The next chapter for AI-powered work management in Microsoft Planner

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 Project for the web into a single, modern experience we called the new Planner. Now available in Microsoft Teams and as a web app, Planner has further been enhanced with the Project Manager Agent, an AI-powered assistant that helps streamline your planning process.

Now, we’re taking the next step by bringing advanced AI skills through Project Manager Agent to our platform—delivering intelligent automation and a seamless planning environment that can help empower teams to move faster, stay aligned, and deliver results with less friction.

A day in the life: From conversation to coordination

It’s Monday morning. A product launch team gathers—some in person, some remote. Instead of action items getting lost in chat threads or emails, Facilitator and Project Manager Agent are now part of the meeting experience.

• During the meeting, Facilitator listens for spoken intent and captures decisions as actionable tasks. Team members can also prompt Facilitator through the meeting chat to add, update, or assign tasks in real time. This ensures that nothing is missed and that tasks are created directly from the flow of conversation.
• Project Manager Agent structures these tasks within Planner, assigning owners and due dates as directed by the team. The agent helps team members organize and track their work efficiently by making it easier to create, assign, and update tasks within Teams meetings.
• Furthermore, the Project Manager Agent works alongside Facilitator to generate a marketing plan, so the team can use the document as a reference for stakeholders. The agents are able to create the document, pulling context from the meeting transcript, meeting chat, and files shared during the meeting. The document is posted in the meeting chat and is also available as an attachment to the task in the meeting plan.
• As the meeting wraps up, the plan is live in Planner, with clear ownership and next steps. Everyone leaves the meeting aligned, knowing exactly what needs to be done and who is responsible.

This is the story we’re showcasing at Ignite: how Planner and agents are helping teams drive work across Teams.

What’s rolling out soon to general availability

Below is a list of features that are currently available in public preview and rolling out to general availability in the next two weeks.

Project Manager Agent skills in Teams meetings: Leveraging the skills of Project Manager Agent, Facilitator can create tasks during meetings and automatically extract tasks from meeting transcripts to ensure nothing is overlooked. These tasks are captured in meeting notes and seamlessly synced to Planner for enhanced post-meeting tracking. Additionally, the Facilitator can generate documents from meetings, helping resolve the "cold start" challenge. Simply @mention Facilitator to create, assign, or access tasks, or to generate required documents.

A screenshot of a Teams meeting shows a conversation with Facilitator in the Meeting chat. A user has tasked Facilitator to assign a task to Sarah and set the due date to Friday.

Project Manager Agent skills in Teams channels: Leveraging the skills of Project Manager Agent in Teams channels, users can create tasks, set due dates, and assign tasks seamlessly within their collaborative workspace by @mentioning the respective Channel Agent.

Learn more about Project Manager Agent skills in Teams meetings and channels in our announcement blog post.

What’s new for Project Manager Agent and Planner

Below is a list of features that are new to Project Manager Agent, Channel Agent in Teams, and Planner.

Workback plans in Teams channels: Project Manager Agent and the Channel Agent together now support the creation of AI-powered workback plans, automatically generating a reverse timeline of tasks and milestones based on the target deadline and goal provided.

A screenshot of a Teams channel shows a conversation with the Channel Agent. The Channel Agent has created a workback plan with tasks and due dates.

Ask questions about your plans in Teams channels: You can now ask the Channel Agent questions related to your plans in Planner. Simply @mention the Channel Agent directly in your channel conversation with questions such as: What tasks are assigned to me? What tasks need to be completed this week?

Create and update tasks with Channel Agent: You can also ask the Channel Agent to create new tasks and update existing ones. Simply @mention the Channel Agent with prompts such as: Create a task to complete the Quarterly Business Review deck. Assign the LT review prep task to Daniel. For more information, see how to create project tasks using Channel Agent.

Status reports with Planner data: Channel Agent uses its knowledge to create status reports for channel members. These status reports are delivered as a Loop file within the channel, allowing team members to review, edit, collaborate, and share with others.

Previously, the Channel Agent would generate status reports based on messages in its respective channel, as well as meeting summaries for any meetings the agent was added to. Now, status reports generated by the Channel Agent are enriched with Planner data to provide additional context, improve project visibility for all stakeholders, and enable better decision making by highlighting progress, risks, and blockers. Learn how to generate a status report using Channel Agent.

Please note, these new capabilities in Teams channels are currently available in public preview. A Microsoft 365 Copilot license is required to create, interact with, and manage Channel Agent in Teams. Learn how to get started with Channel Agent for Teams channels.

Support for Information Barriers: Microsoft Purview Information Barriers are policies in Microsoft 365 that a compliance admin can configure to prevent individuals or groups from communicating and collaborating with each other. Support for Information Barriers in Planner enables organizations to restrict access to plans and tasks based on user groups. This feature can help prevent data leaks, enforce internal policies, and support regulatory mandates by limiting plan visibility and collaboration to authorized segments.

Support for Information Barriers is now generally available in basic plans only across:

• Planner for the web
• Planner in Teams (web, desktop, and mobile)

Learn more about Information Barriers in Microsoft Planner.

What’s coming soon to Planner

Below is a list of additional compliance features that are currently rolling out or starting to roll out in Planner next month. Please note, these features are not being demoed at Ignite. Check the Microsoft 365 public roadmap for rollout status and additional details.

Microsoft Information Protection (MIP) label support in Planner: Up until now, Planner has supported container labels for Microsoft 365 Group-backed and Roster plans, restricting access based on label permissions. This update will enable support for content labels, enforcing Data Loss Prevention controls, such as:

• Preventing users from copying task content, exporting plans to Excel or other formats, and forwarding tasks or plans to unauthorized users.
• Restricting users from printing plans or tasks when the content label includes a “block print” directive and restricting users from any form of hard copy generation of sensitive plans.
• Displaying watermarks on plans and tasks when required and ensuring watermark visibility across all supported clients (web, desktop, and mobile).
• Inheriting content labels from Loop Task List components or other linked containers, applying the same restriction to the Roster plan created from a Loop file, and respecting label changes.
• Informing users when label restrictions are in effect, preventing actions that violate label policies, and offering downgrade prompts if label changes would revoke access for certain users.

With this rollout, users will be able to apply and modify content labels on Group-backed plans. Roster plans created from meetings will inherit the meeting label.

eDiscovery support for Roster plans: Up until now, Planner has only provided eDiscovery support for modern Group-backed plans. This update will enable eDiscovery support for Roster plans as well. Once rolled out to your organization, admins will be able to pull the task data relevant to a user by selecting the individual’s mailbox. When the eDiscovery admin selects a user’s mailbox as the data source, they would see the task that the user was assigned to.

Join our sessions at Ignite 2025!

Whether you’re on site at the Moscone Center or joining us online, dive deeper with demos and Q&A. We’ll share additional details on the features above and announce some exciting updates coming soon to Planner.

• Theater session (THR761):
  Accelerating productivity with Planner and Project Manager agent in Microsoft Teams
  Time: Thursday, November 20 at 10:00 AM Pacific
  Speakers: George Bullock, Robyn Guarriello
  Duration: 25 minutes (in person, live Q&A)
• Breakout session (BRK287):
  Planner & agents: Driving work across Teams, Outlook, and Copilot Chat
  Time: Thursday, November 20 at 4:45 PM Pacific
  Speakers: Howard Crow, Robyn Guarriello
  Duration: 45 minutes (in person, streamed live, and on demand)
• Expert meetups:
  Visit the Copilot & Agents station for hands-on demos and unblocked Q&A with product experts.

Learn more

• Watch the on-demand Breakout session from Ignite 2025.
• Sign up to receive future communication about Planner.
• Check out the Planner adoption page and Planner help & learning page to learn more about Planner.
• Visit the Microsoft 365 roadmap for feature descriptions and estimated release dates for Planner.
• Walk through the interactive demos for Project Manager Agent in Planner and Project Manager Agent skills in Teams meetings.
• Take these hands-on learning courses to enhance your AI business solutions with Copilot and agents at work.