The new Microsoft Planner: manage all your tasks and plans in a familiar interface and enhance your project outcomes

Did you hear the news? This week, Microsoft announced at Microsoft Ignite that they have created a new unified experience to bring together to-dos, tasks, plans and projects, all within the new Microsoft Planner.

According to the blog post linked above, “the average employee spends the bulk of their time – more than 57% – communicating, when they could be focused on driving outcomes.” Further, “59% of employees say their collaboration tools are not aligned with how their teams prefer to work.” 70% of survey respondents would love to offload as much work as they can to AI.

The new Microsoft Planner will enable you to manage all your tasks and plans in a familiar interface that provides an ease of use in managing tasks small and large, from individual task management to team initiatives to full-scale project management. Take advantage of the simplicity of Microsoft To Do, the collaboration of Microsoft Planner, the project management power of Microsoft Project for the web, and Microsoft’s AI solution, Copilot, all in an easily scalable modern tool that will empower all members of your team to manage their work in a single place and improve business outcomes.

The team at Innovative-e is incredibly excited about the new Microsoft Planner and feel it has the potential to enable our customers to significantly enhance their project outcomes. Besides being easy to use, which supports the democratization of project management and work in today’s business environment, the new Planner will afford its users the following:

1. Integration of Tools and AI Assistance: The promise of integrating Microsoft To Do, Planner, Microsoft Project, and AI with Copilot within a single platform aligns with the need for seamless, intelligent, and efficient work management. For project managers, including “casual project managers,” this consolidation means fewer fragmented tools and an AI-assisted environment that aids in keeping focus, streamlining tasks, and maximizing productivity.
2. Task Management Efficiency: Offering a simplified yet comprehensive view across Microsoft 365 applications will enable users to manage tasks effectively at both individual and team levels, with the ability to access Recent, Shared, and Personal plans within a unified interface, as well as the option to customize task views through boards, lists, timelines, and sprints.
3. Scalability and Adaptability: With configurable options and integrations with Power Platform tools like Power BI and Power Automate, the new Planner can adapt to diverse organizational needs. This adaptability enables custom reporting, workflows, and higher-level visibility across initiatives.
4. AI-Driven Insights and Assistance: The integration of AI with Microsoft’s Copilot, is a game-changer for project management and work. Natural language prompts and AI-driven support will aid in generating plans, setting goals, tracking progress, and more. This level of AI assistance can significantly reduce the time spent on routine tasks, allowing project managers to focus on strategic project elements that impace overall project outcomes.
5. Enhanced Integration with Microsoft 365 Experiences: Integration with various app experiences like Loop, Outlook, Viva Goals, Microsoft Teams and Teams4PM ensures that users remain in their workflow while accessing Planner features. This seamless integration allows for smoother collaboration, ensuring that information and tasks from different platforms are readily accessible within the Planner interface.

At our November 2023 webinar, “Optimize AI and Automation for Project Success Now” (which you can view on-demand here), we noted three critical truths about project management and work that can drastically affect project outcomes:

1. People will use different tools to manage projects and work.
2. Centering collaboration for people, applications and data will help you pull together the elements necessary for successful project outcomes.
3. We need to reduce the distance between the work being done and the tools governing it.

The new Microsoft Planner combines multiple tools to facilitate greater productivity and better team collaboration.

In Spring 2024, the new Planner app will be available in Microsoft Teams; later in the year, a web experience will be available. Sign up to learn when the new Planner is available as a preview.

To learn more:

• Watch the on-demand Microsoft Ignite session: The new Microsoft Planner: Bring together to-dos, plans and projects  
• Explore product demos 
• Download the new Microsoft Planner datasheet
• Meet the new Microsoft Planner 

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Looking back at 2019… and ahead to 2020

2019 was a great year for Innovative-e and its partners! Join us for a walk down memory lane to revisit the most memorable events and happenings of last year!

Innovative-e was selected as a finalist in the Microsoft 2019 Partner of the Year Award for our work in Project and Portfolio Management. This honor recognized Innovative-e for providing outstanding solutions and services in Project & Portfolio Management (PPM).

See what Mike Taylor, President and CEO of Innovative-e, had to say when we were named as a Partner of the Year finalist.

Innovative-e renewed its partnership with Microsoft in early December. We have been a Microsoft Gold partner for more than a decade and are certified in the following areas:

These partnership levels highlight the strengths we bring to our customers and partners. Maintaining Gold or Silver partnership with Microsoft requires expertise in the competency areas, certification of our SMEs and compliance with the high standards to which Microsoft holds its partners.

As a key Microsoft Partner, Innovative-e provided strong support and a robust thought leadership role when Microsoft rolled out its major update to Project in October 2019, unveiling Project for the Web to bring better work management to pro project managers as well as team members whose work entails everyday, ad hoc project management.

At Innovative-e, we believe in #PMforALL, whether you’re a Contract Manager, HR Professional, or you fill another job role in which a robust, easy-to-use project management tool will boost your productivity and efficiency – even if you’re not a formal project manager.

https://youtu.be/5hJMzf0qD_U

If you haven’t seen how flexible and easy to work with Project for the web is yet, we’d be happy to sit down with you and show you around the tool. Drop us a note and we’ll sync up to give you a demo!

You may have noticed, when browsing our ever-growing library of knowledge pieces, a fresh face.

The gentleman on the right is Bryan Quick, our Director of Sales. Bryan spent years with Microsoft as a Solution Sales Professional and is now leveraging his expertise in Microsoft’s work management suite to  improve our customers’ day-to-day work life with increased visibility, agility and control. We’re thrilled to have Bryan sharing his knowledge and positive energy with the Innovative-e team!

Microsoft isn’t the only partner we’ve worked closely with during 2019. We’ve partnered with edison365 for years and have watched them grow their suite of tools, built to work seamlessly with Office365. In 2019, edison365 announced major upgrades to:

• edison365ideas
• edison365businesscase
• edison365projects

We helped our customer, The Guthrie Clinic, implement all three edison365 products in 2019, and enabled them to achieve success with an end-to-end solution that took Guthrie from idea conception to project execution:

“We had a pretty good foundation in place for project management and we were looking to take it to the next level. Microsoft Project Online got us there and now, with edison365ideas, businesscase, and projects added on, I’m in love! – Gail Strausser, Application Manager, The Guthrie Clinic

We also produced several webinars and other knowledge pieces with edison365 during 2019, the better to show you these fantastic tools that make it easier for you to work smarter, not harder.

The edison365 folks also launched a great new podcast, Innovation Brew, late in 2019. We’re so grateful to be partnered with Ivan Lloyd, Tad Haas, and the other marvelous members of the edison365 team! Thank you for a marvelous 2019 – we look forward to even greater successes in the coming year!

We had a great year with one of our other partners, Bravo Consulting Group, which works largely with government customers to leverage Microsoft products for strategic, technology-enabled innovative solutions. While we do a lot of behind-the-scenes work with Bravo to enable our customers (and theirs!) with work management solutions that improve collaboration, effectiveness and visibility, one of our most popular joint ventures was a webinar, “All in – 3 Steps to Digital Transformation. It’s win/win!” that was such a hit that we did it again a few weeks later. Shout-out to Gino Digregori and his team for years of successful partnership in bringing digital transformation and cloud services to our customers! 2019 was amazing, and we think 2020 will be even better!

https://youtu.be/m9hWlTQM5Cc

Looking forward

Sure, we packed in a lot of success with our partners and customers in 2019, but we’re not stopping there!

Innovative-e is in the process of developing an expanded selection of educational offerings for 2020, and broadening our offerings with DIY-style content to help you beef up what you can do on your own with the expansive work management tools from partners like Microsoft and edison365. We’re also deepening our offerings for project and portfolio managers; for years, we’ve provided solution-specific training to our customers, but we’re adding PM skills training and other work management-related courses to our curriculum.

We’ve already loaded up our editorial calendar to keep bringing you (free!) thoughtful and practical content in 2020 to help you improve your work life with more effective work management practices and tools. We and our partners like edison365 and Bravo Consulting Group are eager to share new e-books, whitepapers, articles and infographics in the coming year, so keep an eye on our blog, our YouTube channel, and our website for more knowledge pieces. Don’t forget to follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook – and subscribe to our newsletter! –  so you can see when we or our partners drop info that will make work management easier for you no matter your job role.

If your 2019 was as good as ours was, then you’ve had a very good year, indeed! We’re looking forward to an even more successful 2020, and we’re glad to have our partners – and you! – with us for the coming new year!

Better Project Management Improves Lives

Reflecting our ongoing commitment to improving lives with all-in PPM, last month Innovative-e was named a finalist in the Project and Portfolio Management category of the 2019 Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards.  Microsoft will officially recognize us for this honor next week at the Microsoft Inspire Conference in Las Vegas.  In the next several blog posts, we’d like to tell you what Innovative-e’s finalist status, as well as our partnership with Microsoft and other world-class solutions providers, means for you.

Innovative-e believes that better project management can improve quality of life in a number of ways.

Effective project management is easier with better tools, processes and training

Isn’t your life improved when a task you anticipate being difficult is easier than you expected? Easier is usually better than harder. Innovative-e’s approach to work and project management focuses on making it easier to work on a day-to-day basis.

Innovative-e’s solutions make sure there is a single source of truth for portfolios and projects so that everyone who needs to know has access to complete and up-to-date information to help them do their jobs effectively. This includes Program Managers, Project Managers, Leaders and Stakeholders, and the rank-and-file.

Innovative-e’s process leverages tools and processes that eliminate the need to cobble together disparate tools (spreadsheets, email threads, etc.) to manage projects in a siloes, reducing the chances for info to fall between the cracks. This improves not just the ease of managing work, but the efficiency and value, which is a win for your customers as well as your team.

 “…. the most critical value we have gotten since implementing our solution [with Innovative-e] is the ability to help restore trust in IT.  Now that we have the solution in place and a plan for moving forward, we enjoy a better, more collaborative environment where trust is being restored among the team because we are now able to deliver on our promises.” – C. P., Director, Project Management Office – Information Technology

1. Easier is better for your team. Happy workers are more productive workers.
2. Better processes even out the workload so that no one person or group is overloaded trying to compensate for poor processes.
3. Implementing well-designed and -deployed solutions enables business teams to deliver better work to their customers.

We at Innovative-e know from experience that teams thrive and customers and stakeholders receive higher value. When our customers adopt properly designed and deployed solutions, their lives are improved. Creating this reality one customer at a time is our mission and our passion!

With more than two decades of proven experience designing and helping customers implement business solutions, Innovative-e is delighted to be recognized by Microsoft as a world-class practitioner of PPM and business best practices.

For more information about Innovative-e being named a finalist in the 2019 Microsoft Partner of the Year Award for PPM, click here. To learn more about what Innovative-e does for and with its customers, visit our website at www.innovative-e.com or drop us a line at info@innovative-e.com.

In our next blog post, we will explore our customers’ discovery that Microsoft Project Online is a complete end-to-end solution that makes their work easier to manage.

 

Innovative-e: Going places. Come with us!

We’ve been going a lot of places and doing a lot of things in the last few months!

June 6, 2018, Everywhere

We were a Silver Sponsor at the Project Virtual Conference, a one-of-a-kind  24-hour virtual conference (free to attend!) focused on Microsoft Project, Project Server, and Project Online. Supported by the Microsoft Project Community, this conference was designed to help attendees best use Microsoft PPM tools to address their business problems and derive maximum business value.

June 12-14, National Harbor, Maryland

We explored the theme, “Pioneer, Partner, Build Bridges” at the annual Gartner PPM Summit in National Harbor, Maryland. One of our customers presented showing how we helped his organization implement Microsoft PPM tools to transform his PMO. Check out our short video recap of the whole amazing event!

July 10-14, Washington, DC

We joined hundreds of Microsoft partners at Microsoft Inspire to see innovations Microsoft had planned for partners (that’s us!) and the customers those partners serve (that’s you!). These new technologies and enhancements to the products and services you already know and love are designed to help organizations achieve transformation, realize value, and stay on the cutting edge in a modern business environment that often changes with breakneck speed.

August 16 and September 19, Everywhere

We presented “Rapid and Sustainable PM: 3 Steps to Success” to highlight our proven 3-step process to achieving #AmazingPM with a

solid foundation, team empowerment, and a focus on adoption and

growth. Did you miss it? Watch the webinar on demand!

September 2018, Innovative-e HQ

We achieved another Silver competency with Microsoft. We currently have the following Microsoft competencies:

• Gold, Project & Portfolio Management
• Gold, Collaboration & Content
• Gold, Application Development
• Silver, Small & Midmarket Cloud Solutions
• Silver, Cloud Productivity

These competencies mean we have achieved and exceeded Microsoft’s standards as partner providers of these products and services to customers like you, ensuring that you are getting the best products, serviced by a highly qualified provider.

September 12-14, Las Vegas, Nevada

We headed to Las Vegas for the Digital Transformation Academy conference with Microsoft. Digital Transformation is a hot topic these days. Do you know what to do with it? We do. Email us for more info!

September 24-28, Orlando, FL

We attended Microsoft Ignite virtually (living in the future with work-anywhere capability is so great!) The theme of this year’s event was, “Creating a more secure, intelligent and connected enterprise.” Check out this roundup with all the key announcements and news from Ignite.

October 2-3, Boston, Massachusetts

We were in Boston to present our customer’s success story at a Microsoft PPM Summit. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ Executive Office of Health and Human Services strategized innovation and implemented PPM technology to achieve change. We showed how transformation can be approached with three simple steps to ultimately deliver value continuously and position our customers for success through people, process, and (future) technology growth. Have a look at the case study here.

October 16-18, Redmond, Washington

We joined the Microsoft Project Partner Summit on the Microsoft campus to learn how to best help customers with exciting new Microsoft Project enhancements and to discover more about Digital Transformation and how to best leverage the power of Microsoft PPM to the advantage of our customers.

November 5-8, Las Vegas, Nevada

We were at Booth 6 at TribalNet showing conference attendees how we have helped tribal nations achieve more by empowering organizations to overcome common project management challenges, leveraging solutions from Microsoft PPM and edison365projects.

We have helped tribal nations for whom large gaming CAPEX projects are critical pieces of their governments’ revenue to help sustain and grow their tribes. Read our case study to learn how Innovative-e and Microsoft PPM continuously deliver #AmazingPM to enhance the overall quality of life for a Tribal Nation.

Learn more about what Innovative-e can do for Tribal Nations here.

Where to next?

Coming soon to NYC, DC and Atlanta

 

Free all-day summits to learn how Microsoft PPM enables Digital Transformation. Where do things stand now? What’s the future of the journey? Each of these three conferences will show you how to implement Microsoft PPM and select premium add-ons to get a handle on your reporting and resource management, how to migrate to Microsoft Project smoothly, and how edison365 can help drive Digital Transformation for overall #AmazingPM. Watch this space for more details soon!

30K Projects!

Innovative-e, a Microsoft partner with a Gold PPM competency, is always on the lookout for ways to make #AmazingPM even more amazing for our customers. Microsoft is continually improving, too. Recently, Microsoft announced some exciting improvements to Project Online.

• Project Online was previously limited to 5,000 projects – that max has now been raised 6x to 30,000 projects!
• Additionally, project sites were previously capped at 2,000. That limit has also been bumped to 30,000, and will scale on a 1:1 basis with the number of projects in the PWA.
• More fine-tuned control over where project sites can be provisioned is now available. For example, different site collections can be specified for different EPTs so that project sites can be logically segregated.
• Some OData performance enhancements have been made, which should improve SSIS pulls.

Learn more about these enhancements to Project Online at the Project Online blog, here.

Innovative-e is Pleased to Announce Partnership with Concerto Cloud Services

Innovative-e has entered into a partnership with Concerto Cloud Services, starting with  a hosted SharePoint environment, which will be the foundation to leverage other cloud services in the future.

From the news release about the new partnership:

“After conducting extensive research of different cloud solution providers, Concerto Cloud Services stood out as a high-performing, quality provider of hosting services with a reputation for exceptional customer support,” said Mike Taylor, CEO and President of Innovative-e. “Concerto is initially providing us with a hosted SharePoint environment, but we’re looking forward to leveraging this relationship and the talented Concerto team to provide additional cloud-based project management solutions to our customers.”

Steve Terp, president of Concerto Cloud Services, said, “”This partnership will help Innovative-e bolster its project management services through the cloud, and offer new models and solutions that will streamline business processes for its customers.”

We agree with Steve. Just another way we’re bringing #AmazingPM to our customers!

Read the full news release here.