Bringing a Plan into Microsoft Teams
Published Mar 28 2017 11:31 AM 68.2K Views
Microsoft

Now that Microsoft Teams is generally available, I wanted to provide a video demo showing how you can import an existing Plan into Teams. 

 

 

Here are the steps and important items to note:

 

-In order to import a plan, you must create a Team from an existing O365 Group.

-To bring the plan into Teams (mirroring the plan in the Planner web app), add a Planner tab to your Team, and click "Use an existing plan"

-This will import your board and enable you to have a fully synced experience between Planner and Teams.

 

We will continue to develop this experience, and we always welcome your feedback here and on planner.uservoice.com!

29 Comments
Copper Contributor

I assume the original Planner group will still be required?

Copper Contributor

We have a Planner and OneNote that we created before teams with all of the same users. We don't have an existing 0365 group, nor I doubt will we be able to get one set up, is there any other way of syncronising the two?

Brass Contributor

The oneNote wont imported in YET, but the planner should be, regardless if the group is created or not.

 


 

Brass Contributor

Getting there! Thanks for the hard work. 

 

So if you create a new planner in Teams app it does not show up in the Planner web portal. It's kind of confusing. So I created a new planner in teams app. Filled in some buckets. Added a couple test tasks. Alls ok. There is a link at the top to "view in web" and it takes you to the Teams planner and it shows you that planner with the new buckets and tasks... but it's actually the Team name? So I hit refresh and it's back to the parent planner for that team. So how do you get back to the teams app plan?

 

Obviously it's still getting some bugs worked out. But wanted to bring that up in case I was missing something? We're trying really hard to make this work for us but we keep running back to Trello. 

Brass Contributor

We've found that if you create a Team using an existing O365 group, it deletes the planner from the group therefore there is nothing to merge. It tells you that there is an existing plan but is unable to get group data 

Microsoft

@Peter Atherton that is not anticipated behavior, and I would recommend raising a support ticket

 

@Creighton Barnes for now, the link to Planner from Plans started in Microsoft Teams is through the "My Tasks" page. We will continually develop the integration, but for now the integration above is the method of having plans sync between Teams and Planner.

 

@Jay Bellchambers did you create the plan in Microsoft Teams or Planner web app?

 

@Michael Skitt that is correct!

Copper Contributor

I'm having the same issue as @Creighton Barnes. Do I have to recreate all the cards in the plan I created in Teams in order to have the full planner functionality? Is there a way to transfer cards from one plan to another? 

Thanks,

-Rowan

Brass Contributor

@Dave Heller thanks for the feedback. We just kicked off Lean for our dept and the entire firm is moving forward with training and visualizing work in kanban boards. We're using Trello but us (the IT dept) will be checking back in to Planner as new features get rolled out. I will be honest and Planner is dead in the water until it is at least comparable to Trello. I know they have a head start but I know ya'll will get there. The Butler Bot or the ability to do similar in Planner with Flow is a must have.

 

Thanks for your hard work!

 

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Not applicable

I am still confused. Now that Teams syncs with Planner and viceversa, how to 'transfer' a Team's Channel onto Planner?

 

@Dave Heller any plans for developing reporting tools such as Gantt Charts or data export (I know you are not part of Teams)?

 

Ta

Copper Contributor

Hi @Dave Heller,

The original plan was created in planner. I actually copied the live tasks into a new plan in teams but something strange happened with that one. See the link below. 

 

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams/Teams-and-Planner-integration-error/m-p/60235...

 

Thanks for your help,

Jay

Copper Contributor

I'm hoping next cab off the rank is if a 365 Group is created by the Teams app, that we can choose the existing plan.


If you create an MS Team (which creates a 365 group under the covers), i'm unable to add a plan tab and associate with an existing "plan". It creates a new plan that is not visible in the hub.

Brass Contributor

Hi, If you want to use an existing plan and have an O365/Outlook group already created then you need to first merge the existing Group with MS Teams. I wrote a document explaining the process. Step 3 is the one that got me at first.  I did have graphics in here but copy and past removed them. Hope this helps.

 

The following assumes you have an existing Outlook Group that you want to turn into an MS Team. You must also be the Admin of the group.

 

  1. In Teams select Add team from the bottom left corner.
  2. Choose Create Team
  3. Select Add Microsoft Teams to an existing Office O365 group. It does not look like you can click on it but you can. Do NOT enter a new name in the Team Name field.
  4. Choose the Office 365 group you want to add Teams to by clicking on the radio button to the left of it. Then click the Choose Team Button. 
  5. Click on the + symbol to the right of the toolbar on your new Teams page. 
  6. Click on the Planner Tile. 
  7. Choose Use an existing plan. Then click on the dropdown below and then click on the name of your plan which should be the same as your group name
  8. Save the plan 
  9. Your existing plan will be imported into Teams 
  10. You can rename the Plan to something more descriptive if you like.

 

 Caveats

  1. Files will need to be moved from the group site manually
  2. OneNote notebooks will need to be merged. You cannot see Teams OneNote files in Groups or vise versa. You can however open a local OneNote client and see both under separate tabs.
  3. The calendar should continue to show your meetings that were created in the O365 group. Meetings created in Teams however don't seem to appear if you go to the group calendar.
Brass Contributor

@Sam Nicolitsi I was confused by the process of merging a team with an O365 Group at first. I replied to your post earlier with details but somehow it was deleted.

 

To keep it short here is the key. When creating a Team to associate with an O365 Group you must not create a new Team. After selecting Create Team you will see something towards the bottom of the screen that says. 

 

Add Microsoft Teams to an existing Office O365 group. It does not look like you can click on it but you can. Do NOT enter a new name in the Team Name field. Then any O365 Group that you are the admin for will be listed with radio buttons. If you are not the admin of the group you want to merge it will not work.

 

Do not put a new Team name in or it will create a Team that is not associated with the group.

Copper Contributor

Hi @Peter Atherton, thanks for the response. Unfortunately i don't get the option in teams to 'Add Microsoft Teams to an existing Office 365 group'. I do with my personal tenant, but with the work tenant, i don't. What's bizzare at work is that for some reason no users have the capability to create a 365 Group in Admin Center. However, we can inadvertantly create a group by creating a new team. The boys in our IT department apparently have global admin but are still unable to create a 365 group in admin center.

 

*edit: interestingly enough. I tried again adding a planner tab via MS Teams (choosing an existing planner). I did this before but tasks weren't appearing in Planner Hub (which was a bummer). However, this time everything seems synchronised and is appearing in hub! I've tested tasks in Teams and on the planner website, it's all in sync. I'm positive i did nothing different but at least now its working.

Copper Contributor

Hi @Dave Heller!

 

I'm just planning to start using Planner and Teams in my team of training developers.

This team has lots of interaction during development. Some people on the team are shared resources for all different concurrent projects happening. This makes me look for a tool that will allow a group to collaborate effectively on a number of projects.

Now I see that Teams allows me to create a number of Planners for a single Group. Is this the path I should follow? I just can't seem to get what force within Microsoft has more power and where the product integration will lean towards. 

In current state I can't see all plans in the Planner Hub when they are created in Teams. This makes me somewhat out of control. If this will be added down the road - I'd jump in.

 

What would be the best future-proof setup for a team with multiple concurrent projects, shared document space, number of chats happening and people playing a role in several projects at a time?

Multiple Groups - one for every project

or

Teams with a single Team and a number of Plans

 

In either case I believe there is no single pane of glass to see all plans from several Groups or all plans from several Teams plans at the moment. 

Copper Contributor

I work in a marketing team are have been using Microsoft Teams for a month or so now.

 

It is a really good tool allowing us to share resources and conversations etc across quite a large number of multiple projects.  Planner is good at managing tasks.  The big downside we see is that plans created for channels in a team are not visible within the Planner hub, so we can't get an overview across all projects.

 

Before planner we were creating a new group for each project but that was getting unwieldly as we have eight to ten new projects per week.

Teams solved this as we now only add a channel for each project (perfect :)) except for the inability to use the planner hub for complete oversite by project or project group in the planner hub.

 

Copper Contributor

Is there any way to bring a plan from within teams to the Planner hub?

Bronze Contributor

I have really strange behavior. 

 

Create a Planner from Teams. Add cards. Hit the button with the square and up-arrow to go to the Planner portal. Add the plan to my favorites. Then when I try and access the Planner from the portal Hub or favorites, I get a blank plan with the same name. There are two "PlanID", the one that came from Teams and a second blank plan that i don't want. Something is not working right.

 

Is there any way to access a plan both in Teams and Planner? the same Plan?

 

Thanks,

Rob.

Bronze Contributor

I have really strange behavior:

 

Create a Planner from Teams. Add cards. Hit the button with the square and up-arrow to go to the Planner portal. Add the plan to my favorites. Then when I try and access the Planner from the portal Hub or favorites, I get a blank plan with the same name. There are two "PlanID", the one that came from Teams and a second blank plan that i don't want. Something is not working right.

 

Is there any way to access a plan both in Teams and Planner? the same Plan?

 

Thanks,

Rob.

Copper Contributor

There are two versions of Plans when working in Teams from what I can understand.

The first is a plan created for the Team as a whole, which I believe is based on the O365 Group created for the Team.   This primary plan will be visible within the Planner Hub as standard.   I believe this is the first Plan created for a Team.

 

If you create any subsequent plans against any other channel in that team you will have a Plan that you will not be able to fully see within the Planner hub.  

You will be able to see any tasks assigned to you within the My Tasks section of the Planner hub.

An over view of the channel plan can only be seen within the Planner tab you created for this channel.  This overview is limited to the tasks and buckets within that Plan, you won't see the donougt graph etc.

 

It is still a bit confusing I know, but I hope that the MS developers correct this in the short term. 

 

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Not applicable

I'd like to import my existing Planner to my existing Teams channel.  It shows only "Create a plan" option when trying to add Planner to Teams. "Use an existing plan" option only appears if I already create a Planner in Teams, not bringing my existing Planner from Planner.  Can you please advise? 

Deleted
Not applicable

Eun, you need to enable that Group in Teams. so add a new Group and then select Enable Teams for an existing Group. Then when you add Planner to that new Team/Group, you will have the option to select the existing planner.

2017-10-28_10-30-37.png

 

 

Copper Contributor

Forgive me if this scenario has already been discussed, and if it has, I would appreciate being directed to it. 

 

I understand how I can take an existing Planner plan (O365 Group) and make it a Team, then add the Planner tab to expose it.  But I want to do is take a single Team and add multiple plans to corresponding channels.  For project management groups who work and collaborate on multiple projects, hence different conversation, filesets, and Planner plans, it would be nirvana to be able to congregate in a single Team.  (I guess I'm really asking for is the ability to nest Office 365 groups?)

Copper Contributor

I am having issues importing a plan the I created in Planner and then importing that plan into Teams, I even changed the name of the Planner Plan to match the Teams Team so that it could recognise it, but all Teams does is create a blank Plan with the same name rather than importing the existing Plan.

 

What am I doing wrong?

Copper Contributor

I appear to be having the same issue as above. I've spent a considerable amount of time developing a complex plan in planner and wanted to use it as a "template" for new teams that will be created in the future. When I try to import a plan it appears to draw only from any existing plan in the team site and not more broadly across all plans. Is this the expected behavior? Honestly I hope I'm doing something wrong. 

 

Iron Contributor

@John Kostenbader - I think you're describing copying a plan, not just importing one, right?

 

Check out this post by @Brian-Smith:

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/brismith/2017/04/17/planner-cloning-a-plan-with-multiple-assignment...

 

Copper Contributor

"all Teams does is create a blank Plan with the same name rather than importing the existing Plan."

 

It seems that to add the existing plan from the Office Group you must be a member of that group, not "just" one of the owners. Use existing plan appeared only after I added myself as member, though I had to be owner to create a team from that group. Or maybe it just takes a very long time after creating a team from a group before you can add the existing plan.

Iron Contributor

My plan is not listed as one of the available plans for the team.  I believe the plan was created before the Team was.  Is there anyway to get the plan imported?

Brass Contributor

I have the same issue @John Warner - In my situation I have used the copy plan feature to create a new project plan based of a template I built.  I am doing this in the Planner web app.  The copy bit works great but the plan is not created in our Clients Team so when I try to add the Planner tab to the team the Planner project is not available to select.  How do I take any Planner Project and assign it to a team so I can add it to the Teams tabs for my clients?

 

This is very frustrating - every link on this subject points to this thread as the solution but it doesn't seem to be.  Simple.  I have a team that I need to add a planner project to.  I can't change either of them or add a new team.  It doesn't seem like you can do this?

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