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
71 comments
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Administrator - co.nexus exchange
commented
Every Office 365 Group gets its own calendar. Because so many users are so tied to Outlook and are always using both their personal Outlook calendars as well as their group Outlook calendars, it would be a real feather in the cap if users could at least see the Planner tasks on the respective group calendars so users can get a one-stop calendar view of all appointments, to-do's, etc. on their group calendars. This would certainly help the mobile experience as well. I know many users are clamoring for the ability to interact with those tasks from the calendars, which I can appreciate might be a complex feat, but a nice stop-gap measure would be simply the ability to see all items on the respective group calendar for quick one-stop consumption without having to review through Planner. The app doesn't even give a calendar view. It requires the browser experience. Also, for the tasks which are assigned to a respective user, they too could see those tasks on their personal Outlook calendars.
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BL
commented
Needs to synchronize without significant delay. waiting half a day for a Planner task to reflect in outlook calendar is unusable.
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Krzysztof
commented
An automatic synchronization for Planner and Calendar is missing. It should work both ways. You would be able to add a new taks in Planner with dates, and right after that (if the calendar have been imported to Outlook, of course) see it in the Calendar.
Also clicking in the Calendar's event would give you an option to EDIT it, thus changing the task in Planner.
This would be a huge improovement! -
Oliver Gruber
commented
To use the calender-link with planner in a productive way, it would be crucial to add a "time"-option (hour of the day) to the current date-information - otherwise tasks simply appear as a list of full-day-blocks at the top...
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Christophe B.
commented
Very usefull to sync outlook tasks (desktop) with the tasks in planner. Click on outlook's task and you get access to the task on Planner. This behavior should be chosen by the user (general, and also plan by plan, for instance if I want all my taks from all the plans except 1 or 2, it should be very easy).
The tasks should be oraganised by the plan, or due date, or other fields available in Planner. -
Michael Fishtorn
commented
My opinion is that we should be able to sync either individual plans or My Tasks (to get everything) shown on the Outlook calendar. Then we could compare task calendars side by side, or merged with our meeting calendar. And if we could drag tasks around from day to day, or even hour to hour we could plan all tasks and meetings for a given week in a single view. But the updates would have to translate from Outlook calendar back to Planner.
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ABIGAIL BARNES
commented
For quick implementation, using the features that Outlook Calendar already has:
1. Add a Plan as a distinct calendar - this appears to already be a function with Outlook "Groups".
Then, on that calendar, the following should appear:
2. A Task should appear as an "All day" appointment on its Due Date.
--- For tasks that have a Start Date and Due Date, the Outlook appointment should span between the two dates.
--- Potentially filter Tasks based on who they are assigned to - so only Tasks that the person has assigned to them will show up on their version of the Calendar
3. The title of the task should appear as the title of the "appointment".
4. The name of the Planner Bucket that the Task is in should appear as the "Organizer" or the "Location"
5. Notes on the Task should appear as Notes on the Outlook appointment
6. A link to the Task should also appear in the Notes section of the appointment
--- Links to Tasks are already a feature of PlannerThis is basic integration that utilizes features that already exist, hopefully making it easier to integrate. Full integration with all of Planner's comments/checklist/attachments etc can come later.
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Hazzel
commented
I would like our team to be able to have their to-dos on their calendar, even if tasks are completed.
Ideally in Outlook, they should be able to see any notes, checklists, comments, flags, priorities, and both the start and finish date. Any attached files should be linked to or listed out. It would also be amazing to be able to check off the task as completed from the calendar, or from a link in the calendar.
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Anonymous
commented
Dear Planner Team,
since 4 years the user asking for the feature of syncing as between planner and outlook.
As a starting point, it would be good to get changes done in planner synchronized via the icalendar link to outlook. For me, it doesn't make sense to add my Planner Tasks to the outlook calendar only once and not seeing any updates. Currently, I would have to add the planner link always when done any changes. That doesn't make sense to me.
Please implement this that couldn't be such a big deal.
At least a one-way communication from Planner to outlook would be nice to get and later a two-way communication would be a good enhancement. -
mayer
commented
NO!
Calendars are a MUST DO. Why then force it into calendar? I want to have the ability to decide it I want it on the calendar -
Marti
commented
If the following information from tasks/planner could flow to an Outlook Calendar, it would replace our need for combining planners across channels within a Team into one (which is a separate request in "Tell Us More") as we could use the Outlook Calendar instead of the planner for this view.
The *Project Manager* role would need to be able to see:
-Bucket Name/Task Name/Assigned/with the color of the label, and this should display on the Due Date, for all Team Members assigned a Task. If no Due Date assigned, it wouldn't need to flow to Outlook. It would be ideal if when user clicked on this item in Outlook, it would open the Task in Teams to allow user to see details. There should be a setting in Team Planner to "enable" the flow to Outlook, as in our use of Teams, we wouldn't need the Task from some Channels to flow to Outlook. This setting should allow naming a specific Outlook calendar, or if no specific calendar assigned, allow it to default to the main calendar.The *Individual User* Role would need to be able to see:
- Same as above but for only their tasks.Again, this functionality would replace our request to be able to see across multiple planners in one, or be able to view all Tasks assigned to a user across multiple Teams.
Thanks,
Marti -
Sara
commented
-What information from tasks would you like to carry over to Outlook Calendar?
Task Title
Task Start and End Dates
Assigned to-How many different plans would you like to view on your Outlook Calendar?
As many as my company needs to display - unlimited
-Any specific scenarios or examples of how this would fit into your workflow
Currently no workflows are configured, but if it makes life better, I will research and configure some. Helpful suggestions are welcome, if you've discovered meaningful workflow steps that would make life awesome - please mention them.
Our need is to display the tasks that are in the planner in everyone's Outlook calendars...when the tasks start date arrives, it needs to be set AUTOMATICALLY to "In Progress", then when the task end date is over, it needs to set the status to "complete" AUTOMATICALLY.....the tasks are showing in my planner and calendar. I am in the team however. Do I have to add everyone to the team, or can they use a link from the calendar to add to their outlook?
I haven't tested if adding new tasks to Teams is updating automatically in my outlook yet, but this question was posted in 2016, and its 10/2019...I'm hoping this is solved and is working already.
Thought Id answer the Admin questions in hopes that it helps somehow, and perhaps for suggestions from anyone that is already skilled with teams/planner/tasks/workflows.
Thanks!
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Casey
commented
We are utilizing Planner to create onboarding plans in Teams for new teammates at my company, so we are stacking many "tasks" in the same day and primarily operating from the schedule view. We would love the added functionality of being able to choose a start and end TIME for each task, and being able to sync those times with Outlook calendar with each assignment or when the entire plan is published to outlook. Also, it would help with the prioritization/organization of tasks on the same day in schedule view. Right now, they can only be prioritized/organized by alphabetical order as far as I know.
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Anonymous
commented
When creating a task it's possible to set a start and due date. What we also need is the possibility to set a start and end time as in Outlook when creating a meeting including an information whether or not the person I assign the task at a specific time is already booked or not. As soon as I schedule the task and assign it to a person it is implemented to this person's calendar in Outlook. And the other way round - when a user organizes itself in the Outlook calendar there should be an option to add that task from the calendar into a specific plan in Planner.
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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).