Background
Planner, Project, Tasks by Planner, To Do, so many tasks, so little time! Recently I was trying to find a way to have a central, master list of tasks within a Planner board that, when a new task was created would be able to be duplicate said task within a different board depending on some variables (such as name). I started by thinking Power Automate should be able to handle that…but was I ever wrong!
My original intention was as follows:
- A master planner board that contains all tasks, with each new task being created with the name of the subsequent Planner board that the task needs to be duplicated into (example: Customer A | New task 1)
- Power Automate would run when new tasks are created, and based on the name within the task title create a duplicate task in the correct Planner board
The problem
The warning signs started for me with the lack of triggers there are within Power Automate that relate to Planner – three!
When you also look at what actions are available, there are also a limited set to choose from:
Aside from the limited number of triggers/ actions, it’s also extremely difficult to work with the limited dynamic content you have available within Power Automate. Here are some of my findings:
| Issue | Detail |
|---|---|
| Buckets | Buckets can’t be mapped from one planner board to another as they all have unique ID’s. Determining the bucket name from the ID is complicated, then trying to pair bucket ID’s from different lists that share the same bucket name is even more so. |
| Labels | Labels are fixed fields with a set number in Planner and can’t be mapped from one planner board to another via Power Automate |
| Updating tasks on change | There is no trigger in Power Automate based on when things change in Planner, plus there is no way to store the ID of a task between boards. |
| Checklists | Power automate can’t see the checklists associated with a planner task, so they can’t be created when duplicating to another planner board via Power Automate |
All in all, it was proving very difficult to be able to achieve what I needed via Power Automate. So I decided to look at different options.
Possible workarounds/ alternate solutions
#1 Consider a basic flow that only duplicates tasks with basic information
This option is to accept the limitations of Planner/ Power Automate and just create a simple flow that duplicates tasks and routes them to the correct Planner board. The tasks would only contain basic information that can be easily retrieved from the master Planner board such as: title, assigned to, dates and description.
#2 Use the Microsoft Graph API to get access to more information
This is definitely pro developer territory and not something I would advocate as a low-code option, but quite often the Graph API opens up more possibilities for automation/ integration and the Microsoft documentation on the subject seems to indicate this would be the case here.
#3 Use the out of the box copy/ move functionality
Planner has an in-built copy/ move function that could be used to simplify the process. Of course this is completely manual, but it does allow for buckets, labels and checklists to be copied or moved.
#4 Use a Microsoft Lists based approach
I created an alternate version of this using Lists as the data source for the tasks and I was able to meet all the requirements. Naturally, having the ability to create custom columns makes it much, much easier to build out the logic in Power Automate. There are a couple of drawbacks to using Lists though, such as:
- Board view in Lists doesn’t drag & drop between swim lanes
- Lists do not integrate into To Do/ Outlook
- You can’t create checklists within list items in the same way as Planner tasks
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