How to Choose Between Microsoft Lists and Microsoft Planner for Task Management

when it comes to task management in Microsoft 365 you may be questioning which tool is right for you are you going to use Microsoft planner or you're going to use Microsoft lists to manage all of your tasks and when it comes to Microsoft guidance well we have two options and it's not very clear which one suits which audience so we've had this question as well many times from people because it is pretty confusing what is it the lists give you that planner doesn't and vice versa and we only had this question the other day from one of our subscribers meaning it's a great time for us now to explore that and show you those key differences between list and planner so you'll be able to take the right tool for you when it comes to task management in Microsoft 365 and if you find there's a huge amount of value in this video we'd love it hit that like button and not only that subscribe to the channel to find more great content like this every single week to make you more productive with the tools you already have so let's Dive In what does Microsoft planner do well well when we're working in Microsoft teams a lot of people use planner and we can easily add it by clicking on the plus icon and add ourselves a brand new plan that just takes seconds to do and inside of your new Microsoft plan we can add our phases or buckets as it's known in planner adding a task is as simple as clicking on a button and then adding the relevant detail all of these fields become pre-configured for you to use there's no need for you to become an IT developer to create your different fields to fill in your plan as we can see here we can add checklists descriptions assignment and also we can add comments as a task moves forward we also have pre-built charts allowing us to go into a chart section in our plan do filtering based on different information in our plans which you want to test it you and even get a schedule view of all of our tasks and that's all inbuilt and available to us in just a couple of clicks we also have notifications built in automatically to send us emails and also that all important Microsoft to do integration allowing those assigned tasks in planner to appear in our to-do list so there's a lot of great capability available to you straight out the box when it comes to using planner so what doesn't planner do very well well Simplicity is a problem in planner we don't have the ability to define a dependency or a subtask this task is dependent on another in the plan there's no way to note that in addition it becomes blocked and our statuses are not started in progress and completed there is no ability in Planet to have a different set of statuses that problem then gets bigger if I create myself a new plan for a project that's also Associated to the one I created in our plan such as in the scenario here where we create a product launch in the same team we work in we can create a brand new task in that plan but we once again cannot Define a dependency against another planner even if it's in the same team or group that is not supported in Microsoft planner so subtasks and dependencies can become a massive problem when using planet and trying to understand what task is depend on what not only that we can also have a problem with assignment here I want to assign my task to someone outside of my plan and that will be Diago now when I do that you can see I get a nice message in teams and plan out warning me that if I go and add Diago it's going to give him access to the whole team and by that I mean exactly what we see behind me when I add I go into that plan by accepting that message I inadvertently have given access to the whole team all the files and the plan as well something I see people fall for unfortunately in planner and over share their team and data don't adjust your YouTube sets I'm just here quickly to tell you about something you're probably missing out on now we send out video tips and tricks on how to get the most from Microsoft 365 every single week and we call this email that we send out the motivational Monday because we always need that Kickstart right on a Monday and so if you're missing all of our great content and want it delivered straight into your inbox every single Monday all you need to do is head to link below get signed up and we'll do the rest and we look forward to having you part of our great Community where you can find all of this great content to be more productive every single day other than that let's dive back in so what does list do well that can build on those problems of planner well let's take a look I'm going to create myself a brand new Microsoft list in the same team and in the same channel this is going to be much the same as what we used in planner but we're going to see some differences where it can build on some of those problems we're going to create ourselves a brand new Microsoft list here and I'm not going to use one of the templates available because there isn't a template for a task list surprisingly so we're going to create our own from a blank list that also provides a flexibility later to fully Define your structure of the data you want to collect I'm going to give it a name and get started here now you'll see that when I click on new there is only a title because I need to define the structure of this list which is just like a table in Excel firstly I'm going to go and rename the title column so we can have a bit of a task summary instead of the word title at the top I can now add further columns I'm going to add myself a task description inside of my task list because we're going to need to know what each task relates to likewise I can come in here and I can also set a status column that status column super important because I can now Define additional fields that planet couldn't do so I can now introduce a blocked status allowing one of my tasks to be blocked where in planner I just couldn't do that once I've set that up that'll become available for me to use and I can even use color coding which once again I couldn't do inside the planner to make it very visual when I look back at my task plan in addition when I assign a task the person does not need to be inside of the team or group so I can add a task to someone such as Henrietta outside of my team and Henrietta does not get any access to the resources but me as a project manager I know that task has been assigned but no access has been granted to Henrietta now what I've now done is also create additional tasks here is the same one we had in Planet we're going to create social accounts but I want to make this a dependency on another task I'm going to create a brand new column called a SharePoint lookup column and in a lookup column I can tie it to another piece of data inside of the same list here I'm going to set it up to connect it to the title which is our task summary and I'm going to allow multiple selections from our data set that now means that when I open this task I can now set a task dependency meaning this task has a dependency on the first one inside of our plan and I've had multiple dependencies which are all linked and visible inside of our task plan so a great way to visualize those dependencies that also extends to project plans outside the bomb we're working in I'm going to go and create myself a brand new list in the same team or group this time I'm going to copy it from an existing list which is a task list I just created meaning that whole structure will be copied for me and there's no need for me to recreate it now inside of here I can begin populating tasks in our new plan but in this scenario what I want to do is create a dependency in our original plan to this task which sits outside of that task list and I can do exactly that once again with the power of a SharePoint lookup column we're going to go and create a new lookbook column on this list and inside of that I can Define as cross project dependencies this time selecting the list I've just created with that whole new task list and once again selecting the title and multiple the actual items when we say that that no means in that task I can click into it and I can actually Mark as a dependency a task from a different plan entirely I can even click onto that and find myself in the review page so I can check that data really easily so the ability to cross-reference data from another list becomes possible when we're using Microsoft lists so what does list not do so well well Liz has a problem it can be pretty complex to get it running so in here I've obviously got my Microsoft list running as a task list and on the right hand side we see a drop down for all items and by default that's the only view of the data you're going to get in Microsoft lists so you're going to have to create yourself a brand new actual what we call views to slice and dice a data it's pretty easy to do here I'm effectively filtering by in progress and saving it as a brand new view but planner gave us all these out of the box I didn't have to create all of these different views of my data that's a good way to waste half an hour out of your day now in addition to that we also have to deal with things like board views and calendar views they come straight out of the boxing planner once again inside of lists I can go and create myself a board View and get that configured to one of my different columns but once again time is taking out your day to configure that the same with a schedule view I have to go and create a brand new schedule view to do exactly that and then once again we get that all ready inside of planner without any of the additional effort to set it up so it's very straightforward to use those capabilities but unless they're going to take you some time likewise when we look at Power bi and Reporting we have to use power bi or another reporting tool to report on this data if you have a power bi license you'll be able to connect this to power bi and have power bi build report for you which is tends to be pretty useless at the Box so that means additional work is needed for you to get your reporting set up that planner do for you and also there is no ability to sync these tasks inside of Microsoft to do so you are going to have to rely on checking your list to get ahead of your day and keep an eye on what's coming up and finally another problem in this Microsoft list setup is that there are no notifications that are sent out automatically that is reserved for Microsoft planner when it comes to getting set up out of the box however I can show you a quick way of getting something set up to achieve that but of course planner already comes with this that's more time out your day to get this set up so if you do want to set up notifications on your test list go into the freed up menu in your Microsoft teams list and open that list inside of SharePoint again now in here we will have options under automate we can now begin to set rules so I can go ahead and create a new rule on my task list then when I do that you can see we have a few options data in a column changes and new item is created or it's deleted so in that scenario we could use a date or we could use when a new task has been priced in this list to send a notification and that is effectively how we can build notifications very simply in Microsoft list as an example when a new item is created we want to send an email and we can Define who that has been assigned to so very simply when a new task item is added and I've defined the person it's assigned to they will get an email notification stating that a new item has been added to this list but that's not exactly what we call in planner notifications with a summary of tasks and descriptions in fact if you wanted to go there what we'd have to do inside of Microsoft lists we'd have to head into the integrate Tab and begin looking at a power automate workflow to try and achieve some of those notifications so once again that's time about your day maybe that's expertise you don't have when it comes to building notifications a planner can do straight out of the box so whether this leave us when it comes to summarizing those differences between Microsoft planner and Microsoft lists well in short Microsoft planner is simple and it's efficient it means that we can create a plan and tasks we already have that set up ready to go so it might take you a few minutes to go and create your plan or if your tasks but planner Simplicity can become a problem in Microsoft lists we have so much more in terms of adaptability to go and build out those statuses that we don't have inside a planner add new Fields create subtasks and dependencies but all of that comes at a cost that adds complexity in terms of how you're going to use Microsoft lists into upskill or understand more about SharePoint and of course as we have seen the report inside of Microsoft lists and task management isn't the best out the box yes we can use power bi but that may come with additional cost not only for licensing but for your time as well whereas planner provides comprehensive reporting out of the box you can use very quickly about needing to go and build reports in power bi so in summary what do you choose to do your task management well that's really going to come down to what you need to actually achieve when it comes to your own task management if you need things like subtasks and dependencies then planner may not be for you whereas Microsoft list May well be also understanding that you need to know a little bit about SharePoint when it comes to building out those capabilities but I'm sure between those two choices you'll find the right one that's for you we would hope that this video then summarize those key differences between Microsoft planner and Microsoft list when it comes to task management and if it has we'd love it if you have that like button on this video and not only that subscribe to this channel to find more great content like this every single week to help you become more productive at the tools that you already have other than that we'll be seeing you in the next one [Applause] thank you [Music]

Channel: Scott Brant

Views: 53,904

Keywords: microsoft 365, office 365, microsoft lists, microsoft to do, microsoft planner, lists, planner, microsoft lists or microsoft planner, how to use microsoft planner, how to use microsoft lists, microsoft lists task list, how to, tutorial, your365coach, scott brant, sharepoint lists, sharepoint, versus, how to setup a microsoft task list, what is microsoft lists, what are microsoft lists, what is microsoft planner, comparision

Id: abRmliGjPHE

Length: 14min 46sec (886 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 16 2023