Earlier in April, Microsoft started rolling out the revamped version of its Planner app for Teams. It was designed to combine the features found in the older To Do, Planner, and Project for the web apps. It even received a newly redesigned icon.
Today, Microsoft announced some new features that are being included in the revised Planner app. They are all designed to assist companies in assigning tasks to their frontline workers.
In a blog post, Microsoft said that one of the biggest requests from businesses that use Planner was to make it easier to set up tasks that frontline workers would be required to complete, such as training objectives or learning about new company policies. The post stated this new feature has been added as a new type of task list for each worker:
When publishing a task list for each team member, you can select the locations that should receive the task list, as usual. Once you confirm the locations, a copy of each task in the list will be created for every employee at each of the chosen locations. When these tasks are created for each employee, they’ll be created in a plan for the specific employee rather than the plan for the team. Once the list has been published, you’ll have access to simple reporting to monitor completion.
The new Planner app also lets companies quickly assign recurring tasks to frontline workers, with options ranging from daily tasks all the way to assignments that only occur once a year.
Companies can also set up the Planner app so that workers can fill out a form and mark a task as completed. There are options for uploading a file, like a photo of the filled-out form, as a requirement for completing a task. Finally, Planner can be set up so that a worker must submit it for final approval in order to complete a task.
Microsoft plans to add more features to Planner, including support for Copilot, sometime in the near future.