If you’re looking for a lightweight project management app that can be used in Microsoft Teams, then the Microsoft Teams Milestones App might do the trick for you. You’ll notice that I used the word “might” instead of “will” to do the trick. The reason for that is that the Microsoft Teams Milestones App is not actually a full-fledged app built to satisfy a wide range of project management use cases. In fact, it is quite the opposite. This app is what Microsoft calls a “sample app”. A sample app is one that Microsoft developed on its Microsoft Power Platform (primarily Microsoft Power Apps) for two reasons:
- To show off the power of its low-code tools, Microsoft Power Apps and
- To showcase the extensibility of Microsoft Teams when using the Microsoft Power Platform to expand its capabilities
This article will provide you with an overview of what the Microsoft Teams Milestones app can be used for, what types of features it has and how it compares to Microsoft Planner. If you’re looking for an in-depth guide to using the Microsoft Teams Milestones app, then check out my other blog post here.
The Microsoft Teams Milestones app is a template app that can be used as-is or that can be further customized through Microsoft Power Apps to meet specific requirements and use-cases. Despite, its limitations it does provide some utility considering it is embedded directly in Microsoft Teams and more importantly, it’s free. That’s right, there is no cost to using this app as is in Microsoft Teams.
What Is The Microsoft Teams Milestones App Used For?
The Microsoft Teams Milestones app allows teams to create project records and to track the milestones and project activities required to complete the milestones. Project records in the Milestones app consist of a name and the major milestones and due dates. Milestones in the app represent high-level groupings of work (or work packages).
Once the project is created, users can then add Work Items to the project which represent low-level tasks or activities required to complete the milestone. Work items can be assigned to users however, the app doesn’t fire any type of notification in its base configuration (as with Microsoft Tasks By Planner & To Do). On work items, users can specify which milestone group the item belongs to, the status, category, priority, due date, a description and can also provide text-based updates.
The Milestones app also features a very basic dashboard that automatically tabulates a percentage complete for each milestone based on the status and progress of the associated work items. While this isn’t overly sophisticated, it might be able to satisfy very rudimentary requests to visually display the status of some work.
Microsoft Teams Milestones App VS. Microsoft Planner (Tasks by To Do & Planner)
Unfortunately, the Microsoft Teams Milestones App does not integrate with Microsoft Planner (Tasks By Planner & To Do) out of the box. It is possible to implement this functionality using Microsoft Power Apps and Power Automate. The list below outlines some of the key differences between the Microsoft Teams Milestones App and Microsoft Planner.
Microsoft Teams Milestones App
- Create project records
- Assign users to project records
- Group work into milestones which consist of a name and due date
- Add low-level work items with minimal details
- Assign work items to users
- No native notifications fired for task assignment
- Basic dashboard that outlines percentage complete for milestones
Microsoft Planner (Tasks By Planner & To Do)
- Create project task lists & task boards
- Share projects with Teams & users
- Group work into buckets and labels
- Create robust task records which can include checklists, attachments, rich-text
- Facilitate conversations with users through use of @ mentions
- Task assignment & @ mention notifications
- Multiple views of tasks including, list, board and calendar
- Add labels to tasks for additional grouping
- Advanced dashboard that can be filtered
How To Use The Microsoft Teams Milestones App Video Tutorial
To learn how to use the Microsoft Teams Milestones app in-depth, check out my YouTube tutorial below.
How To Use The Microsoft Teams Milestones App Written Tutorial
If you are looking for an in-depth guide to using the Microsoft Teams Milestones app, then check out my blog post below. In this post, I provide a walkthrough of how to create projects, how to create milestones, tasks and how to use the Milestones app visual dashboard. Click the link below to check it out.
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[…] from Microsoft Planner (otherwise known as Tasks By Planner and To-Do) check out my overview article. The overview article explains what the Milestones app does and also provides a feature comparison […]