Hello World.

A practical guide to Microsoft Planner and Loop by someone implementing these tools with a team of 20 project managers. I will cut through confusing product changes to provide clear, experience-based insights.

Otto

— 2 min read
Hello World.
Photo by Federico Respini / Unsplash

This is a new site dedicated to Microsoft Planner sprinkled with some Microsoft Loop, the former I'm rolling out with a group of about 20 project managers at work.

Microsoft shapes our tools, and thereafter Microsoft shapes us - me, adapted from the quote by McLuhan

Why

Microsoft tech is really confusing especially when the names of products are changed and this one is no exception. I'm finding it hard to get quick and up-to-date answers because Microsoft is actively developing and integrating this tool and still has the legacy tools lying around.

What

I plan to use this platform to share my learnings and experiences in public and maybe you or someone you know can benefit and, in turn, I can learn from you.

Who

Just me for now. I'm hoping others can join in over time, send me ideas, inspire me to continue.

How

Through experiential learning, random acts of kindness from others, structured rollout of the tool, and sheer determination I intend to learn as much as I can to save people on my team the pain. Plus, if I can remove some friction and barriers to their learning, the rollout could go smoother. Eat your own dogfood!

Get ready, get set...

So far I've done the following:

  1. Looked back at my Obsidian notes on Planner and related files I took over the past year as inspiration
  2. Took the course "Introduction to Microsoft Project for the Web" by Cindy M. Lewis
  3. Reading D. Lynn Kelly's book Change Questions and created a mini change management plan, signed up 5 early adopters, created a schedule for the change
  4. Registered a domain name yesterday, coming soon!
  5. Signed up for Ghost this morning, which is such a great tool. I used it for my other hobby noteapps.ca
  6. Found a good alias for myself and my privacy with the help of my friend claude.ai 😂
  7. Drafted a logo using Claude, he was so patient with me

What's next

Well, it depends. It depends on how much time I can spend on this, how I can keep costs low, and maybe how many people are interested. That last part is not that important, I'll do it anyway 😂

Stay tuned!

Otto.

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