Add Tasks to Outlook Calendar Automatically
Add ability to view tasks that have assigned due dates in Outlook calendar
Lindsay
shared this idea
Beyond the iCalendar feed, we will continue to explore our options for adding tasks to Outlook Calendar automatically. We would love to hear more of your thoughts on the following:
-What information from tasks would you like to carry over to Outlook Calendar?
-How many different plans would you like to view on your Outlook Calendar?
-Any specific scenarios or examples of how this would fit into your workflow
Cheers,
The Planner Team
57 comments
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PK
commented
Shannon summarized my thoughts perfectly in her comment back on January 17. What is the purpose of exposing the calendar automatically to the user as a member of the group when it offers literally no functionality. Is this a step on the path to it functioning like one would expect it to or some unintended byproduct that we shouldn't be reading into? No one likes the publicly published .iCal solution -- some may tolerate it, but it's not a good solution.
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David
commented
The iCalendar option isn't ideal as it is too insecure (you are basically making your calendar public by publishing it to iCalendar). I would like to see tasks in Outlook Calendar online in a secure way.
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Jeremy
commented
Any Official Update? It seems too long as the last official update was July 2018. It is coming to another year.
Our small Team is moving into Office 365, and seeing how Team, Kaizala under Group - as well as bringing in Shared Inbox, Planner and Calendar together are great. However, not able to view all Planner event of all Groups in 1 Calendar view is very disturbing. It should be easily integrated, on and off by a simply switch.
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Kelly Hammerle
commented
We would like a way for assigned tasks to be color coded by who they're assigned to when they show up in Outlook calendar.
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Shannon
commented
What is the purpose of the automatically created plan calendar in "All Group Calendars" in Outlook if it isn't going to show the tasks assigned in the plan in Planner? We've used the publish to Outlook calendar option in Planner but all that did was make another calendar in Outlook under "Other Calendars". This new one does show the tasks so the original one is basically useless and the new one works but has security issues as many people have noted.
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Anonymous
commented
Our users would like to view their Planner tasks in their Outlook tasks. There is a possibility to publish the Planner plan and import the iCal link into Outlook. However, by doing do, the link becomes public and anyone who gets hold of it, will be able to access the content of the Planner plan. We don't consider this secure enough and have therefore disabled this possibility. Still - the need is there and are users are asking for it. When is Microsoft planning (pardon the pun :-)) to introduce a more safe method of integrating Planner and Outlook? (To-Do would also be nice to have, but for the time being we would prioritize secure Outlook integration).
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Claudio
commented
I simply need to see the tasks in my Calendar as I need 1 single place where to look at when I have to know/define what to do today. I cannot check on different solutions, therefore please just ensure that the tasks in Planner (and also Outlook) can be included in the Calendar, so that the time will also be blocked and people cannot invite for meetings etc.
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Chris
commented
This is why I stopped using Microsoft products. I trusted MS for my organization's tools, and EVERY - not some of the time, but EVERY time I set up and test a tool to see how it can save me team time and money, the feature is broken, poorly conceived or flat out ugly. Usually all three at once. Mailchimp, slack, trello, GSuite - Open Office ALL better than o365. Spending time researching the web like a chump, trying to find user communities to confirm that an advertised feature does not, in fact work is a WASTE OF TIME and money. I no longer trust MS - its obvious you don't care and you can no longer compete. Planner is such a rip off of trello I'm shocked there's no lawsuit - likewise for Teams and Slack. The only possible defense would have to be "Oh, don't worry, none of our stuff actually works". Fix it, don't fix it, I stopped caring today. Just. Like. Microsoft.
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Anonymous
commented
Many users plan their "To-Do's" on a weekly or daily basis. To do work needs planning and ressources, which means some users love to add their To-Do's to their daily tasks in the calender not getting disturbed during their tasks. Why does Planner does not support to add a "Block" into the own calender without the need to add that block additionally in Exchange.....if a task is closed before the due date, the calender entry is automatically deleted.
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David
commented
If a task has been assigned to me, I would like that due date to show up on my calendar. It might show up in the all day slot with the "Free" status.
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Anonymous
commented
The current paradigm of publishing the calendar and importing into Outlook isn't feasible for organizations that value internal and/or customer privacy. These two Microsoft products should talk to each other without having to publish the calendar publicly. In Outlook a group calendar is created for each plan, why can't that group calendar have the tasks on it?
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Weston Technologies
commented
This "integration" has never worked properly. Once you've published the web calendar and opened it in Outlook, one-way updates only occur rarely, and in some instances not at all. But there is a workaround that at least makes it minimally functional. Please note, this only works for local instances of Outlook, not the online (OWA) version:
- Publish the project calendar in Planner, but do not click "Add to Outlook"
- Copy the iCal link provided
- Open desktop version of Outlook
- Go to: File / Account Settings / Account Settings
- Open tab "Internet Calendars"
- Click "New..."
- Paste the iCal link from your project, and click "Add"
- Now double-click the calendar you just added (or select, and click "Change...")
- Rename the folder to something more friendly in the field "Folder Name"
- Uncheck the checkbox under "Update Limit"
- Click OK
- Click "Close" to close out the settings MDINow, instead of updating at odd, seemingly random intervals, you can add the calendar to a Send/Receive group (or just the default group) and set any interval please. You can also include the group in the F9 Send/Receive updates to force an update whenever you like.
This is a ridiculous work-around, and it shouldn't be necessary, but at least it lets you see current Planner scheduled items in Outlook (and in overlapping calendars, no less!). I don't hold out hope that we'll see this rumored Outlook plugin any time soon, and those plugins are always a gigantic stability nightmare in any case. It would have been far better if they'd gone with direct integration through Exchange, but I guess that's just not in the cards.
Hope this helps someone,
Weston -
Lohith
commented
Hello All,
i believe i have a way to integrate the task to outlook, all we need to do is use "Microsoft Flow" to automatically add the tasks based on the start and due date to the outlook calendar. i have created a new planner calendar and the flow is working just fine.
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Anonymous
commented
we need this feature to update between Planner calendar and Outlook calendar.
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Weston Technologies
commented
The .ics feed sync problem persists. Is there an update on when this will actually be working? We've opened a ticket with O365 support, but they don't seem to have any more information than anyone else. The "feature" has been included with Planner for almost 9 months. It seems to me you should either fix it, or remove it.
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Anonymous
commented
iCalendar feed is not working. It doesn't update the calendar. Have to manually add planner to outlook to get new tasks to appear.
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Jeff Allen
commented
When will the feeds actually sync? I see a way to add the calendar with iCal and as an admin of a plan, turned it on but not all of the tasks assigned to me show on the calendar and as they are added it doesn't sync.
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Anonymous
commented
For many people Outlook (Windows, iOS, Android, OWA) will be their default working application, their ‘goto’ app. However, the mobile Outlook apps lack tasks functionality and the todo apps seem to lack consistent connectivity to exchange server. Therefore, it seems a strange omission to create the planner software suite and not build in connectivity to exchange server even at a minimal level of allowing the integration of scheduled tasks from planner appearing in the appropriate person’s outlook calendar. Are you telling us that you have created a separate calendar function, re-invented the wheel and not entered into dialogue with the exchange server guys? OK. Exchange Server uses the JET engine while planner is layered on top of Sharepoint which is layered on top of SQL server. There are connectors out there. Go and play.
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Daniel
commented
Agreeing with all below. Since groups have been included in Outlook clients Planner calendars should be too. Would also love to see an "add to planner" button on meetings and tasks.
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Peter Seitz.
commented
Agree with a lot of the comments below: tasks created in Outlook (both those created directly in OL as well as those created via OneNote) MUST be accessible in Planner, and vice versa. Having Planner as an isolated stand-alone will be an obstacle to adoption by folks already using OL tasks & OneNote. Also, having a one-way link where Planner tasks are visible in OL but not the other way around also is a deal-breaker. In the MS world, tasks are tasks and should accessible/editable via all apps. The fact that OL is THE calendar tool (just think of all the meeting requests managed in OL) means that must not be ignored if Planner is to succeed.