Filter for planner needs improvement
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Cuthbert Kamudyariwa
On the planner calendar, it would really be helpful to have a filter for not just tasks within a list but the whole workspace e,g i need a filter of due date is today but i want that for my whole workspace. The today and overdue part is good but the problem is the list is overwhelming when you have many overdue items, sometimes you just want what is due for that week only so that you can propely plan your week.
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Gabriele Vitale
I fully agree with what has been expressed.
From a weekly planning perspective, having a filter at the
entire workspace level
(not limited to a single list) would be essential. In particular, the ability to filter tasks by due today, due this week, or within a custom date range
would provide a far more realistic and manageable view of the workload. The current combination of “Today” and “Overdue” quickly loses its usefulness when the number of overdue tasks grows, making it difficult to focus on immediate priorities and plan the week effectively.In addition, the issue of
task context visibility
is a concrete limitation in day-to-day use of Planner. Requiring users to hover over each task to understand which list or plan it belongs to does not scale in multi-project environments. The fact that teams resort to manually adding prefixes to task titles (for example, the client name) is a clear indication that structural information is not sufficiently visible in the UI. This workaround not only reduces readability and naming consistency, but also introduces long-term organizational debt.The management of
Parent Tasks
is also currently too rigid for a WBS-based approach. When parent tasks represent the structural level of the project and child tasks represent the execution level, the inability to control their visibility:* complicates daily execution, when users would prefer to see only operational tasks
* reduces effectiveness during structure and scope reviews, when focusing only on WBS-level items would be more appropriate
In summary, the following enhancements would significantly improve Planner’s usability:
* Global, workspace-level filters, especially for due dates (today, this week, custom range)
*
Grouping options by List/Plan
, so that task context is immediately visible* View or filter controls to:
* show only execution-level tasks
* show only parent (WBS-level) tasks
* or clearly distinguish between the two levels
These improvements would eliminate the need for manual workarounds and make Planner far more suitable for multi-project, WBS-based environments, improving clarity, governance, and overall productivity.
Sergio Sapuppo
In addition to what Cuthbert Kamudyariwa mentioned, from a practical, day-to-day usage perspective, identifying the originating list or plan of a task in Planner currently requires hovering over the task.
This approach is not always convenient and becomes inefficient when managing many activities across multiple plans or projects.
As a result, some team members are currently adopting a manual workaround:
they prepend the client name directly in the task title in order to quickly understand the task context at a glance.
This workaround:
• Reduces naming consistency
• Decreases readability
• Clearly indicates that structural context is not sufficiently visible in the UI
In addition, Planner does not currently allow users to control the visibility of Parent Tasks.
In our setup, Parent Tasks are used to represent WBS level 1 elements (project or workstream structure), while child tasks represent execution-level activities.
Not being able to:
• hide Parent Tasks when focusing on execution, or
• show only Parent Tasks when reviewing structure and scope
makes it harder to use Planner effectively for WBS-driven project management.
Requested improvements:
• Enable a group-by option based on List / Plan, so task context is immediately visible without relying on hover or naming conventions
• Add view or filter options to:
• show only execution-level tasks
• show only Parent Tasks (WBS level)
• or clearly differentiate between the two
These enhancements would remove the need for manual workarounds and significantly improve usability, clarity, and governance in multi-project, WBS-based environments.
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Emily Robbins
Additionally, it would be great to be able to filter actual calendar events vs just filtering tasks