Planner Comments: Email Notifications

Question

Hello,

I have been playing around with Planner for use with client onboarding, and I was just wondering if there is a way of ensuring clients get an email notification in their inbox, instead of in the Outlook group, without having to comment on the task first? We have been testing this internally, and discovered some of us were getting direct notifications and some weren't and later realised it seemed to be linked to having made a comment on the task (or not). It would be a lot easier when dealing with clients if I could set up a task and comment on it and they receive a email in their inbox allowing them to see the comment and reply, rather than having to direct them to the plan/task and have them make a random comment so they can follow along. I assume this is possible, and I am just missing something that I need to do to make this happen.

One of my colleagues also seems to be getting random email notifications about a task he isn't assigned to. Do the notifications work on a task by task basis? Or does anyone attached to a plan get a notification every time a comment is made on any of the tasks?

Thanks for you help!

Answer 1

Dear respected Jason Wilson4,

Good day! Thank you for posting to Microsoft Community. We are happy to help you.

As per your description, first of all, Planner sends email notifications to the Microsoft 365 Group associated with the plan. This means that anyone who is a member of the group will receive an email in their group inbox when a task is assigned or completed, or when someone comments on a task.

Secondly, Planner also sends email notifications to individual users based on their personal settings via open Planner for web, click on your profile picture in the upper right corner> Notifications, the notifications include: "When someone assigns a task to you".

Previously, whenever a user posted a task comment, a notification was sent to the inbox of all plan members subscribed to the plan’s group. This meant lots of users received comment notifications on tasks not relevant to them. Due to this behavior, a Microsoft developer Team changes the behavior, so that users will no longer receive comment notification emails in their inbox for tasks they have never commented on due to task comment notification emails are too much (Previously behaviour).

 Regarding to your concern, "if there is a way of ensuring clients get an email notification in their inbox, instead of in the Outlook group, without having to comment on the task first?" based on my research a lot, it might be possible using Power automate flow customization trigger.

For customization Power automate flow solution and to avoid any incorrect information from our side, we’ll suggest you post in Microsoft Power Automate Community for expert assistance. This is a specific channel related with Power Automate.

The reason I ask you to post a new thread is that in Answers forum, we have limited resources and very little knowledge about Power Automate and in Microsoft Power Automate Community, you will get the most qualified pool of respondents, and other partners who read the forums regularly can either share their knowledge or learn from your interaction.

Appreciate your patience and understanding and thank you for your time and cooperation.

Sincerely,

Waqas Muhammad