Sorting by date in Planner

Question

When tasks are viewed inside a bucket there needs to be an automatic way to order by date, am i missing something? Drag and drop is clunky and since I'm trying to put things to the bottom of the list it often won't go directly there.

Answer 1

Dear @Clare Burgess, Thank you for reaching out to Microsoft Q&A forum. We are happy to assist.

Planner doesn’t provide an option to automatically sort tasks by due date within a bucket. In Board view, you’ll need to manually drag and drop tasks to arrange them. If you prefer to see tasks organized by date without moving them, switch to Schedule view, which displays tasks on a calendar based on their start or due date. You can also use filter or group options to view tasks by due date, but these won’t change the order inside the buckets.

As an alternative, you can set up a Power Automate flow that uses a Condition action to organize tasks by due date automatically.

• Make sure your Planner plan already has buckets named Today, This Week, and Later.
• This flow won’t reorder tasks inside a bucket. It only moves them to the right bucket.
• If you want this to run daily for existing tasks, add a Scheduled trigger and loop through tasks.
• You are the membership in the Planner plan.

Here are the steps to create a Power Automate flow that you can refer to:

• Go to https://make.powerautomate.com/
• Select Automated cloud flow.
• Name it something like “Planner Auto-Sort by Due Date”.
• Choose the trigger: When a task is created (Connector: Microsoft Planner).
• In the trigger, fill in your Group ID and Plan ID. Also verify that the connection is valid.
• Insert a Condition action: You’ll need to check the task’s Due Date against today and the end of the week.

Condition 1 (Today)

1. In the Condition box, choose Expression. (Press / then choose Insert Expression)
2. For the left value, paste: formatDateTime(triggerOutputs()?['body/dueDateTime'], 'yyyy-MM-dd')
3. For the right value, paste: formatDateTime(utcNow(), 'yyyy-MM-dd')
4. In the True branch, Add Update a task (V2) action. Set Bucket ID = “Today”.
5. Inside the False branch
   1. Click Add an action > Condition. Left box > Insert Expression: formatDateTime(triggerOutputs()?['body/dueDateTime'], 'yyyy-MM-dd') Right box > Insert Expression: formatDateTime(addDays(startOfWeek(utcNow()), 6), 'yyyy-MM-dd') Operator: is less than or equal to.
   2. In True branch > Add Update a task (V2) > Bucket = “This Week”.
   3. In False branch > AddUpdate a task (V2) > Bucket = “Later”.

It will look like this:

Save the flow and test with a sample task.

For comprehensive guidance tailored to your environment, I recommend reaching out to certified experts through the Power Apps Community – Power Platform Community.

I hope this information is helpful. If you need any further assistance, please feel free to reach out. We are here to help. Thank you very much for your understanding and cooperation.

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