Forum Discussion
Subtasks - What level is needed?
My company is looking into utilizing our Planner so that multiple people have access to the same plan, but for the team to create subtasks we have to purchase premium plans. What level (1, 3 or 5) is needed to create a subtask? The breakdown found https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/planner/microsoft-planner-plans-and-pricing does not specify subtasks.
2 Replies
Hi JKMT,
Great question, the licensing page is really not explicit about subtasks.
In the new Microsoft Planner, subtasks are part of the premium capabilities. You don’t unlock subtasks by a specific “1 / 3 / 5” level on the feature list; instead, you need any Planner Premium license, and the plan itself must be created as a Premium plan (the one with the diamond icon).
In practice:
- Users with Planner Plan 1, Planner and Project Plan 3, or Planner and Project Plan 5 can all use subtasks, as long as:
- They are working in a Premium plan, and
- Each person who needs to create or edit subtasks has a premium license assigned.
If you’re in a “basic” Planner plan (the one that comes only with Microsoft 365, without premium), the subtask option won’t appear, even if some users have higher licenses. In that case, your admin would need to assign a premium license and you’d create a new Premium plan to start using subtasks.
We also walk through Planner / Project licensing and Premium features in a video on our YouTube channel (MLPro), where we explain the differences step by step, you can check it here: https://youtu.be/nnzJw2Du2o4
If this is becoming complex in your organization and you’d like help designing the best way to use Planner/Project (migration from Project Online, reporting, project management, licensing, portfolio visibility), my team at MLPro works specifically with Microsoft 365 work management. We help companies set up these scenarios end to end, from planning to rollout. Feel free to reach out if you’d like to discuss your use case in more detail.
The ability to create and manage subtasks is part of the new Planner experience that’s rolling out under the Planner Premium (previously called “Project for the web”) tier. So, to use true subtasks, where you can break a main task into smaller, trackable parts with dependencies, you’ll need at least the Planner Premium (Project Plan 3) license. Plan 1 gives you basic task management, while Plan 3 (and Plan 5) include the advanced scheduling, dependencies, and hierarchy features. If your team only needs simple checklists under tasks, you can still use those in the free version, but for real “subtask” functionality, Plan 3 is the one to go with.
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