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What’s new in Microsoft Planner – April 2025

NancyatMSFT's avatar
NancyatMSFT
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Apr 30, 2025

The April 2025 update for Microsoft Planner brings several practical enhancements aimed at improving task management and overall productivity. With real-time task notifications for the Project Manager agent, now available in public preview, you can stay updated on task progress and ensure timely input where needed. Additionally, new tools for customizing your view provide a more tailored planning experience. Let’s take a closer look at these updates. 

Real-time task notifications for Project Manager agent in preview 

Real-time task notifications for the Project Manager agent in Planner are now in public preview within the new Planner in Teams. These notifications ensure you and your teammates receive timely updates when tasks assigned to Project Manager agent are completed and ready for review or when Project Manager agent requires input to proceed. This feature improves accountability, helps meet deadlines, and keeps teams on track—even amid shifting priorities. Notifications are enabled by default but can be managed through Teams settings. Access to Project Manager agent capabilities requires a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. 

Hide columns in My Day and My Tasks 

This feature lets you tweak your task grid in My Day and My Tasks by hiding the columns you don't need. It remembers your settings across devices—so no need to redo it every time! Coupled with the column reordering capability released last month, this feature allows you to concentrate on task details that are most relevant to you. 

Manage non-default environment plans in Planner 

You can now view and manage non-default environment plans directly in Planner, and view recently opened plans from a non-default environment under the Recent section. Now, when you select the plan, it will open directly in Planner. You can also view which environment the plan belongs to by hovering over the plan name in the Recent section. 

Bug fixes in Planner 

Earlier this month, we addressed performance issues that caused Planner to load slowly in Teams and led to slow response times in basic plans. We also fixed a bug in basic plans to ensure that the Board view loads by default when you open a basic plan. Thank you for your feedback in helping us identify these issues! 

Share your feedback  

Tell us what you think about the new Planner using the Feedback button (icon of a person with a chat bubble overhead) in the top right corner of the app. We also encourage you to share any feature requests by adding your ideas to the Planner Feedback Portal. Your feedback helps inform our feature updates, and we look forward to hearing from you as you try Planner’s new and existing capabilities!  

Resources  

  • Sign up to receive future communication about Planner.  
  • Check out the Microsoft 365 roadmap for feature descriptions and estimated release dates for Planner. 
  • Watch Planner demos for inspiration on how to get the most out of Planner in Teams. 
Updated Apr 30, 2025
Version 2.0

20 Comments

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  • ThePHM's avatar
    ThePHM
    Brass Contributor
    Jun 22, 2025

    Why do people even want to use named environments? Seems like a hack and you end up with negative side effects like the above. Maybe I should've made this a discussion topic instead of a comment 🤔

    • robhprojility's avatar
      robhprojility
      Brass Contributor
      Jun 23, 2025

      Hi. the default environment is the one available to anyone on the organization. As such it's difficult to put any real security controls around it.  Folks setup named environments to meet specific organizational purposes they have - just like in traditional IT environments, where you may want an instance of the system for the IT group, another one for Product development, etc. Having the ability to setup multiple environments is an enterprise strategy and capability that Microsoft provides.  That way each instance could have its own security, customizations, reporting, etc.  It could certainly be it's own topic, you are right! In a smaller organization this may not be relevant, but b/c Microsoft builds these solutions to be 'enterprise scalable and ready', this kind of functionality is pretty critical.  

    • BrianSmithPhotos's avatar
      BrianSmithPhotos
      Iron Contributor
      Jun 22, 2025

      Hi The PHM - Maybe you want to have some governance?  Take backups?  Have the ability to extend the size of the environment if it fills up?  Practice good deployment of changes in non-production environments?  Plenty of VERY good reasons.  Best regards, Brian.

      • ThePHM's avatar
        ThePHM
        Brass Contributor
        Jun 22, 2025

        Thanks Brian, the default environment must have backups? Microsoft wouldn't be able to sell the service if it wasn't being backed up by them. Maybe I misunderstand. When mentioning Governance do you mean controlling what people can do in the environment? That's not governance that's restricting tool functions and my preference would be to set useful guidelines. What I heard is that custom environments means you don't get all the features that you're actually paying for but that could be incorrect. Deployment changes of? This is off the shelf software and really shouldn't customize COTS IMHO. That means lots of money for consultants and third parties. I would rather extend using standard APIs than customize a tool. 

        Here's some things I was pulling together when my org was talking about using custom environments. A bunch of this comes from Claude.ai and ChatGPT and I haven't verified it so feel free to correct it!

        https://github.com/thephm/microsoft_tech/blob/main/planner%2Fposts%2FMS%20Project%20for%20the%20web%20in%20custom%20environments.md

         

  • Sivacom's avatar
    Sivacom
    Copper Contributor
    Jun 03, 2025

    I was expecting the support of @ mentions to be included in this update - it is hideously frustrating not being able to send a notification in the comments to assignees that you have updated their task with feedback, having to copy the task link, and then go to chat to send them a message that the task has been updated is such as waste of time. I may as well have just emailed them the task in the first place and run the feed via the email. Is there any update to support the @ mentions urgently? It just seems like a no-brainer for a task management tool? 

  • owarrak's avatar
    owarrak
    Copper Contributor
    May 02, 2025

    Great news that plans in non-default environments can now be seen in the new Planner. Do you know if tasks assigned in these non-default environments will be seen in peoples Planner "My Tasks"?

    • BrianSmithPhotos's avatar
      BrianSmithPhotos
      Iron Contributor
      May 07, 2025

      I would have expected and hoped they would, and am seeing the plan show up from my named environment, but not the assigned task.  Is this expected NancyatMSFT​ ?  Is there a delay maybe (although the plan showed right away).

  • CourtBoda's avatar
    CourtBoda
    Iron Contributor
    May 01, 2025

    NancyatMSFT  Any update on if / when the Planner Premium Cards will include the comments and other features Basic Plans have but Premium Plans are missing? 

    Also still hoping there will be some progress on @tagging within the task card vs having to open through teams. 

    Lastly, any update on being able to see and filter easily across all projects vs going in one by one? 

    I have added and upvoted these to all the feature enhancements, just waiting for these essential features to make their way on the list :) 

    • ThePHM's avatar
      ThePHM
      Brass Contributor
      Jun 22, 2025

      Would love this, the Notes field is small and comments in basic planner are better except for them missing @mentions 😭