Introduction

This blog post is part of a series discussing Microsoft Planner’s App-Powered Task feature.

• Post One: Introduction to App-Powered Tasks
• Post Two: How to Build Planner App-Powered Tasks.
• Post Three: Gotchas, Findings, Thoughts and Bugs.
• Post Four: Features I would like to see in App-Powered Tasks. [This Article]

In this blog post, I wanted to share some ideas, features and thoughts about where I would like to see Microsoft App-Powered Planner Tasks go.

Agent-powered Planner Tasks

Currently, we are discussing app-powered tasks which are assigned to users, as in humans. However, imagine if we could assign tasks to an AI Agent such as a Copilot Agent. These “Agent-Powered” Tasks would be really powerful. If we could assign work via a task to a Copilot Agent. The Agent could then do what is being asked, feedback the results via the task comments, and reassign the task. This truly would help us integrate Agents into our everyday work and really bring them into the flow of work and the business process flow.

I’ll coin the phrase, “Agent-Powered Tasks”; you heard it here first! ☺️

App-Powered Tasks Make It to General Availability

I am sure that Microsoft will release App-Powered Tasks into general availability (GA). I really hope that they do, as it is a big gap in the Microsoft 365 platform. Once they do then I think people will really start to make use of Planner-powered tasks because suddenly, there is enough control.

It’s a chicken and egg situation; if technology stays in preview and is not ready for production use, then it is difficult to see that organisations will use it. Fingers crossed.

Part of Microsoft 365 Base License

Additionally, I hope and expect that this feature will be a base Microsoft 365 license feature rather than a Planner Premium feature. The fact that there is all the plumbing to do and the use of Teams Apps to me means that there won’t be the additional processing and, therefore, the additional expense for Microsoft to run this feature. Compare this to a feature such as a Copilot, which has the underlying cost of running the LLM workloads.

If Microsoft don’t include this in the license, then they will really impact Microsoft Planner adoption. Additionally, as Microsoft Planner forms the base for task management and if organisations want to adopt some of the premium features, then app-powered tasks increase the likelihood of that happening.

Fingers crossed that Microsoft agree with me 🙂

Power Platform Integration

There needs to be an easy way to work with the APIs through Power Platform Connectors.

If these are available, then we could drive the task workflow via Power Apps, manage the process and task completion via Power Apps

Task Outcome Field

The other thing and maybe I am missing something, is that I think tasks need an Outcome field where you can put the final results of a task. We used to have this with SharePoint workflows back in the day.

Currently it’s difficult for a human or an AI agent to know what the outcome of the task has been in this custom logic world.

Conclusion

In this post, we discussed some ideas and thoughts that I would love to see in these Planner App-Powered Tasks.

I really do hope that licensing doesn’t become a barrier to this feature; anyway, we will see what happens as this amazing feature evolves.

Thanks for reading!