Plans deletion/archive
As I saw that when you delete a Plan all conversations, Groups etc are deleted could be useful to have another Status for that Plans, maybe an "Archived" status, maybe visible in another dashboard or something similar.
Nicola
shared this idea
We’d love to hear more about the following:
1. When would you delete or archive a plan?
2. How long would you like it to be accessible?
Feel free to include any specific scenarios where archiving a plan would be useful.
We appreciate your feedback and look forward to reading through your comments!
Cheers,
The Planner Team
359 comments
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CT
commented
You (Planner Project Manager) wrote:
"We’d love to hear more about the following:
1. When would you delete or archive a plan?
2. How long would you like it to be accessible?"We already have MANY plans in our Planner instance and the presence of inactive campaigns causes some of us "pain". We've only been using the app for about six months. Can't imagine who it will feel for our "power users" in another year. So... yeah... your app needs a workflow for an "Archive" action or some type of active/inactive metaphor. Would recommend you also consider a max number of active "Plans" per user or aggregate max across each tenant simply for your road map. Just a thought.
Your questions:
1. When would you delete or archive a plan?
We would like to archive/deactivate/hide a plan from our users once the "plan is complete". To clarify, we currently use Plans for both individual projects (with end dates) and as "Boards" to track things (Orders, department backlogs, etc. without end dates). All the Plans we currently wish we could archive are completed projects. We have not yet had a need to "archive" a plan used for a purpose without an end date. hope this makes sense.... trying to be brief.
We would like to Delete a plan once we decide there is no business value in retaining the archived plan data. As you would surmise this is highly subjective. Hence my reference earlier to the need for a max storage limit or max number of Plans. It's fair to say that a max limit would force our employees to make decisions about what to archive vs delete.
Final comment, on a long enough timeline (i.e. use of Planner) clearly there would one day be a need (assuming a Plan count-limit were enforced) for users to have the ability to automate the deletion of plans. I'd prefer to have some manner of automation (as opposed to the system simply destroying old plans "older than x"... "archived and now exceeding retention policy"... etc. Better to allow us (the tenants) to decide how the automation would work. I could get onboard with something like:
- automatically export/copy the plan data to OneNote
- automatically export/copy the plan data to a OneDrive directory (would be super epic bazinga if each archived plan could be stored in OneDrive as a file (or files contextually similar to a ZIP archive file). That could allow a user to restore an exported/archived Plan when necessary.2. How long would you like it to be accessible?
In an attempt to help... we offer this feedback... perhaps your long term road map could deliver two conceptual ideas to address this "archive vs delete a plan" request:- "Archive" might be defined as the user action performed to essentially export a plan (i.e. the OneDrive storage automation cold storage idea) so the Plan is no longer available in the Planner UI
- Active / Deactivated. Perhaps there's a need to allow a user to "deactivate" a Plan in order to hide it completely from the Planner Hub UI. Ultimately this is what annoys our users... old plans are piling up alphabetically in the Hub list (i.e. non-favorite plans). If you were to add an active vs. non-active metaphor to the Plan entity you could then add a filter to the Planner Hub to allow the user to view active Plans by default and to filter the list to view his/her "inactive" plans. This is complicated, but not rocket science.
Hope this all helps. We would very much like the ability to identify discrete plans as "active" vs "inactive" to clean up the Planner Hub list UI and to make the left-hand nav bar (Favorites and Recent Plans lists) easier to use.
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Laura
commented
1. We would like to use different plans for different projects. If one project is closed, we still have to keep all the information but some employees have many projects within one year. Therefore by keeping every plan in the Planner Hub, one might loose the overview. It would b much better to be able to archive the plans of closed projects to also remove the group in outlook from the top of the list.
2. we're talking about several years here, maybe law determines even 10 years.Thank you for regarding this idea. I think the amount of comments on this idea already show the necessity of this improvement.
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Anonymous
commented
I see it no different than how you archive Teams.
Good idea. Keeps your notes and documentation on hand for later use. Always a good idea.
1. Delete a plan if it was created in error or if it contains no useful documentation
1A. Archive a plan if it was used to build a project or to create something. Always good having a copy of the process on hand.
2. I would say indefinitely like Teams.If it makes sense to archive a teams chat, why does it not make sense to archive their planner boards?
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Hermes Uribe
commented
1.- I will archive a Plan if I need to show my job in my anual feedback in the company.
2.- I would like plan to be accesible at least one year, because of my feedback
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Monica
commented
1. I would only delete a plan if I created it by mistake. I would archive the plan whenever a project was completed.
2. Indefinitely - we would need to be able to access this archived plan for reference if questions come up so we should always have access, unless we choose to delete it. Giving an option for the length of time to keep the plan would be good. If we had a way to print the entire planner board, that would be great. -
John Kennedy
commented
This feature is most needed in my org as we have started using Planner more and more. But it seems Microsoft will not provide this feature now. When researched online, found this tool
https://www.jijitechnologies.com/blogs/how-to-archive-plans-in-microsoft-planner
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Justin Griep
commented
We just lost a customer to Jira because of this limitation specifically and it has been out there for a long time.
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Kent Berk
commented
I would want the Plan accessible indefinitely after archiving.
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Kent Berk
commented
We are using a new plan for each major client/project, including to share tasks and OneNote notebooks. When the client/project is complete, we don't want to delete the Plan (and all of the Notes etc.), we want to archive it so it is accessible through another view, rather than the main Planner Hub.
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Mat Wraith
commented
1. When archive or delete?
Option to a.Manual archive and b.Auto-archive x days after all tasks are completed
Delete: Only delete after export
2. How long archive?
Option to keep archived between; 1 month - indefinitely, and include export and import feature -
Chana Wolfson
commented
1. I would archive a plan when a project (e.g. grant proposal or exhibit or workshop) is complete.
2. The projects are recurring. I would like to retain access indefinitely because we rotate our exhibit themes and want to have access to previous exhibits on the topic. -
Thais
commented
1. When would you delete or archive a plan? - When it's done.
2. How long would you like it to be accessible? - At least for 3 years or we should have the possibility to export it to One Drive. -
Anonymous
commented
I agree with the other Heather's comments! Having the option to archive/un-archive a plan would allow users to manage their plans much more effectively
1. When would you delete a plan? When it was no longer needed
2. When would you archive a plan? When it was no longer needed to be seen every time I open planner.
3. How long would you like it to be accessible? A deleted plan should disappear and archived plan should stay until it is deleted. -
Anonymous
commented
I would archive a plan/task when it is complete, but want to keep records 7 years.
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Anonymous
commented
Any update on this planner team? The ability to archive and retain access to completed projects is basic PM 101.
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Kevin
commented
For plans created in Teams we should be able to archive plans and have them accessible from an "Archived" tab rather than staying in the "Conversations/Files/Wiki/..." tabs of the Team Channel the plan was created in.
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Anonymous
commented
Projects have start dates and end dates. When a project is complete it should be able to be archived and accessed at any time indefinitely like most other project management applications.
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G
commented
Any progress on this feature? Desperately need an archive function!!
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Tim
commented
Need an option to restore accidentally deleted buckets and tasks. Currently any user can delete any item without warning or the ability to restore or even view the delete data.
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Heather
commented
1. When would you delete a plan? When it was no longer needed
1. When would you archive a plan? when it was no longer needed to be seen every time I open planner.
2. How long would you like it to be accessible? A deleted plan should disappear and archived plan should stay until it is deleted.Just like a piece of paper if I shred it, its deleted. If I put it in a box and put it in a cupboard it's been archived.