InfiniteZero TECH

Microsoft Planner is a task-centric work management solution, despite the 'project management' terminology other reviewers are using. The orientation of the tools is to aid teams and team members tracking jobs and coordinating task work through social communications.

Adviser is one of several task-oriented solutions that Microsoft is working to incorporate, including Wunderlist and Microsoft Project. Conceptually, this means that users will be able to manage personal tasks (in Wunderlist), team work (in Planner), and manage project planning (in Microsoft Project), and then for these to be integrated in sensible ways. So for example, it might be helpful easily could see my work-related tasks, perhaps created and annotated in Planner, in a mobile Wunderlist app. Or examine the cost implications for a shift in employees in a Planner task within the portfolio of company projects managed in Microsoft Project. That's one part of the industry’s long-range vision for Planner and the other tools manipulating task information. But it is going to be a long time before all the kinks and use cases are worked well out for your grand vision. And at any rate, eventually Planner will need to stand on its own, dependent how good of a work management tool it is.

And that assessment presents another issue. If Adviser requires Office 365 in order to put it to use -- or even test out it -- many possible users will simply never leap through the hoops to try it out. I have raised that all issue with Microsoft representatives this year, as I was being briefed on the product. The suggestion is the fact that Microsoft should create a standalone version of planner -- at least a web app, if not mobile software -- so that an individual, team, or company could do an apples-to-apples comparison with Asana, Trello, or Wrike, and not the apples-to-oranges comparison with the umpty-ump boxes in that Office image, above. Also, that is the best way for Planner's functionality to improve -- in head-to-head competition -- and not as a captive work management 'capability' locked into Office 365, depending on its integration with Office email, Outlook, Groupings, and other tools.