Coming hot off our last Planner roundup at the end of May, we’re excited to announce two new features that rolled out in June: copy plan to an existing group or team and task filtering for iOS. Both have been frequent asks on Planner UserVoice, and both are now generally available to all Planner users.
Copy plan to an existing group or team
Office 365 Groups and Microsoft Teams are fantastic hubs for collaborating with your team. But in the words of one UserVoice commenter, “Group sprawl” is real. The more you use Groups and Teams, the more groups and teams you need to manage. Before today, copying a Planner plan created a new group, adding to that sprawl. But now, you can copy your plans to an existing group or team to streamline your workflow. This release also lets you choose which parts of your plan to copy over.
(Quick side note: Office 365 Groups is being renamed to Microsoft 365 Groups. You can read about this change, which is happening over time, here.)
To copy a plan, start in the Planner hub and select the ellipses “…” in a plan box. Then, select Copy plan. You can also copy a plan from with the plan itself by selecting the ellipses near the top of the window. This brings you to a redesigned pop-out for choosing the destination group or team and the elements of the plan you’d like to duplicate: priority, dates, description, checklist, and labels. You can only copy over attachments to the group or team in which the current plan exists. There’s still the option to copy a plan to a new group, too.
Your copied plan will automatically appear under Recent plans and be associated with the group or team you selected.
One known issue with this feature is that users who don't have permissions to create groups can't copy plans, even if they are just copying it to an existing group. We’ve since resolved the issue internally and will be rolling out the fix soon. UPDATE: This issue is now fixed. You can now copy plans even if you don't have permissions to create groups in Microsoft 365 Groups.
Task filtering for iOS
Filtering in the Planner web experience makes it easy to quickly find tasks using keywords or premade filters, like Priority and Assignment. To bring greater parity to the mobile experience, we’ve added keyword filtering for task titles and assignees to the Planner app on iOS. Using the new keyword filter bar (i.e., the magnifying glass icon at the top of the Board view), you can surface relevant tasks from the Board view and My Tasks view.
We developed both features in response to your feedback on UserVoice, so please continue to drop us suggestions for improving your Planner experience. As always, keep checking our Tech Community for the latest Planner news.