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How Microsoft Planner helped build the Maia 200 AI Accelerator

WendyHaddad — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 13:50:08 GMT

Maia 200 is Microsoft’s second-generation first-party AI accelerator built to support large-scale AI inference workloads in Azure. As Maia 200 moved from pre‑silicon design toward deployment, work across multiple engineering organizations was managed within a single program responsible for bringing the accelerator into Azure. At its peak, that effort tracked over 700 active tasks spanning silicon, software, and datacenters. To manage the intricacies of the effort at that scale, the program team turned to Microsoft Planner.

As the Maia 200 program was forming, much of the individual engineering organizations’ work was already in motion across different products including Planner, Excel, and Azure DevOps. Creating a shared view across multiple products proved challenging, as milestones that looked achievable to one team could quietly introduce risks for another, and executive discussions relied on manually assembled status updates rather than a live picture of where the program stood. Program leads needed a shared view of execution to manage dependencies across workstreams, align milestone progress, and identify risks that had the potential to impact delivery timelines.

Creating program-level visibility with Planner

With work already in motion across multiple organizations, the Maia 200 program maintained existing team workflows and tools, but selected Planner as the central coordination layer. As a collaborative work management solution, Planner provides a unified experience that spans individual task tracking through enterprise‑level project management, giving teams a single place to plan, manage, and complete task‑based initiatives. This allowed swim lanes, milestones, critical‑path tasks, and dependencies to be visible regardless of where the underlying work was managed.

Maia 200 program leads began setting up the plan by creating a series of visual swim lanes for each engineering organization. These were built in Planner as parent tasks and subtasks, covering areas like silicon feature readiness, networking enablement, and system validation. Each swim lane was color-coded to the product or engineering owner responsible for that area, and a custom field was added to track the directly responsible individual (DRI) for each task. This structure made ownership immediately clear throughout the plan. While the plan was originally designed for program-level visibility, it quickly became more than that, as some development leads began using these sections as their primary source of truth for day-to-day project execution.

Screenshots reflect the Planner configuration used throughout this program and have been anonymized for confidentiality.

Next, the Maia 200 program team created a structure for tracking overall program milestones. The use of a single parent task called "Top‑Level Program Milestones" visually distinguished milestones from swim lanes within the plan. Underneath, milestones were captured as individual subtasks and grouped by stages of the full program lifecycle, helping align work across phases and clarify what the program was working toward at each stage.

From the start, the same plan served both executive leadership and engineering team leads by providing a consistent view of program progress while still allowing milestone tracking to connect directly to the work‑level details required for execution.

Screenshots reflect the Planner configuration used throughout this program and have been anonymized for confidentiality.

Tracking the critical path and dependencies within Planner

With milestones and swim lanes in place, the next challenge was to track cross-organizational dependencies. The program leads used Planner's dependency feature to track blockers and reinforced a consistent rule in program meetings that any capability on the critical path needed to be represented in Planner. When one group's work depended on another's, both sides created dependency-linked tasks in their respective swim lanes to make the connection visible.

In practice, this meant that when multiple Azure DevOps items rolled up to a single critical-path capability, that capability was tracked in Planner as a task. Dependencies between teams were also represented within the plan, even when the underlying execution remained in other systems. As a result, if a team became blocked, that blocker was visible in the plan and acknowledged by both sides.

The Maia 200 program team also mapped milestones to related tasks within each swim lane setting each milestone as dependent on the final task (or tasks) required for completion. Planner's scheduling engine then automatically updated milestone dates as work within the swim lanes progressed.

To monitor progress over time, the team used Planner baselines to capture point-in-time snapshots of the plan, allowing them to export task data to Excel, compare multiple baselines, and identify delivery trends as needed.

Tracking risks within Planner

Risks were also tracked directly in Planner, giving program leaders a single view of the work underway and the factors that could impact it. Each risk was represented as a task in the plan and made dependent on the related tasks within each swim lane. Milestones were similarly linked to these risk tasks, keeping mitigation work directly connected to the execution required to reach each milestone.

Screenshots reflect the Planner configuration used throughout this program and have been anonymized for confidentiality.

With critical path work, cross-team dependencies, and associated risks visible in one place, program leads could anticipate risks earlier and respond before changes have a chance to ripple across the program.

Over time, this shifted the nature of program discussions. Instead of spending meeting time providing status updates, program and engineering leads were able to focus on the decisions that mattered, including which risks to prioritize, which tradeoffs to make, and where to act before a dependency became a blocker.

For program leadership, this meant schedule changes never arrived as a surprise, because blockers, dependencies, and risks were already visible and actively managed within the plan. For the engineering teams, it meant a dependency could not be claimed without being represented in the plan and acknowledged by the team responsible for driving the dependent work. By connecting milestones, critical path work, cross‑team dependencies, and risk tracking in a single coordination layer, Planner gave the Maia 200 program the shared operating picture it needed to keep execution aligned across organizations, systems, and every stage of delivery.

Planner Agent brings work management directly into Microsoft 365 Copilot

MarsGu — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 18:26:59 GMT

Work rarely lives in one place. Your priorities may be spread across personal tasks, shared plans, email follow-ups, meeting notes, and chats. Planner Agent can help bring that work together, delivering intelligent work and task management right within Microsoft 365 Copilot. Now you can see what needs attention, take action, and keep projects moving all in one place. Planner Agent is currently available in Microsoft 365 Copilot through Frontier and can be added from the All agents menu once enabled by your admin.

If the player doesn’t load, open the video in a new window: Open video

Focus on what matters

A common challenge at the start of the day or week is not a lack of tasks. It's a lack of clarity. Work often spans Planner, To Do, email, and chat, and pulling that into one clear picture takes time. Planner Agent is designed to solve exactly that. Start with a simple question such as, “What should I focus on today?” and Planner Agent will return a prioritized, interactive view so users can quickly understand what is urgent and act right away.

With Planner Agent, you can get oriented, review what matters, make edits inline, and keep going. Planner Agent can help unify commitments across Microsoft 365, capture follow-ups from the flow of work, and keep plans current without breaking momentum. Whether you're reviewing a Word document, in the middle of a standup, or catching up on your latest emails, you can open Microsoft 365 Copilot and engage Planner Agent. This makes it easy to review your priorities and turn context into action without breaking your flow.

Ask questions across your work

With capabilities such as Q&A across multiple task sources, you can ask the agent about private tasks, tasks assigned to you, flagged emails, and unified plans. The broader capability set also supports grounding across enterprise sources during Q&A, task creation, and task editing, which makes it possible to ask questions that reflect how work actually happens, not just how it is stored.

For example, you can ask:

“Show me my tasks due this week and help me prioritize what I need to work on.”
“What is the list of plans that need my attention right now and what actions should I take?”
“Help me summarize the urgent tasks in the Marketing launch plan and highlight the biggest risks.”

Planner Agent does not just fetch items. It can help you understand urgency, risk, and next steps more intelligently, so you can move from scattered information to clear action without having to piece everything together.

A screenshot of Microsoft 365 Copilot demonstrates an AI-generated response with prioritized task cards and a summary of urgent work.

Turn follow-ups into tasks in the right place

Planner Agent can also create new tasks directly in Copilot Chat. Users can create a single task, draft multiple tasks, or ground task creation in enterprise content such as email, chats, files, or meeting content. This helps turn work that is still in conversations into clear, actionable tasks.

For example, a user can review an email thread about a launch, ask Planner Agent to turn follow-ups into tasks, review the suggested titles and due dates in a preview card, remove anything unnecessary, and then confirm the final set before tasks are added to the plan.

You can ask Planner Agent to:

“Create a task for me to draft the user study by Friday.”
“Review my emails from today and draft private tasks for the most urgent follow-ups.”
“Turn follow-ups from this meeting into tasks in the Marketing plan.”

A screenshot of Microsoft 365 Copilot shows an AI-generated draft of a task preview card created from an email thread, with editable task rows.

Update existing tasks without leaving the conversation

Planner Agent also lets you edit existing tasks in both private tasks and unified plans. You can make updates in natural language or directly in the interactive task card such as changing the task name, status, date, priority, or plan without leaving Copilot.

For example:

“Help me adjust the deadline of my task to this Friday and change its priority to Important.”
“Mark ‘Q4 launch brief review’ as complete.”
“For tasks assigned to me across shared plans, push anything due next week by one week.”

Updating work is often where momentum stalls. Planner Agent makes it easy for users to keep current work inline, without breaking focus.

You can review, refine, and confirm task and plan updates before committing them, keeping work efficient, accurate, and in your control. Once confirmed, these changes are reflected directly in Planner. You can move into the Planner app at any time to review the same updates, continue editing, and keep working with your team. This makes Planner Agent feel less like a separate assistant and more like a natural extension of Planner inside Copilot.

A screenshot of Microsoft 365 Copilot demonstrates in-line task editing with before-and-after changes.

Create a structured plan from scratch

Beyond individual tasks, Planner Agent can help generate a comprehensive plan with structure. You can ask for a plan based on a request or a grounded source, and the agent drafts a structured plan for review before saving.

Planner Agent finds the right reference document, confirms it with the user, and drafts a plan based closely on that source. The plan goes beyond a simple task list. It includes hierarchy and organization, with goals to group related work and additional details like buckets and notes to make the plan easier to understand and manage.

This is especially helpful when you are starting a new project or turning a large set of information into an actionable plan. Instead of starting from scratch, you can begin with a goal, deadline, or source document. Planner Agent then provides a structured draft with milestones and tasks that can be quickly refined and saved to Planner.

For example: “Help create a new Planner plan for an upcoming conference based on the ‘AI Initiatives Launch Summit 2026.’ Break it down into goals and buckets and include the appropriate task details.”

A screenshot of Microsoft 365 Copilot shows an AI-generated plan with goals, grouped tasks, and plan details.

Getting started

Getting started is simple:

Open Microsoft 365 Copilot for Work on the web or in Teams.
Navigate to All agents.
Search for Planner (Frontier).
Add it, then start with a natural prompt like, “Show me my recent high-priority tasks and what’s due this week.” You can also pin it for quicker access or call it directly in Copilot Chat with @ Planner (Frontier).

Availability

Planner Agent is available now in Microsoft 365 Copilot through Frontier for eligible Microsoft 365 tenants. Users need an active Microsoft 365 Copilot license, and access depends on admin enrollment and assignment for Frontier experiences.

Planner Agent is designed for a very practical outcome: less time hunting for work, less time copying action items between tools, and more time moving tasks and plans forward in the flow of work. By making it easier to capture new tasks and update existing ones in the same Copilot conversation where work is already happening, it helps prevent important follow-ups from getting lost in the friction of switching between tools. From answering questions across your private tasks, shared plans, and enterprise sources, to drafting new tasks, updating existing ones, and generating structured plans from scratch, Planner Agent brings work management into the flow of work itself.

Planner Agent is available now in Microsoft 365 Copilot through Frontier, and this is only the beginning. As these experiences continue to evolve, the goal remains the same: help users understand their work faster, take action more easily, and keep work moving with less friction.

Providing feedback

Your feedback is important! While using Planner Agent, use the thumbs up/down option in Copilot to share feedback. We also encourage you to share any feature requests by adding your ideas to the Planner Feedback Portal. Your comments help inform our product roadmap, and we look forward to hearing from you.

Learn more

Read the following support articles to learn more: What is Planner Agent in Copilot? What can you do with Planner Agent in Copilot?
Visit planner.cloud.microsoft to access Planner directly from your browser.
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.

Project desktop vs Planner + project Plan 3

ItecMuttenz — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 09:54:34 GMT

We are trying to plan our projects using ms Planner Premium (Plan 3). However, I get very confused because of the so many product names, subscription name, soon ending products, etc. my questions are:

Which desktop tool of microsoft for project planning is running currently. If it's "Microsoft Project Online Desktop Client MSO" can this be synced with the planner premium (Plan 3)?, if yes how?
I have an excel list of a Project plan with the columns below: can i manage my project in planner premium? if yes, are all this custom fields deployed in dataverse, so that I can access them from power bi?
i have a project plan in an excel file with this columns. now i want to create this project plan in project plan 3, how to do it?
Company
Cost Center Name
Company Number
Account Number
Cost Center Number
Accounting Project Number
Project Number
Sub- Project number
Project Leader
Concept
Vendor (provider)
Total Cost (in contract
currency)
Contract Currency
Project Initiated/Not Initiated
Committed/Not committed
Priority
January, 2026
February, 2026
March, 2026
April, 2026
May, 2026
June, 2026
July, 2026
August, 2026
September, 2026
October, 2026
November, 2026
December, 2026
Q1/27
Q2/27
Q3/27
Q4/27
2028
2029
2030
What is the best practice project planning approach when i have complex projects that I have to manage, with resources, costs, projects, sub projects, sub sub projects. How do this on desktop and online? And also colaborative?
when project managers have to input thier budgets, how can I create a mapping where they can input thier budgets and project related facts.

Thank you in advance for you inputs and help

F.A

Can't see timeline in Microsoft Planner Plan 1

samuelebrtls — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 07:20:10 GMT

Hi,

I would like to find a solution because I can't see the "timeline" menu when I create a premium plan, even if I have a Planner Plan 1:

It happens both with Web app and Local app

Best regards

Planner - Plan 1 - Welcome message

jakudo — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 06:22:54 GMT

Hi,

we're using Teams for managing our projects. We have Team "Projects" and there are many channels inside this Team. Each channel represent our project (we are HVAC company). With the basic Planner, I used to create channel "Mr. Newman" - inside that channel we have all files related to that project, we have discussions about that project and we also have Planner assigned to that project. Which works well.

Since we are growing, I wanted to test the Planner Plan 1 (I like the Goals, timelines etc), however, there is a huge problem that when I create the Planner now (the premium one), it sends an E-mail to everyone. I don't want that. All of the employees are getting emails that they have been added to the planner "Mr. Newman" etc. and they are asking what should they do with that?

How do I turn that off?

Thanks,

Jakub

Creating groups in Planner

AV3 — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 20:45:14 GMT

I lead a team of 20 who each partner with 5 other people on external teams (to us but still internal to the company). I have been using the planner to give each 1:5 ratio group a single place to track status on tasks. However, every time I want to make a new group to add to the planner, I have to request it via microsoft. Our IT can't get around that. It takes weeks for my group requests to be approved and really ties up onboarding. Is there a way around this? Or any other way that I could get the same result minus the hectic waiting for groups to be granted access?

Connecting Planner tasks to employee goals/OKRs - anyone figured this out?

MeggyB360 — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 05:49:01 GMT

My manager wants us to tie our daily Planner tasks back to our quarterly OKRs but theres no native way to do this. I spent a couple hours trying to set up a Power Automate flow that updates an Excel tracker whenever a Planner task gets completed but it feels hacky. Is there a cleaner way to connect what people are actually doing in Planner to higher level goals?

Timeline zoom

JGobel — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 19:06:06 GMT

Hello,

Is there a way to lower the zoom level in the Timeline view to less than 1 week? I have a couple projects with multiple dependent task per day but if I use the maximum zoom level in the Timeline view I don’t get a good overview of the different task in for example a 4 day period. I was expecting a Gantt chart like view, like what you have in Microsoft Project, in where you can zoom to a minute level granularity even.

[BUG] msdyn_project silently renamed from "Plan/Plans" to "Project/Projects" in new environments

Woody — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 17:56:15 GMT

We need clarification from Microsoft on whether this is a bug or an intentional breaking change.

Overnight and without any announcement, the msdyn_project table now ships with display name Project / Projects in newly provisioned environments. Dev and UAT environments provisioned a few months ago have Plan / Plans out of the box. All environments are running the exact same PSCore version: 1.0.163.730.

The entity is as expected, marked non-renameable — read-only in the maker portal — so there is no way to align environments manually.

Solution import from an existing environment (where msdyn_project = "Plan") into a newly provisioned Production environment fails with:

0x8004023B: Entity 44286cce-2389-4532-ac04-7a18a2818e9a is not a renamable entity. Hence Entity Display Name cannot be modified

The only workaround — and why it is not acceptable

It is technically possible to manually edit customizations.xml inside the solution ZIP before importing, removing the <DisplayName> node for msdyn_project. The import will then succeed, but Production will permanently show "Project" while Dev and UAT show "Plan" — a broken inconsistency across environments.

More importantly, this is not how ALM is supposed to work. Developers should never have to manually patch solution artifacts to work around a platform-level inconsistency introduced silently by Microsoft. This is incompatible with automated CI/CD pipelines and unsustainable for any team managing multiple environments.

The question for Microsoft

Is this a bug or a planned change?

If it is a bug: when will it be fixed, and is there a supported workaround in the meantime?
If it is a planned change: why was it not communicated, and what is the supported migration path for teams with existing environments and solutions?

[UPDATE]:

After 3 attempts of resetting and reprovisioning the Production environment, msdyn_project finally came up with Plan / Plans — same process, same PSCore version each time. The behavior is non-deterministic. The only workaround currently available is to keep resetting your environment until you get lucky, which is not an acceptable answer for any type of deployment.

Planner App is gone.

Sara_McDaniel — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 15:21:57 GMT

Opened Teams today to check on work and the planner app is gone. What is happening?
When I look at the available apps within the teams App list, it now says I need a copilots license to use.

Planner tab missing from Teams channel only shows as separate app

Straw — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 09:19:32 GMT

Our users can no longer open the Planner in the Teams channel; they can only access it via the app.
This has been the case for a short while now. Does anyone know of a fix for this, or is this how it’s supposed to work? It cannot be selected via apps.

Premium Planner compatible apps?

mdesmith — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 16:07:17 GMT

Has anyone found any 3rd party solutions to bridge the gap on some of the shortfalls of Planner Premium? I'm really looking for something that my field team can use to access Planner tasks on their mobile devices. Also, for management, I need a solution that allows them to track tasks assigned to their team members across multiple open plans/projects. Thanks for any suggestions!

Also, if Microsoft is working on any of these solutions, please put out some communications to help us explain to our bosses that something is being done.

Filtering on labels with AND logic please

Freke — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 10:22:14 GMT

Hi,
Currently planner is filtering on labels using OR logic, this is a big problem for us.
We want to label tasks with labels Software, Hardware, Product_A, Product_B etc.

So if I filter and selects labels Software and Product_A, I want to see only the Software tasks for Product_A.
But with the built in OR logic I also get the Hardware tasks which is annoying and complicates things.

I'm not looking for a workarounds like exporting it to lists, using power automate or grouping on labels.
Just a simple tickbox somewhere to use AND logic instead would be very much appreciated.

Changes to Project Web App site creation and unused sites effective April 1, 2026

Muralidhar_Koduvande — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 15:05:39 GMT

Microsoft Project Online will be retired on September 30, 2026. As part of this process, starting April 1, 2026, the creation of new Project Web App (PWA) sites will be blocked, and existing tenants without projects across their PWA sites will be blocked from accessing Project Online.

What is changing on April 1, 2026

Starting April 1, 2026, Microsoft will implement the following changes for Project Online:

Creation of new Project Online PWA sites will be blocked. Users will no longer be able to create new Project Online sites (new PWA site collections) in their tenants.
Existing tenants with no projects will be blocked. Any existing Project Online tenant that contains at least one project across any PWA site will be allowed. All others will be blocked. Non-PWA data will still be accessible.

How this affects your organization

If your organization creates Project Online sites on demand, you should ensure all required PWA sites are created before April 1, 2026.
If you have existing PWA sites that were set up but never used, those sites will no longer be accessible after this date. Non-PWA data will still be accessible.
Existing Project Online tenants that contain at least one or more projects across any PWA site will not be affected by this change.

What you need to do

Review your existing Project Online PWA sites and identify any unused sites.
If you intend to keep a PWA site active, ensure that at least one project is created before April 1, 2026.
Inform Project Online administrators and PMOs in your organization about this change.
These changes will be applied automatically on April 1, 2026. No admin action is required to enable enforcement.

For more information

Read our blog post, “Microsoft Project Online is retiring: What you need to know,” to learn more about the upcoming retirement.

Bringing AI assistance to basic plans in Microsoft Planner

ShreeShastha — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 17:30:57 GMT

Today, we are excited to announce that the Project Manager Agent in Microsoft Planner has been officially renamed to "Planner Agent," and its powerful AI-driven features will be generally available across both plan types. This means that basic and premium plan users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license will have access to intelligent Planner Agent capabilities that help streamline project management and task work. Previously, users could try these agentic features in premium plans only.

The rebranding to "Planner Agent" reflects its role as an integrated part of the Planner experience and ensures naming consistency. You will see the new name and icon reflected across the Planner app's user interfaces and all supporting documentation going forward.

Planner Agent for basic plan users: New AI features coming your way

Planner Agent's capabilities are expanding to basic plans for the first time. Starting this week, organizations and users of basic plans will begin to see Planner Agent enabled in their Planner experience. This update brings intelligent, AI-driven assistance to all Planner users, even those without a premium license. Our goal is to empower every team to work smarter with Planner.

If the player doesn’t load, open the video in a new window: Open video

For the initial release in basic plans, Planner Agent will introduce two major AI-driven features:

Status reports: The Planner Agent can automate the creation of status reports for your plans. This capability streamlines the process to generate, view, modify, and share status reports based on project progress. The agent produces a concise, accurate, and professional report summarized from your plan's progress, key milestones, and upcoming tasks. With this feature, you can ensure stakeholders stay informed effortlessly, saving time while maintaining transparency and alignment across your projects. Instead of spending hours manually gathering updates, the Planner Agent prepares a draft status report at the click of a button — highlighting what has been accomplished, what is on track, and any pending inputs.
Task execution: Basic plan users will now be able to have the Planner Agent work on tasks within their plans. You can assign a specific task to the Planner Agent just as you would assign it to a team member. The agent will then carry out the task and attach the results or output back to the task. Results are captured in a Loop page embedded within the task, allowing all plan members to collaborate on and review the output. This capability enables your team to offload routine or time-consuming tasks to the AI assistant, helping everyone focus on more strategic work.

Suggested alt text: A screenshot of Planner for the web shows a task card with output provided by Planner agent in a Loop component and feedback that reads, “Need your input to complete this task. Answer the question in this Loop file, then regenerate.”

These two features — status report generation and task execution — are the first Planner Agent skills for basic plans. They represent a significant step in bringing intelligent project management assistance to all Planner users, not just in premium plans. We will begin a phased rollout of these capabilities in basic plans starting this week, and we expect all eligible tenants to receive the update in the coming weeks.

Planner Agent for premium plan users: Continuity in capabilities

Planner Plan 1, Planner and Project Plan 3, and Planner and Project Plan 5 users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license who have already been using the preview of the Project Manager agent will continue to enjoy AI capabilities uninterrupted under the new Planner Agent branding.

What stays the same for premium plans? In a word: everything (except the name). There are no functional changes associated with this rename. The Planner Agent still offers the full feature set that was available during preview, including:

Task generation – Given a project goal or objective, the Planner Agent can automatically generate a structured plan with a set of suggested tasks, effectively jump-starting your project planning process. The agent takes your goals and breaks them down into actionable tasks. To help you get started, predefined and customizable templates on various topics are available, allowing you to quickly kickstart a plan and tailor it to meet your specific goals.
Task assignment – You retain full control over how work is distributed. Tasks can be assigned to team members or directly to the Planner Agent for autonomous completion. In premium plans, the agent is available in all existing premium plans shared with a Microsoft 365 Group, as well as in new plans created using agent-powered templates.
Automated task execution – The Planner Agent can be assigned to certain tasks to complete them autonomously. When you assign a task to the agent, it will work on it and produce detailed output captured in an embedded Loop page within each task. All plan members can collaborate directly in that Loop page, and the agent will incorporate feedback to refine its responses.
Copilot chat – This is the conversational AI experience in Microsoft Planner that lets you ask questions about your plan and tasks in it to help your work move forward. You can quickly understand status, priorities, and next steps across your plan—without digging through tasks or updates. Planner Agent Chat turns natural language into clear guidance and actions, helping you make consistent progress with less effort.

A screenshot of Planner in Teams shows a premium plan in Grid view with the Planner Agent Chat pane open to the right.

Premium users also benefit from features such as the Goals tab, where you can generate a list of tasks for each goal and use the built-in file picker to add resources as context, enabling the agent to deliver more accurate and contextually relevant responses. Additionally, the Board view lets you group tasks by the agent's progress status — from tasks not yet assigned to the agent, to those ready for review after the agent has completed execution.

What about other Planner Agent features for basic plans?

We know that basic plan users will be eager to get the full range of Planner's AI capabilities. At launch, basic plans will support the two agent features outlined above — status report generation and task execution. However, this is just the beginning for Planner Agent in basic plans.

Over the coming months, we plan to introduce more AI features to basic plan users, gradually expanding the capabilities available. Our team is actively working on broadening Planner Agent's skillset in basic plans, and you can expect to see updates that bring additional AI-powered capabilities. We will share details on these upcoming enhancements as they become ready, so stay tuned for future announcements.

The introduction of Planner Agent to all plan types in Planner marks an important milestone in our journey to bring AI-powered productivity to everyone. Whether you prefer to use basic plans or premium plans, you will now have an intelligent assistant in Planner that can help reduce the manual effort of organizing plans, tracking status, and executing tasks. This change reflects our commitment to empowering every Planner user — from small teams to large enterprises — with tools that help you achieve more with less effort.

To explore these capabilities, customers are required to have a Microsoft 365 Copilot license.

We invite you to try out the Planner Agent today. Premium users can continue leveraging all the agent's capabilities as before (now under the new name), and basic users will start seeing the new agent features become available in their plans as the rollout progresses. Give these AI features a spin in your next project — ask the Planner Agent to generate a status report for an ongoing plan or have it tackle a routine task for you.

Thank you for being part of our Planner community, and we look forward to seeing how you use the new Planner Agent to work smarter and achieve more with your plans. Try out Planner Agent today and let us know what you think! Select More (circled question mark icon) in the top right corner of the app, then select Feedback from the dropdown menu.

We also encourage you to share any feature requests by adding your ideas to the Planner Feedback Portal. Your feedback helps inform our feature updates, and we look forward to hearing from you.

Learn more

Learn more about Planner agent in our Frequently asked questions.
Read additional support articles on how to access Planner agent, create a plan from scratch, use templates to get started, execute tasks, add resources as context, and generate status reports.
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.
Sign up to receive future communication about Planner.

Retrieving Planner Premium fields in PowerBI and Power Automate

Vwalter555 — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 08:01:59 GMT

Hi,

Has anyone successfully extracted data out of Planner premium in Power BI ? (custom added fields, not the default ones).

Also - on Power Automate I cannot view Plans which were created on Planner Premium, the system does not recognize them.

What can be done?

Metrics

jballer — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 19:04:16 GMT

I am trying to develop a way of tracking project and team metrics using the task data in Planner. Does anyone have recommendations for this? Here are a few of the issues:

On the task screen, Planner seems to constantly mangle the Effort values making the data continuously suspect. As an example, I have a task that is 16 hours, 50% complete and it says 12.36 complete and 3.64 remaining. There are other issues like this, like having two people on a task, ...
The "Charts" option does not provide a lot of functionality or any customization. Also, the data is often messed up, partially related to items like the one above.
We are using level 5 and some of the plugins that look like they might work for us do not work with this level.

Top Level Task Marked as Complete

jballer — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 18:42:06 GMT

Recently, one of the users of a large Planner project marked the top level task complete and then it appears they marked it not complete. This appears to have reverted the entire status of every task in the 1000 item project to incomplete with a 0% status. I see this is the history log, their name is on every task's history now. Is there any way to revert this or lock out non-base level tasks from having a "complete" selector?

Introducing a refreshed design, task chat, and more in Microsoft Planner

AnavSilverman — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 18:51:32 GMT

We’re excited to announce that a modernized user interface and new features are now rolling out to basic plans in both Planner in Teams and Planner for the web. The updated design offers enhanced navigation, responsive layouts, a new goals view for setting objectives and priorities, and task chat—one of your most requested features—to enable real-time collaboration and @ mentioning team members.

This release aims to make planning easier for everyday users while preparing for future AI-powered capabilities. Our goal is to streamline planning by making it more intelligent and connected, so teams can concentrate on achieving results rather than managing tasks.

What's new in Planner

A refreshed design: With this rollout, users will be able to manage their plans in a cleaner, more modern interface that brings a more consistent planning experience across work. Planner’s new look was designed to feel simpler, allowing users to find what they need. It reduces visual clutter, improves layout and spacing, and creates a more focused workspace.

A screenshot of a plan in Planner in Teams shows the new UI for Board view with tasks arranged by bucket.

Task chat with @ mentions: A new task chat is coming to basic plans, bringing real-time, threaded conversations directly into tasks, including @ mentions, rich formatting, emojis, and notifications to help keep decisions tied to the specific task at hand. Plan members who are @ mentioned in a task will receive a notification in their Teams Activity feed and via email and can select the notification which takes them directly to the task card for additional context. Note that previously, users received notifications for every task comment, but as a result of customer feedback, we now only send notifications to mentioned users.

A GIF of a task card in Planner in Teams shows a conversation taking place directly in the task. Assignees use reactions and @mentions to tag their colleagues for feedback.

The ability to @ mention team members directly in a task has been a top request, and we’re excited to roll this out in a familiar, chat-based experience. Please note, premium plans will continue to utilize the existing task conversation experience. This will converge into the new experience at a later point in time.

Goals view: Basic plans will now include a dedicated Goals view, allowing teams to set clear, well-defined objectives to help prioritize work. By connecting tasks to shared goals, teams achieve greater alignment, gain clarity on priorities, and track progress and outcomes—driving the plan forward together. Access to Goals view in basic plans requires either a Planner premium license or a Microsoft 365 Copilot license.

A GIF demonstrates how to add a new goal to a plan in Planner for the web, as well as how to connect existing tasks to the goal, update the status of the connected tasks, and add an end date for completing the goal.

Notes on availability

Please note that not all users will see the new Planner interface at the same time. This refreshed interface, along with Task chat and Goals view, begins rolling out to basic plans today and will continue to roll out over the coming weeks.

This is only the beginning

This redesign lays the groundwork for many more improvements coming to Planner in the next few weeks and months, including:

Project Manager agent in basic plans – to help with task execution and the creation of status reports.
Custom templates.
Planner in Outlook.

Stay tuned for announcements regarding these updates and more aligned to our long-term vision for integrated work management. Feature availability, naming, and timelines are subject to change. Please refer to the Microsoft 365 Roadmap for the latest status.

Addressing your feedback

We heard your feedback about inconsistencies between basic and premium plans. This refresh starts closing those gaps, so features appear consistently across plans based on your license. For example, users with a Planner premium license will now see Goals in basic plans, and users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license will soon have access to Project Manager Agent in basic plans as well.

Tell us what you think about the new Planner interface, Task chat, and Goals view by selecting More (circled question mark icon) in the top right corner of the app, then selecting Feedback from the dropdown menu. We also encourage you to share any feature requests by adding your ideas to the Planner Feedback Portal. Your feedback helps inform our feature updates, and we look forward to hearing from you.

Learn more

Visit planner.cloud.microsoft to access Planner directly from your browser.
Sign up to receive future communication about Planner.
Learn more about Planner in our Frequently asked questions.
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.

2026.02.20 - Planner UI update is worse

juliuse — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 03:38:50 GMT

The UI changes to Planner within the latest Teams desktop app update (version 26032.208.4399.5) has regressed in its functionality and is worse than before. Previously, all of the contents of an item in the Planner were visible at the same time. Now I have to tab between Task Details, Attachments and Checklist, and am unable to view these at once, which has become a critical workflow for me. It is extremely irritating, as I've developed a workflow around how Planner was presented (which was that everything within a task was visible at once), and now it has been compartmentalised.

Please unwind this - it is a regressive update and provides less information and requires more interaction to work through the detail of a task.