Speaker 1: Hey, Microsoft is finally getting their act together to fix their crappy task management tools. I can't say that. Let's see. Microsoft acknowledges the challenges with its task management tools and is on a mission to turn things around. There is one big gotcha though that you should know about that I haven't really seen people talking about. We'll talk about that in a little bit. In this video, we're gonna talk all about what they're doing, why it matters, and what you can expect to see over the upcoming months. Okay, so for years, this task management situation has been a little bit awkward. There's a lot of different tools that all do task management in Microsoft. And for a while, we've said, why don't they just create one big one? Because you have things like Planner, To Do, Tasks in Teams, you have Project for the Web. You can kind of use lists for it. And people would get confused about what they should use. And actually, one of our most popular videos is about, here's what tools you can use for what. And we always felt it was a little bit silly that we even had to make that video. It led to people not actually using the tools well or being scared off from them because other tools, other outside vendors might have more integrated tools. And then when people would have a tool like Planner that they were using that they wanted to graduate from and have a little bit more complexity around their task management, they would have to move from Planner, go to Project for the Web, and then Project for the Web didn't actually integrate back down into the other tools. And so people would have some Planner, some Project for the Web, and multiple sources of truth for their tasks, which is not good. If you know anything about project management, you do not want multiple places to look for things to do. You want one central place. So that's what brings us to what we're sharing today. So drum roll, please. The big solution is they're bringing all the apps together into one app and calling it Planner. So a little bit of a branding situation they got going on there, but effectively what you can count on is instead of there being To Do and Tasks and Teams and Planner and Project for the Web, those are all becoming one tool. And the first place that they're building this is right within Teams. So where you're used to seeing Tasks in Teams, you're gonna see a Microsoft Planner logo, and that is going to function as both what To Do did, where it gives you your personal list of what you need to do, your own task list that you can control, as well as pulling in things from Planner, and now Project for the Web. It's not gonna be called Project for the Web, obviously, anymore, but think about that complexity being now integrated into the other tools. So you won't have to steer your users about which tool they should use when, you can literally just say, use Planner, and that will serve as the task management tool at your organization. Oh, so now you want to see Planner. We don't have access, nobody has access yet, but there are some demo videos that we'll kind of pull up and show overlaying the fact that now within Teams, you can have that tab and you can see all your plans, all your tasks in one spot, and really bring that all into one space. There will be a web version of this eventually, but for right now, everything is just gonna be right within Teams. Hey, if these tools are helpful to your business and you want to learn more, we're gonna be for sure diving in and creating content about these tools and getting hands-on as soon as we're able to. So I would encourage you to subscribe if you want to see those when we release them. So it was always a pain point in the past when people were using things like Planner and wanting to go to Project for the Web because they said, oh, Project for the Web cost me more money and I need to buy a seat for that. And frankly, it was a pain point for us too. We were like, do we need to buy everyone a seat or just the project managers a seat? And it created this mini chaos of should we even do this thing? And honestly, we never found a really good answer to it. We ended up really not using Project for the Web in the end. And so when I heard that all these tools were coming together as one, it relieved that feeling from me. And it's not the case. It's not gonna be relieved. They're leaving one little paywall in this tool. And that is in order to get the Project for the Web features in Planner, you do have to still have Planner Premium. You're gonna see that little diamond indicator all around the tool and it's gonna pressure you to sign up. And while I understand the mechanics of, you know, it's a business and they want only people that need those tools to pay for them and not bundle it into everyone's price. It just creates a little bit of friction for everyone that's using these tools and they're gonna be constantly asking this question of, do we need to upgrade? Will it be worth it? I don't know. And it's annoying, but I get it. But I just wanted to make you guys aware of that. I haven't seen it really talked about a lot and they're not being 100% transparent about it and saying, in order to get these features, you need to pay more. They're sort of talking about it from the frame of reference of, if you have an existing Project for the Web license, yeah, it's a little bit confusing, but there's a gotcha there. In order to get it all, you're gonna have to pay a little bit more for your subscription. We're probably gonna do it. It's probably gonna be worth it because those integrations are gonna be really nice, but I really wish we didn't have to ask that question of, is this gonna be worth it and should we upgrade? I think it was an opportunity for Microsoft to just incorporate it into their existing tools and it was a miss. We really just want to make you aware of this situation so that you know what you're getting into when you're starting to use these new tools. All right, I've been enough of a downer in this video. This is gonna be a good thing and I'm really excited about it. Let's put all the paywall aside and just reflect on a single unified task list is gonna be fantastic for people that you need to assign tasks to across multiple tools and have it show up in one place for them to do. People have been lost before when they need the complexity of Project or Project for the web and they haven't been able to integrate it into the other tools. That's all going away now and it's gonna be a game changer for a lot of people. Hey, I wanna know how you're feeling about all this mixed emotions from me. Would you leave me a comment and just share your thoughts? Like I said, I'm kind of excited, a little bit bummed, but I'd love to know kind of what people in our community think about this. So when is all this coming? How are they gonna roll it out? Let's get into all those details. The first thing you should know is that in spring 2024, the new app in Teams is going to be available. That's gonna be the primary thing that they're gonna be pushing right up front is having this project experience right within Teams. So tasks by Project and To Do or whatever they renamed it to is gonna change to Planner. The next thing that's gonna change is Project for the Web is going to be renamed to Planner. And I believe they're gonna have a parentheses project at the end. Future Mitch here, you're actually wrong. According to the Admin Center, it says they're not going to proceed with the name change at this time because it leaves some mixed messages around what is Planner proper going to be if Project for the Web is gonna be Planner. I'm not suggesting that this is all super clear. And frankly, I think there's a little bit of murkiness around how they're explaining this. But if I'm gonna guess what's gonna happen, Planner is gonna stay Planner. Project for the Web is gonna be renamed Planner Project in parentheses. And then later in 2024, they're gonna be creating that same experience that is within Teams as a web app. So for people that don't maybe use Teams regularly or want to have that in a web browser, they're gonna have all the same functionality of Planner, the new integrated Planner in a web browser. I will note that they haven't exactly spelled out what's happening with Planner in the web app right now, but I think that's gonna stay the same until they kind of get everything all together. Microsoft, comment below if you have any more details. We'd love to know. So like I said, some of that is my best guess as to what's gonna happen. I do still have some questions about this tool that I haven't been able to find answers to online. First is, are they gonna fix notifications? Notifications in Planner are pretty terrible. You get notified when someone assigns something to you, but there's none in comments. It's just very flat. It's not dynamic. You can't like at tag people and get notified. It's not great. So when I think of this being a flagship product, they really need good notifications. So I'm hoping those get fixed. Another one is, like I said, is Planner sticking around? Is it gonna be renamed Planner Classic? Or what does that kind of look like in the mix of the migration process to this new tool? I'm not sure. The last one is, right now, Project for the Web tasks and everything get created somewhere in Dataverse. So this is a little bit technical for some, but you can do a lot with Dataverse data and create automations and get things all integrated with other tools. And it can be really powerful, but it isn't clear if they're going to be creating the data in Dataverse, or if the Project for the Web is going to wherever Planner gets stored. So I don't know exactly how that storage and the integrations are gonna work. Again, fingers crossed, really hopeful that they make it well-integrated, put triggers around things, make it so I can get data from the tasks, and really make it a cohesive experience. So again, if you know the answer to this, or if I'm missing it somewhere, I would love for you to leave a comment down below and share what you know about the upcoming Planner. Like I said, this is gonna be an exciting kind of beginning of the year, and we're gonna be keeping our eye out for these tools and what we notice, and we're gonna be sharing content around that in the future. So be sure to subscribe if you want to be around for that. Hey, one resource before you go that I wanna share is our Internal Communication Guidebook. If you lead an organization and you've been looking to streamline your workplace, streamline your communication, stop your communication getting lost in the noise of your organization and really making that better, we've taken all of what we've learned over the years of consulting and boiled that down into one guidebook for you. And we actually have a free sample of it down below that you can get if you are interested in learning more. And hey, thanks for watching today. Stick around for future content, and we'll see you again next time.