[Music]
hello everyone my name is maria
and i'm a project advisor at advisacon
today what we get to talk about is the
best practices of building planner
boards in planner
so let's get started so our topics today
are what's new with planner kind of
looking a little bit what's changed
since the last time we've covered this
topic
we'll also be looking at the best
practices for building a planner board
what you need to be doing in order to
have the best experience with planner
after that we're going to take a quick
peek at using planner as a project
manager so that's going to tie in with
the best practices there
but after that we'll be talking about
managing tasks with planner there's been
a lot of great changes since we've
talked about this last
and so we'll get to touch on what's
changed recently and what we get to do
now versus
what we didn't get to do earlier a
little bit about myself
i'm a project advisor at advisacon so i
do everything from project management a
little bit
of development i do trainings as you can
see
i have experience managing projects in
i.t software development
project online amongst other things i'm
been doing training for quite a while
now i'm also a microsoft certified
professional in
microsoft project and project ppm i'm an
office 365 consultant i've helped
clients um get the whole office 365
suite implemented in their company
as well as i do business analysis and
process improvement
all righty let's just jump right into it
so
best practices for building a planner
board
so planner we have here is a great tool
for the project managers that want to be
keeping track of the high level tasks
they need to know what's getting done
when and what the progress
is but they don't necessarily need to be
tracking the nitty gritty of
hours at what percent allocation is the
resource
they may not necessarily need to see
what specific day that resource is
getting that work done they just need to
know
that it's getting done and they are on
the ball with it so
when you're building a planner board
there are three things that you need to
be considering when building it
first off it's pretty simple keep it all
simple
the simpler you are the easier it is to
track your planner board
while you adding a lot of detail can be
beneficial to a point
having too much detail can clog up your
planner board and make it
very hard to track all of the tasks that
you have assigned out to multiple
different people
so keeping it simple and down to the
core details of each task is very
important
and also trying not to build too many
boards or too many buckets
when you have a lot of buckets in your
planner board it can clog things up and
make it hard to find tasks assigned to
different people
next is a little contradictory but it is
adding detail
adding the relevant detail to a task
allows for
users to know exactly what they need to
do without having to schedule a meeting
or come and find you in the office or
ping you now that we're all working from
our homes
after that it's utilizing all of the
features which is
phenomenal um getting to utilize all of
the features we
there's now you have teams we have to do
there's a lot of different
tools out there that are now available
to us so
with all of these features now that we
have available
you can have an easier experience
working with planner and getting others
to use planner to update their tasks and
everything that they've been doing
so i'm just going to jump right into it
i talked a little bit about how we're
going to be touching on what's
new with planner well since we've done
the video before
there we have had a lot of additional
integration
with to do and microsoft teams i'm just
going to pull over
teams here
planners have a lot more integration in
teams now than it did originally
planner can be added as a tab to a
team's channel it can be added as a tab
to multiple
teams channels you can have planner
boards specifically dedicated for each
team that you have in microsoft 365
teams and what i mean
is if i jump to the planning
board here we can see that project
planning
is a planner board within the channel
and so we're going to take a little
a better look at this planner board in
just a moment the one thing i want to
point out to you first
is that the little notification that
comes up on the top of the planner board
the fact that they've renamed planner
and teams to
tasks by planner and to do so planner is
turning into tasks when it comes to
teams
so task is is a feature that's going to
be
allow users to better manage and track
the tasks assigned to them so this
combines with to-do you get all the
things that are assigned
to you and we'll take a look at that in
just a moment but before
we move on to there i'd like to point
out that the planner board that we have
here so we have
all of the functionality that you would
get
in your planner board all available here
right in
microsoft teams and this is not
restricted to this one channel we can
have this planner board in multiple
different channels
so if i jump to development here
and i click this project planning tab
we'll see the exact same
planner board here that we just saw in
the planning channel
so you can have one planner board across
multiple different channels
which is great if you're tracking
different phases
for example if we look over here at the
channels for this specific project
management teams demo
we'll see general planning development
testing and deployment
both all of these are different phases
of a project and this is one of the ways
that we recommend
our clients put together their teams and
their channels
so it depends on the client but this is
the the standard best practice
where you have it separated out per
phase so you can see here we've got
all of these different phases and we
don't have to have different planner
boards for the different phases
instead we can have one planner board
for the entire project
but it is accessible throughout all of
the channels as they're tracking the
phases
additionally so i'm going to point over
here to the left navigation we've got
tasks by planner and to do
so this tool allows each user to track
their daily tasks and we're going to
come back to this in just a second but i
also wanted to point out
this is a new feature from when we last
touched on this
now we get to jump into the planner
board itself
so i'm going to open up planner
so if you'll remember here we have the
planner hub this is where you can access
all of your planner boards available to
you what we're going to go ahead and do
is jump to project
planning it's in my favorites here and
the reason
how it's been added to my favorites is
this little star
so if i had unchecked this right here
you can notice over here in my favorites
that
project planning is now no longer in my
favorite section
i'm going to go ahead and add that back
for ease of access
here we have a developed planner board
and the biggest thing to think about is
those three details i pointed out
earlier
keeping it simple adding detail and
using all of the functionality here
so what we have here for this specific
type of project
is each bucket so we have a back lock
bucket
we have your phase one phase two phase
three
and phase four oops move one of those
over here
phase four and even this is a little big
notice i have to scroll over to realize
that there's a different bucket over
there
now this will depend depending on your
screen resolution for those of you who
have
um a better screen resolution you might
actually get to see all of them in one
screen
either way you want to try and avoid
having too many buckets because if you
have too many buckets and you have to
scroll
it can be really easy to lose different
tasks especially if they're not the ones
that are assigned to you
so as a project manager separating out
per phase of the project is a great way
to keep everything well organized
additionally
you could have to limit it even more you
can just have a backlog bucket
or a to-do bucket or a backlog and a
to-do bucket keeping things simple and
maybe a little longer
but even if it is a little longer going
down the nice thing is whenever you
complete a task let's say i've completed
my requirements gathering session
it'll hide at the bottom so now it's no
longer visible
because that's our that's marked as
complete
so we can see right now i've exposed
them but if i collapse this the
completed items are no longer visible
which can help
better the view of what you're seeing so
that's kind of what i mean by keeping it
simple is
trying to keep the buckets down to
basics if you can keep the buckets down
to basics and try not to extend
past your view screen it's going to
really help you see
everything and not lose track of any
tasks
next thing is adding detail adding
detail means utilizing the fact that
there's checklists here
so if i open up customize project site
we'll see we have this checklist feature
now this is a great and concise way to
outline
what needs to be accomplished before
this can be marked as complete so
right now it's not started none of the
items are checked if i had
actually gone ahead and created my new
risk lists i could mark this as in
progress and that's taking advantage of
those features
making sure everything's up to date with
the detail that it
needs but trying to keep it down to the
bare minimum
if i use so if i wanted to type a
description so if i was going to assign
this to yan
and i didn't have time to do quite as
well of a hand
off as i really needed to i could take a
minute here and write out all of the
instructions so the client needs
a new customized project site
this needs to be completed by
end of week or if it's going to be
longer
then there's lots of different notes
that you can be adding in order to
make sure that they if they have
everything they need and anybody who is
assigned a task is going to see this
information
and then they can proceed to make
comments as they progress through it
so if for example unable to create let's
say the
jan is not able to create the issues
list at this time
he could make that comment here and send
it out so we could say
um issues list
has a roadblock and then he could
explain
as to why and then once that's done you
click send
additionally you can attach items here
so
it may be you don't necessarily want to
have all of the requirements for this
item
listed out in the notes box you can
attach a word document
from either a file you can grab a link
to it
you can grab it from sharepoint and you
can attach that file to the tasks
so you've already written out all of the
requirements everything that the
person needs to know and you can attach
it here for them to look at and then if
they have any questions
again they can post it here on the
comments or they can reach out directly
through teams
so on top of that we can be adding
labels
from here we can see that underneath
this sign so this is how i would assign
somebody i would just go ahead and click
the plus button here and i can assign
either myself for sarah davis or
all three of us if needed to we are all
needed for
this one task and then there's labels so
they've actually moved labels last time
we did this
labels was over here now it's underneath
the assigned persons and we're going to
just click the little button here
to add a label and i can customize these
labels the standard is just the name of
the color
but i can add items like critical path
at risk on track
if i wanted to i can change the name
here to
if i wanted to specifically identify
items that were late
i could change it to pink to be late
that way i can specifically see what
tasks are late and i get a bit of a red
flag with that
the benefit of the labels is it allows
you to organize it at one step
further so the buckets allow you to
categorize everything
by phase or by their
status whereas the labels
add one more layer of organization in
this case
for example critical path if something
may be at risk so if something has a
potential roadblock that's come up
you would want to notify the project
manager that this task is at risk
so having a label that's big yellow
gets the attention of the viewer will
allow that
project manager to be notified when
something is at risk
and then they can come talk to you
directly about it and figure out how to
remove that roadblock
you can if you want to change buckets
here you don't necessarily have to drag
and drop as is
available we already talked about
progress
if something is a high priority or an
urgent priority or something that
needs to be done by the end of the
project but not necessarily soon
it's good to use that categorization
because if something is urgent and you
say so
and then you close out the task you can
see that this is urgent and needs to be
done
now taking advantage of these features
and taking advantage of
all of the tools that are available to
you will allow you to communicate better
to your team and your team to
communicate better to you
because as they update the tasks and you
take a look these visuals will grab your
attention
at risk grabs my attention versus just
the normal configure project online
environment
critical path also grabs my attention
because it's big and red
i can see that that needs to happen by
the 12th of february next year
if it doesn't we could end up delaying
the entire project
i'm looking here and i think deliver
cookies should also be important so i'm
just going to click the deliver cookies
task
hit the drop down for urgent who doesn't
need cookies
and go ahead and put a due date of end
of this week
we will have cookies and then you're
done
so the best way to move things around
for example if i wanted to move deliver
cookies to
different board or a different bucket
would be to
drag and drop over you can also just as
i showed you open them up and change the
bucket they belong to
if you wanted to see things
differently there are different
filtering options and different grouping
options
so this is great another reason why
keeping it simple can be really helpful
because if you keep it simple here
it allows you to easily read when you
switch around how you're filtering and
grouping by
if i click the drop-down for filter i
can actually choose and filter what's
late
what's due today what's due tomorrow
this week so if i
click next week i can see i have to
deliver examples of the power bi report
has to be done by next week
i could choose instead to turn off that
filter by unchecking it
and look down at other items so we could
look at all things marked urgent so we
have we see that delivering cookies must
be done and then after that
customizing project sites all of that
has to be done it's a very urgent item
if i go from here i can go down to other
options would be
labels so the benefit of updating the
names of your labels means you can
filter on them later so anything that's
marked as critical path i could take a
look at
so nothing is marked as critical path
and
urgent but if i update the priority to
take off urgent
we'll see that we have verify project
workflow progression
and the nice thing here is i know a
little bit about what this is about so
if i'm not necessarily familiar right
off the bat with what the task is
having the note on the card so we can
see there's notes
and then we have a checked show on card
allows me to get a quick
insight into what this task is about
having that as somebody who's been
assigned a task is extremely beneficial
and as a project manager it can be a
good reminder if you need something to
kind of tweak that memory of yours of
what you were assigning
but you can see we also have other items
here so critical path
and at risk so you don't have to stick
to one label per
task you can have multiple labels which
for example if we're looking at critical
path items
this would bring my attention because it
has two labels assigned with them and
one of them is at risk
and since this item is critical path i
will need to get that resolved as soon
as possible
now if i want to group this differently
and turn off the filter so i'm going to
hit the drop down for the filter
i can see that i have one label filter
on uncheck that
get everything back i can also choose to
group by different things i can group by
assigned to
so i can see who's assigned to what
so we have maria yan um sarah and i can
see all things that haven't been
assigned
so it's great i can just drag and drop
i'm gonna assign myself deliver cookies
because i enjoy baking cookies
and then i can assign building the
customized report pack to yan
and then i can drag and say deliver copy
of the project schedule that's going to
go to sarah
it's a quick way to assign tasks to your
users
and to your resources if i click the
drop down here i can also choose to do
it by progress
so you this another way to set up a
planner board
is to set up not started in progress and
completed
now you can do that but it's already
included with a planner board so
separating things by phase can be a
great way to go about it
because since this is already included
you're adding an
extra layer of filtering because later
on if i wanted to filter
by my phase bucket i can i can look at
just what's at planning
and requirements and i can see that in
this grouping i can apply the
filter with the group so now i'm looking
at everything here
in terms of what's not started what's in
progress what's complete
and i'm only seeing phase one tasks
which allows me to get a better view on
my project
so another thing we can do is also group
by due date if
you can see if things don't necessarily
have a due date either
so over here we can see things that
don't have a due date
but what things are this week
next week future i will remind you we're
just looking at phase one which is why
we're only seeing less tasks
labels you can see things what is
critical path what is at risk
what is late what is on track
all of that can be grouped by and you
can see how
having multiple buckets can be a little
cumbersome
because with all of these labels i have
to scroll all the way over to find my on
track
and if i was utilizing blue and purple
i'd have to go all the way over to see
those two
lastly we can look at priority so
everything that's low medium important
i can see that all from this grouping
now i'm going to just return back to
bucket and i'm going to turn off my
filter
so other tools that are available to you
are the charts and schedules
so if we go up here we can click charts
and we can see the status of each item
what bucket each task is belong to
the priority of them and we can take a
look at all of the tasks in this left
pane here
this can give you just a quick visual on
where your project is at
because if you have anything coming up
here as late that's something you're
going to want to address
if you have something that's high
priority also something you're going to
want to take a look at
schedule is a great way to see on the
timeline
where your project tasks are due so you
can see deliver cookies is here we have
deliver examples of power bi reports
we completed our project kickoff on
monday all of that is visible
from here and i can look through the
month to see
when the next task is on january 8th i
have configured project online
environments and
customized project sites i need to make
sure that in the first
of february that i take care of the
administrator training
and it needs to be completed by
the 27th and you can see
all of these different items
technically this is an extension though
of the other items but we also have
verified project workflow progression
so you can always take a look here and
see if you um
see if from a calendar perspective where
you're at with the project
other tools available to you if i click
this drop down is
notebook notebook is extremely useful
for a project manager
and is great to take advantage of
because this notebook is not only
visible from
planner this notebook is also visible
from microsoft
teams so we'll give it a minute to load
this is just the general town every
channel and teams has one
but if we go down to planning
we can see this is the kickoff meeting
notes from the well technically
it's today but theoretically it would be
from monday
or not today but the it was in july but
let's pretend it's monday and you can
see
notes for related to the project can be
stored here and they'll be
accessible to everybody within the team
and they can be viewed from here
using planner or they can be viewed from
microsoft teams
so if i was to open
so if i was to open microsoft teams
again
and we're going to jump back to our
planner board
so i have the project planning planner
board here
but i also if i click the drop down for
my tabs
i have planning and if you remember
that's the same name of the notebook
so if i open that up
we can see the exact same note we were
looking at in the website
we can see notes related to the project
can be stored here
and if i added a note here
gotta give it a minute to load oh
open it up we'll open it we'll add a
note
so if i open a note back in planner
says this is viewable from teams
and i go back to microsoft teams
it's slowly updating but there it is so
these notes are visible both in
microsoft teams
and visible in planner though it is
onenote's website and if you opened up
onenote having
synced to this team you'd actually be
able to see it in your onenote
application
so this is applicable this is relevant
to all of the channels because if we
jump back to the website
you'll notice there's a development tab
just like a development tab in our
channels
so we have here notes related to
different phases in the project can be
separated into different
sections in this onenote so we have
pages we have different sections that
are related to different
channels in your microsoft team
all notes can be visible
channels so having made that note if we
jump back to teams
and i instead move to the development
channel
and we'll see there's a development tab
right here
we'll see those same notes that we just
added all
notes can be visible from their channel
and these can be edited from here they
can be edited from onenote
um they can be navigated to from your
planner board
this helps for a smooth transition
between applications when you're
planning projects and when you're
managing them
the smoother transition the more time
you save
so touching again on best practices
it's important to keep things simple
don't add too many buckets don't over
add tasks when you can add a checklist
add notes but i make sure it's all
relevant detail to the tasks
take advantage of all of the features
because there's a lot here available to
you to make your project management
experience easier as a project manager
you can access this then from teams
making teams more of a collaborative hub
for you
versus just another tool that you have
to be utilizing to show you
how i added the planner boards to these
channels
i'm going to go ahead and jump to
testing
so in the testing channel i'm going to
add the planner board that we've been
looking at
so i'm going to click the plus button up
here
and i'm going to look at so we're
looking for tasks by
planner and to-do
and we could create a new plan which
would then be hosted within the same
office 365 group as this team is
or in this case we're going to use an
existing plan
so i'm going to look for existing plans
i'm going to click the drop down and you
can see we have project planning
so i'm going to go ahead you can choose
to post to the channel about this
sometimes that's important sometimes
maybe you don't want to post to the
channel completely up to you
once you're done you click save
and you have that planner board now
added to that channel so now you have
your project plan
available in the channels that you need
so that anybody who's working in the
project
has easier access to them and then from
here they can go in
and they can update their tasks as a
user i can come in
i can filter for what's assigned to me
i'm going to click a drop down
and i'm going to filter for maria fenn
and now i can go in and i can start
making updates as a user i can go in and
say all right
delivering cookies is in progress i have
bought the ingredients
and put put a comment bought the
ingredients
they're going to be chocolate chip
and then i can choose to say that well
actually delivering examples of power
bi reports i'll talk to my project
manager and then if needed i will go
ahead and click the
i need i need yon's help on that i don't
have access to them so i will need his
assistance
and then he'll be able to see any
provided details that are within the
task
another way to be managing the tasks
that are assigned to you
is going back to tasks by planner and to
do
so we'll go back here if you don't see
this task by planner and to do
on your navigation all you have to do is
click the three ellipses and click it
here
mine's here because i added it so if i
chose to right click and i'm going to
unpin that you'll see now it's gone
if i click the three ellipses i can go
ahead and add it
back and then i'll right click and
choose to pin it because i want this
accessible to me
at all times so here i can see
all of the tasks that are assigned to me
whether it's through planner
or whether it's through to do so
assigned to me
we can see from project planning i need
to deliver cookies
and we can also see if i scroll down my
comment
bought the ingredients and from here i
can reply just the same updates and i
don't have to worry about filtering or
finding
these are just tasks assigned to me this
is meant for my
productivity and then to help my project
manager know
what i'm doing and what tasks i've been
assigned so they can look at their
planner boards they can see all the
updates i'm making and i'm not going
into their planner board and making any
changes for them
i'm just applying changes to the tasks
relevant to me and as a project manager
that can be nice just taking care
of the planner board as a whole and then
everybody else just focusing on the
tasks assigned to them
i can put an add-on label i'm just going
to do on track
i'll click exit this also a little side
note has the ability to assign you from
tasks from to do
so if i go up here to task and or even
just clicking
add task here but i'm going to jump into
tasks
we have all of the tasks that are
assigned through
or that i have for myself with to do
so these are tasks so i could say i've
got baked peanut butter cookies there
we've got
another one we can do is write
up best practices plan your best
practices
documentation now i have a task assigned
to me and i can track them all in one
location so i have everything in planner
i have everything in to do
anything that's assigned to me i can go
here i can look at the planned view
and see when things need to be done i
can look at their due date here
there are filters i can look at things
that are completed
right now i'm just looking at all active
all of this
allows you as a user to have a better
user experience
okay so jumping back to the planner
board for a quick recap
so just a reminder and i know i've been
saying this but
make sure to keep things simple don't
add things that are extra when you can
do a checklist
add a description so that the person
knows what they're supposed to be doing
keep things up to date on a regular
cadence looking at the project
as consistently as you can because other
people can make changes they can move
things around
it is good to be constantly familiar
with your planner board
but as a teammate take advantage of the
tasks by planner and to do
this is a great way for you to keep all
of your tasks in one location and use
teams as a collaborative space for you
that's our demo we got to talk about
what's new a little bit with planner
since the last time we talked about this
best practices for building a planner
board then using planner as a project
manager
and managing tasks with planner thank
you so much for joining us today and
thank you for watching
have a great week
you