Ultra-Easy TRUE Kanban-Board via MS Planner in MS Teams

Powering up Microsoft Teams to the Centralized Collaboration Tool in 10 steps

As many others, I struggled to find an easy and free way to implement true Kanban Boards with the existing Tools. True means, with independent swimlanes, each with its own columns to display simple processes.

Neither with Meistertask nor Trello you have this feature. Plugins lack functionality . Swimlanes for Trello e.g. is only usable in Chrome on a desktop. The only practicable Tool I found is Kanbanize, wich is still a great solution for bigger or multiple teams! Also Trello, etc. are still great tools for simpler cases.

Also I always wanted to have it integrated with MS Teams as the central collaboration platform. What I found was a way that is even based exclusively on MS365-Tools.

The steps to reproduce are very simple and can be followed in just a few minutes. I was completely irritated I wasn’t able to google such a simple solution.

Steps to set it up

• Create a Planner Board for each swimlane you use with your team

• Create a new Sharepoint Site for your team

• Add a new webpart (one column) and select Planner

• Choose the first Planner board you created
• Do this again and again for each Planner Board
• Set the section to collapsible and turn on the divider

• Publish that thing
• Create a new tab in your Teams channel
• Select Sharepoint-Pages

• Choose the Sharepoint Site you created

Your Kanban-Board is done!

• Multiple boards (swimlanes) are displayed on one page separated by a hairline
• Each swimlane can be collapsed and separately filtered

Limitations

The only functional limitation you have:

• No overall filters and grouping
  You have to do that for each swimlane separately. Some would say it’s a feature.
• You can’t add attachments to the cards
  You can do that in the Planner app or via your own task list, see next chapter.
• To move the cards to another swimlane you have to go to the Sharepoint site directly. There seems to be a little displaying bug in teams…
• The width of the board is limited due to a limitation in Sharepoint. I am working on a solution for that right now.

But as simple as it is: It’s totally worth it. I hope it helps some of you!

Additional Functionality

As a little addendum a college of mine, showed me the simple integration of Tasks by Planner in MS Teams. This gives you a personal overview of all your tasks. Also you are able to add attachments directly to the cards here.

Just click on the options icon in the left side menu of teams and select Tasks by Planner and To Do.

If you liked this little hack, like and follow!