Recent Discussions
Microsoft where is the love for my Custom/non-default environment?
Like a lot of customers I have a custom environment for planner. I feel like a second class citizen when so many updates are for the default environment. Has anyone heard any news about advancements in a non-default environment. Specifically a way to get all tasks in one place for all resources?
Multiple plan owners
In Plan details there is not the option to add multiple owners for same plan. This option is available in MS Teams. I have noticed that when you are not the owner of a plan, you cannot copy that plan. Our group has created a task plan template that we use to make multiple plans for each year and attach the plans to coordinating teams. For this template, we could really use multiple owners even though it is attached to a team with multiple owners
Feature Request: Enhanced Text Field Support in Custom Fields for Premium Plans
Hello Microsoft Planner Team, As an Engineering Manager at LinkedIn, I've recently started using Microsoft Planner Premium for my engineering team's sprint management. While the custom fields feature has been incredibly useful, I've encountered significant limitations with the "Text" field type that are impacting our workflow. Current Issue: I created a custom field called "Scrum Notes" to capture detailed sprint-related information. However, when I enter multi-line text, it automatically converts to a single line, making it difficult to read and organize structured notes. Feature Requests: I would like to request three enhancements for custom fields with "Text" type: Multi-line Text Support: Enable newline characters (\n) to be preserved when entering text in custom fields. Currently, all text is collapsed into a single line, which severely limits readability for longer notes. Expandable Text Preview: Display up to 300 characters in the Grid view with an "expand" or "show more" option when clicked. This would allow teams to see a preview without cluttering the view, while still being able to access the full content when needed. Rich Text Formatting: Add support for basic text formatting (bold, italics, bullet points) within text-type custom fields, similar to the formatting available in the Comments section. This would significantly improve the organization and readability of notes, especially for technical documentation like scrum notes, technical decisions, or implementation details. Use Case: Our team uses the "Scrum Notes" field to document: Sprint planning decisions Technical implementation notes Blockers and dependencies Action items from standups Without multi-line and formatting support, these notes become difficult to parse, forcing us to use external documentation tools, which defeats the purpose of having centralized task information in Planner. Impact: These enhancements would make Microsoft Planner significantly more powerful for engineering teams and other technical users who need to capture detailed, structured information directly within their project management tool. I'd appreciate any feedback from the community on whether others are experiencing similar limitations, and if there are any workarounds currently available. I've also submitted this feedback through the in-app feedback mechanism. Thank you for considering this enhancement!
Nested Parent/Subtasks in Board View
I recently upgraded to planner and project plan 5 (planner premium), with one of my most anticipated features being subtasks and dependencies. My group usually uses board view to look at our tasks, but if I make a parent/subtask relationship in the grid view, the parent task is not shown in the board view. I know most people use one plan for one specific project, but my tech impaired supervisors need one place to look at all projects, so I need to have everything in one plan to reduce difficulties in navigating planner and finding tasks. I am testing out using portfolios for this reason as well. I am hoping someone else has the same wish and this can become an action item in the future.
Auto mark done for planner task when flagged email has been marked complete
Current Behavior: When an email in Outlook is flagged for follow-up, a corresponding task is created in Planner under the “Flagged Email” section. However, if the user marks the email as Complete in Outlook, the related Planner task remains in the Not Started status. Impact: This creates inefficiency and confusion in task management. Users must manually mark the Planner task as completed even though the email was already marked complete, resulting in duplicate effort. Proposed Solution: Automatically update the Planner task status to Completed when the associated flagged email in Outlook is marked as complete.
Planner Notifications Showing as Sent by Me
Our employees are receiving Planner notifications that appear to come directly from me, the CIO, even though I did not initiate or assign those tasks. This creates confusion, as staff believe I am personally assigning work or flagging overdue items. Questions: Is there a way to revert to the previous “email address removed for privacy reasons” sender behavior? If not, can this be logged as a design limitation for consideration (e.g., toggle or admin control)? What best practices are recommended to prevent confusion in the meantime? This behavior feels misleading and disruptive, so I want to ensure it’s documented as a design concern rather than treated as a support closure. The workaround I was given by Microsoft support was to pay for another E3 license for each of our supervisors/managers so that they can monitor that the emails are initiated by them. Our company cannot afford these licenses--we support intellectually challenged and disabled children and adults and we know that our federal funds have ended and the federal government does not believe in supporting our clients. Thank you for any advice.
Bucket Templates or Duplicate Buckets
Adding bucket templates or duplicate bucket functionality would save so much time for all of us. We're using Planner to project manage repetitive workflows - but each time we create a new project we need to manually copy and paste all tasks. It would save so much time to add the ability to create a new bucket from a template or duplicate a bucket. Planner feels so under baked because it lacks this functionality, and there are hundreds of threads requesting this exact functionality.Tasks deleted automatically
Hello, I'm using the planner (plan3) since March. I've realized that I haven't the same tasks in the history in every month. Apart from the new ones, there are some old tasks which are deleted automatically. They are not the oldest ones. Is there any rule for this deletion? Is it a bug? Thanks for your help. Ana.Notifying team members of new planner?
Hi Very new to Planner and the whole Microsoft environment....so learning as I go! I'll give the context of how I intend to use Planner: We are a school who from time to time gets new students and there are various tasks to be peformed by different people to ensure the student is enrolled fully. I have created a 'New Student' Planner which I intend to use as a template ie - whenever a new student arrives, I'll copy the Planner template and rename it to the student's name. I'm assuming this is an OK and most efficient way to do this? Assuming it is - how can I automatically/easily notify the members of the Planner that there is a new student/Planner in place and as such they need to go into Planner and start their part of the enrolment process. The only logical way I can see is to copy the link for the new planner, paste it into an email and then email the relevant people. This does seem a little 'clunky.' Ideally I'd like it that as soon as the Template is duplicated and renamed - the creation of this Planner automatically notifies the members that it exists....but I don't think this can happen? Any help greatly appreciated Mr BStrategic Missing Capabilities in the new Microsoft Planner (Enterprise Perspective)
The Present State of Microsoft Planner’s Vision Enterprises want one coherent work-management layer in Microsoft 365 Microsoft’s ambition is to merge To Do, Planner, and Project for the Web into a single platform with Copilot, Goals, unified List/Board/Timeline views, and templates The direction is sound: reduce fragmentation and tool sprawl, standardize data, and give leaders a clean and solid portfolio picture while teams execute in familiar interfaces. In an environment where all employees have access to the same tool, are already included in the resource pool and integration options are basically unlimited, this is a step, that everyone was looking forward to. Nonetheless, the quip that “Microsoft abandoned MS Project 20 years ago” is a joke, but it reflects a real anxiety: if the new Planner displaces familiar scheduling experiences without enterprise-grade controls, PMOs will feel left alone again and disengage, in presence of abundant alternatives. Planner will not replace Microsoft Project, Primavera, or other detailled scheduling tools; those remain essential for deep dependencies, resource leveling, and baselining. Planner’s highest-value role is the management and aggregation layer above them: align goals, normalize metadata, and expose cross-program status. Simplicity matters, but simplicity cannot mean missing capability. If essential functions are absent, governance, traceability, and portfolio visibility suffer, and organizations turn to external tools. Following is a list of core functionality that is currently missing and was needed about a month ago. Current Structural Gaps Date logic too rigid for management use No independent target/due date field; planning often hinges on Start/Finish + Duration, which limits top-down milestone control Custom fields capped at 10 per plan Insufficient for enterprise metadata models and standardized portfolio reporting Maximum task duration of 1,250 days Constricts representation of multi-year initiatives and capital programs No enterprise-grade audit trail Lacks comprehensive, exportable change logs with retention controls for compliance Flat responsibility model Multiple assignees exist, but no roles such as Owner, Reviewer, Approver; no RACI support Insufficient hierarchy and dependencies for roll-ups Summary/sub-tasks exist, but cross-plan links and robust multi-plan aggregation are weak Group-based permissions only Sharing tied to M365 Groups/Teams; no fine-grained task- or field-level permissions; no simple view-only for externals Custom fields lack hyperlink behavior No URL field type; links in text fields are often not clickable for seamless navigation Inconsistent text capture and formatting Notes lack reliable rich-text structure; long entries are hard to read No page breaks or robust formatting for long descriptions Executive-level narratives and governance documentation become unwieldy Limited standardization across plans No global library for reusable custom fields, bucket structures, or templates at tenant/portfolio level Required Enhancements for Enterprise Readiness Flexible date logic Allow target/due dates independent of Start/Finish; add constraints, buffers, alerts, and escalation rules Expanded metadata framework Raise the custom-field limit; add field types (URL, Person, Multi-select), required fields, validation rules, and global field templates Enterprise auditability Provide full change history with export, retention policies, filters by field/user, and API access Role-aware assignments (RACI) Support roles (Owner, Doer, Reviewer, Approver), secondary ownership, and role-based views in people and reports Portfolio-grade structure Enable cross-plan dependencies, milestone roll-ups, program-level summaries, consolidated capacity and risk views Granular access control Introduce view-only sharing, external access without group membership, and task/field-level ACLs to protect sensitive data Hyperlink-enabled fields Add a URL type and clickable rendering in text fields, with previews and allow-lists for approved domains Robust editor for management communication Paragraphs, lists, headings, tables, code/quote blocks, and clean print/PDF output for formal documentation Reusable enterprise templates Tenant-wide libraries for custom fields, buckets, and workflows; versioning and approval flows for governed rollout Reliable data layer A standardized Power BI dataset, webhooks/events, incremental exports, and stable keys for multi-plan, multi-tenant analytics Scaling for long-horizon work Lift or mitigate the 1,250-day limit for leaf tasks and provide guidance or rules for multi-year programs Bottom line Planner can succeed as the enterprise management layer if it remains simple but gains the capabilities listed above. One does not work without the other. If Microsoft does not deliver these functions, enterprises will continue using Project, Primavera, or other scheduling tools — while adopting third-party platforms for governance and portfolio visibility. This would directly undermine Planner’s goal of becoming the unified standard within Microsoft 365. Please, do us a favor and spare organizations from having to implement yet another third-party tool. (And yes: I am aware of multiple enterprises that are in the process of testing and implementating different tools, presicely because of this missing capability)
"Show on task" previews suddenly not showing
Hi This has worked fine up until last week. We have several planners with PowerPoint documents attached to the task cards. Up until last week we could see the previews on the task card. Now, none of the previews are showing for any of the users. Just the PPT logo. This is happening both in the Teams app (Mac) and browser. If the task is viewed on a mobile device, then the preview shows as expected. Other image file types such as JPG etc. still work OK. Any ideas? Thanks
Can GUESTS access t Premium Plan in Teams?
I created a Teams Team and want to manage a premium plan project therein. I have the Planner-Plan 1 license. One external supplier is a guest in my Team but he cannot see the Premium plan. Is this by design or is there any wrong setting in my system? I could not find any information on this in the Microsoft documentation. Facts The guest user is part of the teamBetter customizability/themes for planner
There is a big issue with visibility of task boxes on dark theme. The contrast of the box edge with dark background is very low. it very hard to discern the task box edges. There is practically no customizability for how things look in planner. all there is, is an option to change the banner color which is not very helpful. If there was an option to change the default color of boxes that would help immensely on visibility.
Recent Blogs
- Today at Microsoft Ignite, we’re excited to share the next major evolution in work management—one that builds on the journey we began in April 2024, when we unified Microsoft To Do, Planner, and Proj...Nov 20, 2025
- We’re excited to announce that the new Planner app in Microsoft Teams (web and desktop) is now available to customers in the Government Community Cloud (GCC) High environment! There’s no migration...Oct 01, 2025
