Microsoft Planner
blogs.office.com
blogs.office.com
It's missing features one might expect from something tied into 365 (of course subjective):
1. Weak outlook integration (e.g., can't send a card as a task, email, or calendar invite)
2. Weak sharepoint integration (e.g., can't browse for links to attachments). It supports onedrive, but just for the logged in user.
3. Limited (read: one) reporting or charting options. Maybe Gantts are a bridge too far, but there are many useful visualizations beyond who has outstanding tasks.
4. Can't move cards to new boards (just new buckets)
5. Can't clone/copy cards
And it's just plain buggy:
1. Many links aren't actually links, but rather click handlers on divs, breaking common UI like "right-click, open in new tab".
2. Icons and previews have busted caching behavior, whereby "correct" icons show for a while (sometimes seconds) before being replaced with old versions
3. Cards will duplicate or disappear while editing, usually fixed with a refresh
4. and cetera.
There's potential for new features leveraging the 365 ecosystem, but its as yet unrealized, and it has a long way to go before matching its most obvious competitors in polish (UI and code quality, not necessarily style).
I hope they have some cool new features that inspire competition and improvements from Trello. Competition is always good if it makes Trello better!
But since I don't like where Microsoft is going with their privacy and advertising policies, I probably won't use this.
[1]: https://www.eff.org/files/2015/01/28/20141228-spiegel-guide_...
(August 2012)
[2]: http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/05/skype-replaces-p2p-s...
(May 2012)
http://markmail.org/message/exc3srjkx3uu66bz
http://blogs.skype.com/2013/10/04/skype-architecture-update/
"I heard you want to use Trello? Here, our business plan includes this thing called Planner. Use it."
There's little bits of Trello (the main Planner functionality), Google Drive (MSFT competitor Office365), and Slack (auto notifications).
I want the diverse value chain to thrive to increase innovation and extensibility on each link in the space.
1. Ignore it, and hope it turns out to be a fad.
2. Buy them and rebrand it
3. Try to launch their own competitor version
1 isn't really an option, and between 2 and 3, I'd rather Microsoft did 3, so we can have more competition. The fact that it's a closed platform and tied in to all their services is just kind of unavoidable; it would be kind of silly of them to launch a new product and not tie it in to O365.
Aesthetically and morally I agree with you. It's ugly and bad to have one company holding all the links of the chain. However, I don't think it's likely the open innovative ecosystem you're talking about will come into being because all the selling points are for the benefit of the software user, not the entity employing those users.
Creating a tool and adding "Office!" to its name makes me want to stay away from it.
[1] https://ssl-tools.net/subjects/26102266b387fb8b911bc6d37b35b...
Indeed SSL checker[2] says that "this certificate is not trusted by all browsers". Intermediate cert probably missing.
[2] https://www.sslshopper.com/ssl-checker.html#hostname=blogs.o...
That's at odds with the more agile way people develop software today.
Plus they almost never match up to reality. Good for planning the sequence of things, but don't expect them to be accurate over the long term.
Most software development projects lack those properties. Many software projects live or die by how well the "last 90%" of development goes (as opposed to a public works project which has much more critical initial work), but a Gantt chart usually represents that entire effort with one bar.
Having team members sign up for brief work items (2-3 days max), charting it out, then watching where it strains is useful and often humbling.
The nice thing about Gantt is that it can show up your expectations as being too optimistic, very quickly.
TL;DR: https://i.imgur.com/hFpftp7.png
I suggest a vertical stream chart with a top legend (keeping the legend to one line, abbreviating the status labels to save horizontal space if needed but expanding them on mouse-over). In order to emphasise the present status, a stacked horizontal bar chart placed immediately before the stream chart but after the legend emphasises the current state. The inclusion of a stream graph along with a stacked horizontal chart maintains the square overall shape of the widget and the design's present temporal focus. Colour variations can use the second dimension to represent changes in velocity on a per category basis further increasing the information economy of the design, without cluttering its appearance.
However, usage of space in the suggested design is much improved. In using the same quantity of space as the presented widget, the presented design communicates the current state, as well as, a large chunk of the projects history with an emphasis on the near past.
Increasing the interactivity of the visualisation is a natural thought. Such additions might include a contextual (mouse over or fade discover) highlight on the chart (milestones/releases, key dates). Perhaps a forecast feature allowing you to mouse over the chart and using the (mouse wheel nudge or touch drag) into the future. If you (pinch zoom or mousewheel) a past area the graph could rescale to emphasise that point in time.
In short, a bit more attention to the visualisation design would yield a much more substantial and powerful widget without increasing cognitive load and complexity on the user's part of the interaction. I think that, with a bit of focus, a well designed information retrieval and processing platform for project planning and management could easily differentiate itself in the marketplace even in the presence of gratis competition.
...too bad a ton of people are going to completely write this off because of the recent goodwill-burning Microsoft has been participating in. I wonder how their internal departments feel about this?
They've been pretty clear about this new direction if you read the articles, MS is a productivity company. That's why they're building all these productivity apps on iOS and android.
Same word, different meaning.
This is a valid question.