4 min readMicrosoft Planner new feature announcements – Ignite 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.