Tag / Microsoft 365 Development

by Simon Doy

Part 4: App-Powered Microsoft Planner Tasks – Features I would like to see in App-Powered Tasks


Introduction

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

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!

A set of plans, gantt charts with bugs all over them. Some of the bugs have been squashed.
by Simon Doy

Part 3: App-Powered Microsoft Planner Tasks – Gotchas, Findings and Bugs


Introduction

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

In this blog post, I wanted to highlight some of the fun and games that I had working with Microsoft Planner App-Powered tasks.

I have seen the following issues. In this blog post, I highlight some of the problems that I have. I am sure that some of the issues, which are bugs, will get fixed as we get closer to GA:

  • If you complete a task, it requires a refresh of the plan for the user interface to pick up the change and show the task as completed.
  • Accessing completed tasks from the Teams Activity feed can bypass the App Powered Tasks.
  • When you delete the Teams App, it will disable the Task Powered App interface, which, to be honest, all makes sense.
  • Creating the various staging URLs and deep link URLs is tricky. Please use my examples to help you get it right.
  • Do not use a # symbol in your external IDs, as they cause issues with the encoding and decoding of URLs. In particular,r they break the link for Teams stage links. The outcome is that the staging dialog does not appear, and you are taken into the web instance of Microsoft Teams.
  • When developing a solution, use a Dev and environment-specific plan because your tasks are going to point to your development/environment Teams app.
  • The Planner task may miss the start button and app task-powered element if a user is on the planner and immediately opens the task.

These issues seem to have been fixed:

  • The app-powered task user interface does not always show.
  • Immediately created tasks often miss the buttons and app-powered task features.
  • Accessing tasks from Teams Activity can sometimes bypass the App Powered Tasks.

I am sure these issues will get resolved as the solution gets closer to release. My original development issues are getting fixed, which is great news. However, I wanted to highlight the things that I am seeing, and I will feed them back to Microsoft.

Conclusion

This post highlighted some issues that I have seen with Planner App Powered tasks. However, I can already see that some of these issues that I originally flagged have been resolved. This is great news, and I hope is a sign that the solution is coming towards being ready for general availability 🙂