What's new in Project and Planner

TL;DR

Learn about the progress and growth of Project Planner and To Do and the upcoming features and improvements to enhance project management and collaboration.

Transcript

• Hello and welcome to our Spring 2023 Ask Me Anything. Project Planner and To Do have had an enormous year of progress and growth. In the practice of project management as well as our industry continues to transform around us in exciting ways. The team is excited to show you our community, the amazing updates to our products, as well as give you a... Read More

Key Insights

• 😤 Project management has become more collaborative and globally distributed, requiring a mix of methodologies to coordinate teams effectively.
• 🌱 The integration of To Do, Planner, and Project provides a comprehensive system for managing tasks and plans.
• ❓ Updates to Planner include Grid View, Recurring Tasks, and Rich Text, enhancing task management capabilities.
• 📽️ Project offers a combination of scheduling options and supports Agile, Waterfall, Kanban, and more.
• 👤 Users can easily try out Project and invite others to join, with IT professionals having control over the trial process.
• 💗 Microsoft is focused on helping Planner users grow in skills and maturity to bridge the professional project manager gap.
• 👤 The upcoming features will enable users to align projects with organizational goals and track progress.

Questions & Answers

Q: How has project management changed over the past decade?

Project management has become more collaborative and globally distributed, requiring a mix of methodologies to coordinate teams effectively. With teams becoming more global, project management software needs to provide features for coordination and visibility.

Q: What updates have been made to Planner and Project?

Planner has introduced new features like Grid View, Recurring Tasks, and Rich Text, providing users with more flexibility and improved task management. Project now offers the world's favorite scheduling engine and supports Agile, Waterfall, Kanban, sprints, backlogs, and people workload views.

Q: How can users try out Project and share it with others?

Microsoft has created a system for users to easily try out Project and invite friends to join. IT professionals will have full control over the trial process, avoiding the problems of dark IT.

Q: How is Microsoft aligning projects with organizational goals?

Microsoft is releasing features that enable users to connect projects and plans to goals in Viva Goals. This allows for better management of the organization's goals and progress reporting. Project teams will also be able to set up local goals to align their work and track progress.

Key Insights:

• Project management has become more collaborative and globally distributed, requiring a mix of methodologies to coordinate teams effectively.
• The integration of To Do, Planner, and Project provides a comprehensive system for managing tasks and plans.
• Updates to Planner include Grid View, Recurring Tasks, and Rich Text, enhancing task management capabilities.
• Project offers a combination of scheduling options and supports Agile, Waterfall, Kanban, and more.
• Users can easily try out Project and invite others to join, with IT professionals having control over the trial process.
• Microsoft is focused on helping Planner users grow in skills and maturity to bridge the professional project manager gap.
• The upcoming features will enable users to align projects with organizational goals and track progress.
• Microsoft prioritizes the security and compliance of user information and is preparing for a smooth transition to the new Project for the Web infrastructure.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• Project management has evolved over the past decade, with a need for increased collaboration and a mix of methodologies to coordinate teams.

• Microsoft's integrated system of To Do, Planner, and Project helps manage tasks and plans in one platform, with new features like My Day, Flagged Mails, and recurring tasks in Planner.

• Project is continuously improving with features like Conversations, Notifications, and soon-to-be-released Task History to ensure coordination and progress tracking.