task to Planner. Planner’s most obvious strength lies in its integration with other Office 365 tools, such as Teams and Project. So why choose Planner over the variety of other task management apps available Planner users can also receive email notifications summarizing tasks due over the course of a week., (An iCalendar format feed is on its way, too.) Planner strengths There are new options for filtering tasks by due date and a Group feature to view tasks that are yet to start – changes designed to help users prioritize work. A schedule view makes it simpler to plan projects and understand project status with daily, weekly and monthly overviews. 5, Microsoft unveiled further additions to Planner.

#MICROSOFT OFFICE TASK MANAGER UPDATE#

Support for iOS and Android devices was announced in May, enabling users to view and update plans on the go once they have been created using the web app and push notifications are now enabled for the app. This includes a refreshed UI, and new functionality such as a connector into Microsoft’s IFTTT-style app integration tool, Flow. Since launch, Microsoft has steadily added to Planner. The Charts view also shows which tasks a team member has been assigned, offering an overview of their current workload and work completed. This makes it easier to see if a project falls behind schedule or when a team member has a looming deadline. There is also a Charts view that provides a higher level overview of work that’s under way, enabling team members to see the status and progress of various projects at a glance. Those who’ve used Trello already will find the way Planner functions familiar. This may mean a task is dragged and dropped from a “To Do” bucket to “Completed” as work is wrapped up. Team leaders can then assign a task to individuals or multiple team members, who will be notified by email.īuckets are used to represent the status of a specific project. Files can be attached and team members can leave comments within the card. The main way to interact with Planner is through the Board view, which contains task cards, each organized into lists or “buckets.” Individual cards contain information such as task description and due date. Planner and Teams are relatively new in comparison with more established collaboration tools, he said, but Microsoft has “aggressive plans” to compete with the growing and more mature products in the market.

Microsoft office task manager