Microsoft Planner is changing. David Lindsay, Senior Consultant, Strategy & Change based in our Edinburgh office, tells us what’s new and why it is revolutionalising task and project management.
The compass that keeps your team sailing smoothly through the often stormy seas of project management, Microsoft Planner gives you everything (well almost everything!) you need to turn chaotic tasks into a clear path forward. Whether you are juggling deadlines or navigating cross team collaborations, Planner simplifies the journey, allowing you to focus on the destination. With its seamless integration into Microsoft 365, Planner becomes your map, guiding you through the wilderness and helping you reach your goals with ease. Ready to chart a course to success? Lets explore how Planner can help!
Planner is an innovative tool that is revolutionising task and project management within Microsoft 365. It merges the best features from Planner, To-Do, and Project for the Web into a single unified and seamless platform that caters for both simple day-to-day task management and project management.
Benefits and key features
Intuitive User experience -It creates an effortless unified experience that is scalable; from simple task management project management activities; it empowers everyone to manage their work in one place. It is intuitive to use, robust, and deeply integrated with Microsoft 365. It is quick and easy to add items or create a plan from scratch due to the small number of required fields, or use one of the provided templates and as we have quickly come to expect, all of this is assisted by Microsoft’s next generation AI (Copilot) which can help lift the burden of everyday tasks or give you that all important ‘starter for 10’.
Configure and Extend – Users can configure, extend, and automate tasks and processes (leveraging Power BI and Power Automate to name a few applications), and track against your plan’s baseline, to meet your company’s changing needs while ensuring team members are continually focusing on delivering the right work items at the right time.
Seamless Integration – A key feature is that Planner 2024 can also be seamlessly integrated with SharePoint and Teams. You can add Planner as a link, a web part, or a tab to SharePoint pages and Teams channels. Enhancing the user experience, extending the aforementioned unified work management experience across different platforms. And…to make the experience even easier Microsoft have created a MS Teams template that comes with an MS Planner tab to link to your project plan, a link to a SharePoint site for your project that includes an issue and project tracker so you can set everything up with ease and little overhead.
Collaboration – MS Planner 2024 also allows for collaboration with people outside of your organisation through guest access. This feature grants external parties, with the appropriate Microsoft licence, the ability to view and interact with your plan. Guest users can create and delete items as well as edit task fields. You can also add guest users to the Teams channel and SharePoint site ensuring all project communication is easily accessible, shared and centrally located to help achieve the best outcome for your project.
Centralised functionality – From a functionality perspective, there are not any new features of note that we did not have in Planner, To-Do, or Project for the Web. However, for the first time these features are now in a centralised, unified, one-stop-shop application. No more switching between multiple applications and to-do lists. From the end-user experience I would say that this is a game changer for Microsoft as in brings together ‘the project space’ with ‘operations’ and ensures all involved know what they need to do, across all their to-do items (assigned project activities across all projects, flagged emails, loop components etc) and when they are due!
Considerations
That said, there are some areas that would benefit from further development. You can’t @ team members in the comments of tasks (although this is actively being looked at and developed). You can create checklists within tasks, but they don’t have to be marked complete to complete the overall task. These seem like oversights and easy wins / improvements if addressed. The built-in dashboard, or ‘Chart’s as they are called aren’t great but show potential. But as we know it is super easy to link with Power BI and you can even create your own Power BI tab in your Teams Project channel so you and your teams can always and easily view meaningful and bespoke up-to-data MI. Although, we have to acknowledge that, depending on your organisation, this will require the appropriate licenses (and costs) and specialist skillset, thus increasing overhead.
As I see it there are two immediate development areas that Microsoft should look to address in Planner 2024. The lack of being able to grant users distinct levels of permission / access rights. All users with access can freely edit. External users will have all the same access as internal teams and will have access to all associated files attached to the plan. And, if you or a user accidentally delete a task, or even the whole plan, you are unable to retrieve it or ‘undo’ the deletion. It is gone. You will need to start again. Not great – but there are several steps you need to take so it would take more than a ‘fat finger’ to delete. Hopefully, this will be promptly addressed by Microsoft.
Licences
There are several license options available. If you are wondering what licence option is best for you and your firm is then please reach out. We have several experts at Prosperity 24/7 who would be able to assist and advise.
Conclusion
Despite a few limitations, Microsoft Planner 2024 is a powerful application, that offers significant benefits and with its deep integration with Microsoft 365 and other applications like SharePoint and Teams it really does enhance the end-user experience. The benefits and the potential for improvement outweigh any negatives and make it worth considering for those seeking to streamline their task management and project management processes.
As with anything, it is essential to weigh the pros and cons to determine if it is the right fit for your organisation’s needs. Remember, the perfect application does not exist, but the right one does. And Microsoft Planner 2024 could just be the ‘right’ one for you, especially when considering the benefits of being in a leading class and secure ecosystem.
I encourage anyone looking to enhance the end-user experience and bring internal teams together, while staying within the Microsoft ecosystem, to explore Microsoft Planner 2024. See how it can help chart a course for streamlined workflows and improved productivity.
Alternatively, if you are navigating larger projects, programmes and portfolios, and are happy to stretch out beyond the Microsoft shores, I recommend the all singing all dancing Smartsheet, which can also be used outside of the project space and is arguably more user friendly at the time of writing this article. Here at Prosperity 24/7, we offer a solutions-based approach and are not anchored to any one product. This enables us to provide the best advice to meet your business requirements and ensure smooth sailing.
