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Microsoft planner is a great little tool for organizing a team or completing a
smaller project we're full project management software isn't really
necessary most of us are familiar with Outlooks old task list a simple to-do
list that we can tick off when the job's done the second generation task list is
a little more complex but planner is a couple of generations ahead of that and
it can be used to manage tasks shared between different members of a team
provided they're all on the same office 365 account open up your office 365
portal and go to the apps list
clicking on planner opens the app in your browser and there's a useful option
to download the app you can manage your planning tasks from your iPhone and it
will sync with the browser application you'll probably find that there are
already a few plans in your app when you open it up these will be linked to other
apps in office 365 and they'll probably be empty to create a new plan click here
and give the plan a name preparing the company report will need a few people to
cooperate together so it's a good example to use public simply means that
the plan will be visible to anyone on your office 365 account not to the whole
world private Limits is visibility to those
who invite as members of your team and this plan is going to be private so I
want to subscribe all new members to notification emails I also want to give
a brief description of the plan I click create plan and the new plan opens up in
bored view complete with my first task card ready to be filled in there are two
views the other is chart view we'll see more of this later so let's start by
adding a few tasks planner makes this really quick and easy each of those
cards on my to-do list represents a particular action
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next I need a few people on my team to allocate those tasks to go to members
and add either a name or an email address and here's the first weakness of
the system you can only add people who are on the same office 365 account as
you that's great if your company has one large 365 account but not so good if
you're in a large organization and each department or branch has a different 365
account each member of the team will automatically receive an email telling
them they've been added here's mine now having created the team let's assign
people to the tasks I've created
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so far so good but all the tasks are in a single to do list I can differentiate
a little more producing the company report falls neatly into two parts
producing the document itself and then checking for errors printing it and
doing a quality control check planner can help here you can create a number of
different lists or buckets as planner calls them differentiated by topic I'm
going to add produce document and print document reserving overall editorial
control to myself by clicking and holding each task card I can move it the
appropriate list I very much dislike the word bucket for this but maybe that's
because I'm English now let's switch to charts view for a moment here we can see
that I created eleven tasks all have been assigned but none of them have been
started now let's have a closer look at the detail of a task card here's mine
the first thing I'm going to do is to click on in progress and I'll put in the
start date just to rub it in now I want to add the completion date as I'm
managing the whole project this is the date by which I want everything done
including the printing and quality control checks I can add a description
of the task here closing the task card you'll see that there's an icon showing
the task is in progress along with the completion date but none of my
colleagues have started their tasks so I'm going to send them a message to
remind them the message appears in a comments trailer at the bottom of the
task card and there's an icon that's appeared on the close card to show that
there's a conversation in progress on this particular task now let's have a
look at labels open up the card and there's a set of labels for each you can
name them whatever you want they're a bit like the sticky labels you
can physically add to paper documents they're a fun addition and used
sparingly and correctly they'll help your at-a-glance view of the project overuse
them and they just become annoying a quick check on charts view shows one
task started yep it's mine next let's modify the marketing tasks list once
I've marked it in progress and added a start and end date there's another
little useful feature to explore you can add a checklist to each task
and by checking the box on the top right you can tell planners to show the
checklist on the front of the card in bored view so everyone can see where
you've got to like this another feature of planner is the ability to upload and
attach documents to a task I want to attach some guidelines for proofreading
I open the task go to the appropriate method I can add a file create a link or
reference a SharePoint in this case I simply want to add a PDF a few seconds
later it's uploaded and showing on the task card all Jonathan has to do to open
it is to click on it well that's a very quick introduction to planner you can
explore it and Microsoft has produced several training videos for its use our
verdict it's clearly a work in progress it's quite useful as it is now but it's
still a bit clunky deleting a project isn't easy and it still feels a bit
fragmented but if you're the kind of person that thrives on making lists
especially for other people you'll love it
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