Admin Guide: Tracking Message Center Tasks in Planner

The Essence of Utilizing Planner in Administering IT Tasks

In the digital realm, administration tasks often pile up, creating inevitable inefficiency gaps. The blog post by Anja Schröder (M365Dancefloor) suggests a seasoned approach to handle these tasks using Microsoft 365's facilities and, more specifically, Planner.

In larger teams, not all members can view tasks in the Microsoft 365 administration center due to limited rights assigned to different areas of responsibility. This is where Planner comes in handy as a tool to keep IT teams well organized and informed on ongoing tasks.

The blog underlines the importance of syncing tasks from the Microsoft 365 message center with a planner. This simple yet meaningful approach helps IT teams comprehend which necessary tasks have already been accomplished, thereby ensuring progress tracking within the team.

Guide to Setting Up Your Task Allocation System

Here are outlined steps to better navigate the process:

• Create a Washington Teams team, and add your team members.
• Compose a Task from Planner and ToDo.
• Create suitable task area buckets.
• Under the M365 admin center, select "Planner syncing".

Additionally, set up syncing and select a bucket in the Planner syncing dialog. It is recommended to classify messages to sync (All updates or Major updates only), and select appropriate categories, products, and services. Decisions have also to be made on which current messages to import, which range from not importing to importing messages from the last 28 days.

Important Information About Planner Sync

It should be noted that when syncing tasks with the planner, adjustments to current tasks can't be made. Any modification requires the deactivation and complete reconfiguration of the planner sync. The process ends with the selection of the interval for synchronizing new tasks by Power Automate and selecting "Done".

Tasks are then synchronized in the chosen IT Teams team, from where they can be assigned to members of the team and the appropriate buckets for their respective areas. Once completed, the tasks can be marked as such.

However, be aware that you can only choose a single bucket and planner for syncing. Therefore, adjusting the bucket that is being synced to necessitates turning this function off and on again.

A Take Home on Planner

Planner is an effective tool to ensure smooth operations in the IT sector, especially when it comes to task distribution among team members. Taking advantage of Planner's capabilities allows for clear visibility and completion tracking of daily tasks and creates an organized and efficient working environment.

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As an IT administrator, managing your tasks within the Microsoft 365 team can be a seamless process using Planner. However, not every team member may have the rights to access the global admin center. This prevents everyone from viewing tasks in the message center. Notably, it's crucial to know which tasks have been completed by the team.

You can sync the tasks within your message center with a planner. Here's how you can accomplish this:

Step 1: Set up a Microsoft Teams team for your IT staff if you haven't yet. Add your teammates as members in the newly created team.

Step 2: Create a new task organiser (referred herein as a Task admin - an alternative term to the keyword 'Planner') in this team. For instance, you might name it "IT tasks from message centre".

Step 3: Create suitable task sections in this task organiser that align with the task areas from the message center and your team’s unique task allocation in the M365 services. You can regroup the services under common sections if necessary.

Step 4: Proceed to your general M365 admin center. Under Health > Message Center, select “Task admin syncing”, located above your message list.

Step 5: Navigate to the Task admin syncing pane and choose “Set up syncing”.

Step 6: Either search for a plan and choose one from the list in “select your plan” section or create a new task admin from here. Configuring it first is recommended.

Step 7: Under “Select a section”, you can create a new section. Picking an existing one and selecting “Next” is also an option.

Step 8: Under “Choose which messages to sync”, select between “All updates” or “Only major updates”. You can decide on the categories, products, and services you want to sync. Subsequently, select "Next".

Step 9: Under “Choose which current messages to import”, decide if you want to import messages from the message center available for some time. Your choices range from not importing current messages to acquiring messages from the past 7, 14, 21, or 28 days.

Step 10: On the Review and finish page, ensure the information is precise then select “Finish”.

Step 11: Finally, select the interval for synchronizing the new tasks by Power Automate and select “Done”.

Step 12: Go to your IT Teams team and verify the synchronized tasks. You can now delegate these tasks to IT staff members and the right sections for the areas.

Step 13: Once the team has finished their tasks, they can mark them as completed.

Note: You can only choose one task admin and one section to sync to, but you can switch off Task admin syncing and turn it on again to alter the section you’re syncing to.

Equipped with these steps, admins can better manage their tasks using Task admins drastically enhancing their productivity and reducing room for error.

More links on about For admins: Track your message center tasks in Planner

Track your message center tasks in Planner

Apr 29, 2022 — Go to the admin center. Go to Show all > Health > Message center. Then, right above your messages list, select Planner syncing. Planner syncing.

How to sync Microsoft 365 Message Center with Planner

Feb 15, 2022 — From there, you can assign individual tasks to your IT members, track progress, complete them, etc. Messagecenterplannersync12; Next time you ...

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