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

2. Thank you to our sponsors
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3. About Me https://www.linkedin.com/in/yanaberkovich
BI Analyst, Data Platform MVP
Consultant, Product Manager
Member of BI, BA, SharePoint, O365, PM communities
Data Platform Consultant
Experimenting with O365 
Worked as SharePoint everything, love sharing my insights. 
@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? Product / Program Agile Schedule
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

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….
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)
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. Conversation about each task
What happens next?
Welcome
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!
Schedule
Demo – let’s plan… The Next Family Trip!
How Planner can be creatively used for a vacation?

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?
Idea
Scope
Plan
Manage
Measure
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
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. Agile
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…?

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

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

23. Guiding questions What are we going to produce?
Which buckets are we going to use?
Which color codes are we going to use?
Are we going to assign tasks? Or leave it to the team?
Discussions in the tasks or in the product site? In the product team?
Files in the planner? In Teams? In SP site? In One Drive?
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:
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: us/graph/docs/api-reference/beta/resources/task
Graph GitHub:
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
Planner Community Site: Planner Blog:
@Yana_Berkovich
Questions?

33. Thank you to our sponsors
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