Microsoft Planner vs. monday.com

There are a few examples where MS Planner would be suitable for employees at a mature organization. In my opinion, if you have Outlook or Teams, you already have built-in calendars and to-do lists. If you need a project management tool, you have two options: either pay for MS Project or use an alternative tool like Monday, Asana, or Jira. Regardless, their free versions are much more sophisticated than Microsoft's (MS Planner). Any team wishing to put together a halfway-decent project management board will need to look elsewhere, as MS Planner is only suitable for a personal to-do list.

Incentivized

Another feature I love in the free plan is the “Sort” feature, which enables me to sort all my clients by name alphabetically. Or sort by date,
status, progress notes, etc. I make extensive use of the text column, where I can keep ongoing, detailed notes on the progress of a particular client's work and the information I am still waiting on. I have it open automatically every day, and my tasks are listed there for me to follow through on.

Incentivized

• I love the ability to tag and untag others as needed
• I love the ability to customize the tag labels and that there are so many options
• I love the ability to add comments and it notifies the others tagged in the task
• I love that the task description can be changed as needed without notification to others assigned to the task

Incentivized

• Intuitive board functionality with a variety of column types and customizations to address different use-cases, such as templates for user lifecycle management, checklists for onboarding.
• Extensive automation capabilities to reduce tedium in more complex boards, such as our company's computer asset inventory board, to ensure devices are kept organized within the board for quicker reference.
• The ability to connect boards and mirror info across them allowed us to build out a cross-functional, quasi-ticketing system enabling more efficient processing of requests that involved action items from different departments and/or teams.
• We could use both the many board functions in tandem with the WorkForm feature to create an IT ticketing system that could be replicated and tailored for other teams needs.

Incentivized

• Would be nice to see a calendar view instead of a list view
• Permissions aren't configurable, anyone can delete any task at any time and there is no recycle bin
• Notifications aren't great, you have to be attached as an owner to a task to see comments and be notified of changes, and even then notifications aren't shown for a lot of things

Incentivized

• The management of holdable items, continuously drops in incorrect places or doesn't show the 'correct way' to handle in the wished place, it happens with the dragable items on dashboards
• The 'favorites' menu on desktop is now with 'Use my IA feature' everywhere and has removed the Fav section of for the boards in the sidebar. It was so useful when there were hundreds of Tables and only work on or update 3 - 4 of them (it is still visible on the mobile version, by the way)
• The errors after using for a while, like 90 minutes, I am writing something and unexpectedly the app says something is wrong and I need to reload the page, and the thing I was doing doesn't still local storage as in other use cases

Incentivized

It is a very useful tool that brings teams in sync with one another. The integration with other Microsoft products makes it an obvious choice because you don't have to purchase a license for a completely different tool that doesn't have cross-functional capabilities with the software you already use on a daily basis.

Incentivized

Teams involved in content creation, such as marketing or editorial teams, could use monday.com to manage the entire content lifecycle. Boards might track content ideas, assignments, drafts, reviews, approvals, and publication schedules, helping teams collaborate and keep content production on track.

Incentivized

The board-and-bucket layout makes it easy to organize tasks, track progress, and prioritize work at a glance, even for first-time users. I also appreciate how Planner seamlessly integrates with tools like Teams, Outlook, and SharePoint, enabling users to collaborate, schedule tasks, and access their plans without needing to switch platforms. I also like how it’s accessible not only on desktops, but also on mobile devices.

Incentivized

monday.com was pretty easy to use from the get-go. Their automation templates are really easy to get things set up. A few of my monday.com boards are essentially upgraded spreadsheets that are much easier to digest and automatically send out reminder email to myself and my team.

Incentivized

There have only been 2 instances in the past year where monday.com was down.

Incentivized

Everything performs fairly well. Every now and then there are user errors where an employee will not click "ok" on a note they've created and simply exit out (I do wish that something was in place to prevent this, such as a pop "are you finished?")

Incentivized

I personally haven't found their customer success managers to be proactive or useful as the primary user of our monday.com account. This is different from a few years ago, when I had a contact that I reached out to as-needed (we are an enterprise account). I don't get a lot of touchpoints with anyone from monday.com and rarely submit tickets.

Incentivized

To have someone walk you thru the features and capabilities of Monday.com is priceless. Someone also coming along later in the contract to see if you are maximizing the program to suit your company needs is beyond helpful. The staff that have provided this training are fun, creative and very patient.

Incentivized

We signed up for the accounts. Created the accounts. Ran the trial version and tested it live while we were running multiple projects and found that it was fitting our needs perfectly. When the trial ended and we were asked to purchase the full version, we did. We have found other ways to use it and it's a breeze.

Incentivized

Many areas of the company still use Trello to organize their activities and tasks, but gradually Microsoft Planner must replace the activities. Users are often "attached" to familiar technologies, but Office 365 takes advantage of the more organized use of the tools. This year we will not renew the Trello contract.

monday.com gives us the most flexibility when it comes to its features -- to create templates and quickly modify or customize. While limited in its overall functionality, it is secure and does what it is supposed to do well. An ability to interpret documents given to it -- not just its own assets -- would take monday.com to the next level.

Incentivized

For it to work across multiple departments and sites, I would like to see improvements made with integrations and automation. For this question, I am acknowledging not only the addition of internal triggers/automation, but also an expansion on external ones.

Incentivized

• In my experience, productivity is negatively impacted because assigning subtasks aren't clear on Microsoft Planner
• Managers aren't able to track direct reports' tasks across multiple boards -- leading to poor visibility for us
• Notifications aren't always sent to inbox, so you rely on people's own project management skills to follow the communication on tasks they're assigned to. In my experience, this leads to missed deadlines impacting customer relationships.

Incentivized

• The platform has saved us time by allowing us to have all of our program information in one place.
• The fact that it is easy to set up has saved us countless hours of trying to learn the platform.
• The platform has helped us greatly with collaboration with our program partners who need to use our data.

Incentivized