Respectfully adding the list of functional updates that Planner users actually want to see (not AI, colorful backgrounds, etc), which we have been communicating to Microsoft for months or years. For context, my team has been using Project for the Web (now Premium Planner) for 4 years. We have >100 plans with 2-3 dozen tasks each that six staff members utilize.
- Any features that basic Planner has, Premium Planner should have. These feel like two completely disconnected technologies, with basic Planner often having the more-desired features already in place. Why are we paying more for less?
- Ability to edit Premium Plan tasks and see Buckets in the My Tasks tab. THIS IS VITAL. With the number of tasks/plans my team has, it is so annoying to have the extra step of navigating to the Plan to make a note or change the assignee.
- Portfolios, while a good concept, is not very useful because you can't sort rows or link to the Plan.
- The My Plans page is weak and needs an upgrade. No option to view all Plans you are apart of and sort them by columns. The search feature will often say it can't find a plan and prompts me to click a "Search more Plans" button and then it will find it. Why doesn't it perform a search of all plans initially?
- Ability to prevent others from deleting tasks or Plans and the ability to restore tasks or Plans.
- Embed Premium Plans in SharePoint.
- If the long-term plan is to keep the mobile app, ability to view/edit Premium Plans on the app.
The following are courtesy of OwenJones from August 2025 blog:
- Backup, recovery and archiving for the default environment, either for whole plans or buckets.
- Manage tasks across multiple projects, e.g. allow the same task in multiple projects, or create inter-project dependencies.
- Give line managers ability to control incoming work requests vs capacity, and report/plan resource utilization across projects.
- Make effort calculations realistic - could be done by exposing the Schedule Mode and Hours per day options in the main Teams/SharePoint interface instead of hiding them in the Power App which is obscure.
- If you must develop Copilot features, then focus on predictable automation of repetitive functions, not trying to act like a full-scale PM. Copilot should be very low priority though, the basics above are much more important..
- Above all, seek and act on real feedback from real PMs and resource managers, not marketing diktat. A lot of development effort seems to have been diverted recently onto features no-one is asking for, with very little benefit.
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