My slides deck from the Redmond Office 365 Saturday about planner and Agile Product Managment. The presentation is discussing Groups and permissions management, as also planner tasks and where this tool fits in the "whole Story" told by Microsoft with their O365. The first part of the lecture can be viewed on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzDEduNcIfY

1. Yana Berkovich Data Platform MVP
@yana_Berkovich
YanaBerkovich.com
Redmond O365 Saturday
How Can Planner Help?

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3. About Me
BI Analyst,DataPlatformMVP
Consultant, ProductManager
Member of BI, BA, SharePoint,O365, PM communities
Data PlatformConsultant
ExperimentingwithO365
Worked as SharePointeverything,lovesharingmy insights.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/yanaberkovich
http://yanaberkovich.com
@Yana_Berkovich

4. What is planner?
 The most colorful tool in the O365 panel
 Work Management Application
 lets you organize projects, share files, assign tasks, and chat with
other collaborators
 Team collaboration, project collaboration
 Organize personal work visually
It enables the collaboration on the task level, better for small to
medium teams

5. When can we use planner?
 Plan our product release
 Agile lifecycle management – this is the sticky notes board
 Plan the next Office365 Saturday or SQL Saturday
 Plan the family trip
 Marketing release
 Team tasks management
 Lab tests schedule planning
Schedule Agile
Product /
Program

6. Where can we find Planner?
 In Teams – Planner tab
 In O365 – on the menu planner
 In Groups – Planner Tab
 In SharePoint – Can be added to the menu
 In Flow – Planner data connection
 In PowerApps – Planner button (with data connection using
planner flow)

7. Once found, what is in there?
 Planner Hub –
 Contains all the plans that are in the site collection
 Each plan belongs to a group
 If a new plan is created – a new group is created for the plan
 Plan
 Plan is created automatically for a group and can be modified by all
it’s users
 Plan contains Buckets that can be added by all users
 Plan contains tasks that can be dragged in and out of the buckets
 Tasks can be assigned to group members

8. How to add people to your Planner?
 Use Groups to manage people in planner
 Assign tasks to people in your group
 Governance made easier, similar to Outlook distribution
lists
 Permissions types:
 Owners
 Guests
Governance – You have a
group I have a group
Everybody can have a
group!!!!!

9. Planner Administration, Can we limit it?
 Who can use planner?
 Planner can be limited to internal users, or to guests
 The default is for all the users to be able to create planner, just like groups
 Groups and plans –
 People who cannot create groups cannot create plans
We don’t want no plans….
1. The administrator can limit the access or even disable it completely:
Administration: Office365 PowerShell, removing the tile from the menu
DisabledPlans PROJECTWORKMANAGEMENT.
The object type is: tasks.office.com (for any other graph related call)
1. Remove planner from the users plan in the administration

10. Directory Management – Groups & Planner
 Policy in azure ad allows admin to restrict group creation only on outlook and all group
applications including planner
 Multi domain support
Future Plans:
 Working on policy for group expiry
 Hidden membership
 Separate groups by corporate policy type – will follow other organizational content
 Usage guidelines
 Multi domain and creating groups in specific domain
 Usage reporting
 Files quota
 Hybrid – support for groups solution for Hybrid scenario

11. Files Management in Planner
 The files are saved in SharePoint site in O365
 The files can be attached from: your device, SharePoint,
Link
 The documents library of the group site is used to store
the planners data
 Can be viewed from SharePoint, OneNote & Teams

12. What happens next?
Welcome
email
Follow in
Inbox
Calendar
tasks
Shared files
Conversation
about each task
Follow in
Tasks
Follow
Outlook
tasks
Follow in
Teams
See the
whole plan
Teams
activity
Follow in
Planner
status
Dashboard
Follow in
groups
The group
planner tab

13. Demo – let’s plan…
The Next Family Trip!
How Planner can be creatively used for a vacation?
Schedule

14. After the work life balance part,
Let’s get into some work planning

15. MS Project? Why aren’t we talking about
MS Project?
 O365 is about telling the “whole story”
 For use case or user story there is a different
solution
Source: Blog Post Medium
Don’t Use a Cannon to Kill a Fly
By:Andrew Sloan
Source LinkedIn blog post
Jack of all Trades, Master of One
By: Robert Shimonski

16. Planner vs. MS Project Online
Planner for O365 MS Project Online
Price Part of E1-E5 7$ a user/ 30$ a user/ 55$ a user depends on
role
Enterprise View –
Main page
Planner hub shows a list of plans Project Center – portfolio view of projects with
powerful filters, grouping, visual indicators.
Permissions to assigned projects only projects
Plans Plan-> Bucket-> Task Project-> Task -> Subprojects and hierarchies
Project Details Drag and drop tasks organized into
buckets
Detailed attributes, Scheduled projects, sub
projects & subsets, Gantt chart, tasks hierarchy
and prioritization
Tasks Details Pop up screen, no customization
3 statuses: not started, in progress,
Done
Edit in project pro, Checklists are available for
all tasks
Multiple status options

17. Planner vs. MS Project Online
Planner for O365 MS Project Online
Collaboration Group in site collection, Teams,
part of the collaboration in o365
(onenote, one drive, sp…)
No quick link from planner to site
Each project can generate full sp site
template based, Task can be edited
Connected SharePoint Sites
Groups are not supported
Mobile Mobile friendly UI Several partner Apps for mobile to show
parts of the features
Templates Not Supported Multiple templates are supported

18. Product Vs Project
A Product A Project
Solves a problem
Conceived -> developed ->
introduced-> managed ->retired
is a temporary endeavor
undertaken to create a unique
product or service.
Clear Scope
Clear timing

19. How can we track the product in Agile?
To Do In
Progress
Done Not in
Scope
Analyze Task 1 Task 3
Dev Task 2 Task 7
Test Task 4
Prod Task 11 Task 5
Idea Scope Plan Manage Measure
Planned In
Progress
Done Not in
Scope
Iteration
1
Task 1 Task 2
Iteration
2
Task 4 Task 3
Iteration
3
Task 11 Task 7,
Task 5

20. Why was it so difficult?
 In the Waterfall model, all the stages simply follow each
other
 The backlog is between the stages
 The resources are assigned according to the timeline
 Agile is multi dimensional…?
Agile

21. Product
Backlog
Sprint
Scope
Iteration
Daily
Standup
Sprint 2-3
weeks
Demo Released
Software
Requirements
Product Owner
Features
Sprint
Planning
Product
Backlog
Tasks

22. Let’s plan our own product!
Since we have planner…let’s just give it a try

23. Guiding questions
1. What are we going to produce?
2. Which buckets are we going to use?
3. Which color codes are we going to use?
4. Are we going to assign tasks? Or leave it to the team?
5. Discussions in the tasks or in the product site? In the
product team?
6. Files in the planner? In Teams? In SP site? In One Drive?
7. Schedule for tasks – added to the groups Outlook? Or just
iteration dates? If we are not on time, do we track it?

24. Working with the Created plan
What if, after creating all those tasks I
would like to see them somewhere else?
No we cannot…for now
 Copy planner tasks – recreates in
planner only, same bucket
 There are some 3rd party solutions:
http://apps4.pro/planner.aspx
 Task resource type – build your own
planner aggregator

25. Exporting Data –What is Microsoft Graph?
Microsoft developer platform that connects multiple services and
devices. Builds on Office 365 APIs and allows developers to
integrate their services with Microsoft products, including
Windows, Office 365, and Azure
Machine learning capabilities
Example: Teams insight

26. Exporting Data – Microsoft Graph The Dev option
More information: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-
us/graph/docs/api-reference/beta/resources/task
Graph GitHub: https://github.com/microsoftgraph
 Planner objects and plans has structured identifier such as
“Task”
 All information can be accessed using json
Build an
App
Choose
device
Get
Token
Use the
API
Use Data
Query to
track
changes
Add
Custom
data
Deploy in
cloud

27. Make your own task application
 What if I want to export a task when it is created to Outlook?
 What if I want to add a tasks to planner right from my application?
User Story
Technician needs to add task from
the application in PowerApps- add
task that contains all the
information from this lab result, and
assign it to another technician

28. Power Apps & Flow – Add Task To a
planner from Your application
Open Flow
Add Data
Connection
to Planner
Create new
flow
Add step
create task
in planner
Complete
the
functionality
Save the
Flow
Open
PowerApps
Choose the
App
Edit the
App
In the edit
page add a
button
Assign the
Task to
planner
flow to the
button
Save the
App
Test & Debug…

29. Best Practices & Governance Policy
 Control who can create plans
 Control for how long plans & their artifacts are retained
 Define guests users policy
 Define when Planner is used
 Use planner in meetings – to increase the adoption level for small
projects
 Delete plans which are no longer necessary – it is your draft board not
the official Gant chart
 Have firm group creation policy in the organization - Don’t get lost in the
weeds
 Add Flow data connection to planner and a task edition and task read
templates

30. Planner limitations
 Max 250 assigned tasks per user for all plans
 1500 tasks can be created by user
 250 active tasks – not started, in progress per plan
 100 tasks per bucket
 Cannot view all the tasks in the Hub
 Cannot export all tasks to Excel
 Cannot import Tasks from another data source (Excel,
Outlook Tasks, MS Project)

31. The future of planner
 First of all…exporting your data! –(in the community site
prioritized very high)
 Enabling governance is a key – start by planning for it and the
tools will follow
 There are multiple tools for tasks tracking currently, Planner is
not the leading task management software unlike PowerBI for
example, which became the no 1 in it’s field
 What makes planner unique, is that it is part of “the whole story”
as long as it can connect import and export it can lead
 More integration with Flow and Outlook Tasks
 Aggregation, Gantt and full picture – not replacing MS Project,
answering different needs

32. Planner Community Site:
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t
5/Planner/ct-p/Planner
Planner Blog:
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t
5/Planner-Blog/Welcome-to-the-
Planner-Community-Blog/ba-p/36448
https://www.linkedin.com/in/yanaberkovich
http://yanaberkovich.com
@Yana_Berkovich Questions?

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