Subtasks - What level is needed?

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.