Planner topics

Planner Template (.plat) Files

CoralieSimonaire — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 05:30:07 GMT

I've been testing the new Planner capability that allows you to publish a Basic Plan as a template.

After publishing a plan as a template, I can see that Planner creates a .plat file in the SharePoint site associated with the Team (under the General channel document library). I also found the Microsoft documentation explaining that Planner templates are stored as .plat files in SharePoint.

While experimenting with this feature, I started looking at governance and reuse scenarios and found several areas that don't seem to be clearly documented.

I'm curious to know if anyone has explored these scenarios in more depth:

How can a Planner template stored as a .plat file actually be reused outside of the standard Planner experience?
Can a .plat file be moved to another Team / Microsoft 365 Group while remaining usable as a Planner template?
Is it possible to build an organization-wide library or catalog of Planner templates using .plat files?
Microsoft documentation mentions that .plat files can be edited outside of Planner, but I haven't found any documentation describing the format, supported tools, or editing procedure. Has anyone successfully modified a .plat file manually?

I'm interested in both documented guidance and real-world experience from anyone who has tested these scenarios.

Planner tasks from premium projects not updating dates

chawl1 — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 15:30:28 GMT

Hi all,

I've been experiencing problems with tasks in premium projects for almost a week now. I'm updating the due dates in the premium project that are assigned to me but the dates don't update in My Tasks. This is the case in both the desktop app and the web app. Any advice?

View from premium project:

View from My Tasks:

Custom Template Creation from Premium Plan

finnleymaier4 — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 16:47:31 GMT

I have been excitedly waiting for the custom template feature to roll out. My PMO group heavily utilizes Premium Plans only because of the need to have Dependencies tracked. I'm unable to create a template from a premium plan- basic only- which does not have the features that my team needs to use in Planner. Is there an estimated rollout date for custom template creation from Premium Plans?

Tasks associated with goals don't appear in My Tasks

Jumbo64 — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 16:06:58 GMT

I created a few simple plans for myself and my team that do not have goals--just tasks and due dates. When I assign a task within one of these plans, the person who has been assigned receives an email notification and the task appears in the My Tasks folder.

I also created annual plans for each of the six programs my team operates. These plans have goals. I have assigned tasks to myself and other team members under each goal. We can see the tasks assigned to us if we open each plan, but those tasks don't appear in My Tasks and no notifications are sent. This means everyone has to click into each of those six plans separately to see what their tasks are for that day, week, etc. rather than having all of their tasks in one place. Of course, people don't always do this so it is up to me to keep reminding everyone.

Why don't these tasks appear in My Tasks, and is there anything I can do about this?

license to access Planner Premium from Power Apps

johnjohn-Peter — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 08:46:15 GMT

We want to create a Power Apps that connect to those main sources:-

1) SharePoint

2) Premium Planner

now i know that connects Power Apps to Premium Planner will make the Power Apps as premium app, and users will need premium power apps license to access it. and also accessing Premium Planner will need atleast Planner Plan1. so what is the minimum license for those 3 groups of users:-

1) normal users will be accessing SharePoint lists only through the Power Apps

2) Admin users will be accessing SharePoint lists and Premium Planner through the Power Apps + Premium Planner through the Premium Planner UI.

3) Senior user will be accessing SharePoint lists and Premium Planner through the Power Apps only.

does Planner Plan1 is enough for Senior user? and does Power Apps Premium is enough for admins?

Thanks

Understanding Planner plan options

jessicaobrien — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 09:58:14 GMT

Hello! First time posting because I'm not an M365 admin at my company so apparently cannot contact Microsoft directly. We are a small company with about 25 employees and have started using Planner to capture actions from meetings. The biggest concern with this is how to recover task cards that are accidentally deleted.

Looking at the Planner 3 plan, it looks like that covers task history. If we have the board owner on a Planner 3 plan, can regular users create, assign, add checklist items, and comment on task cards?

Though if I'm understanding correctly, task history does not provide a recovery option if a task is accidentally deleted. It seems that we need a third party tool to be able to recover deleted tasks. Is that an accurate understanding, or does Microsoft have a native way to recover tasks?

Thank you!

Improve Resource Capacity and Baseline Governance in Planner Premium

CRC1612 — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 14:24:14 GMT

Microsoft Planner Premium works well for assigning individual users to tasks within a single plan. However, significant limitations appear when organizations move from managing isolated plans to managing programs and portfolios.

For Planner Premium to become a truly enterprise-ready project and portfolio management solution, Microsoft should urgently address the following three areas.

1. Cross-plan resource capacity management

When a person is assigned to several tasks or multiple plans, Planner Premium can accumulate more work than the person’s actual daily, weekly, or monthly capacity.

Although effort can be adjusted manually in the Assignments view, this becomes extremely difficult when managing many tasks, resources, projects, and concurrent assignments.

Organizations need a consolidated capacity management capability across all plans, programs, and portfolios.

Planner Premium should allow organizations to:

Define each person’s available capacity.
Allocate people using percentages, such as 20%, 50%, or 75%.
Consolidate assignments across multiple plans.
Detect overallocations before they affect delivery.
Compare demand versus capacity by day, week, and month.
Consider vacations, absences, calendars, and reduced availability.
Generate warnings or optionally prevent assignments that exceed capacity.
Support resource-leveling and workload redistribution.

The People view is useful within an individual plan, but portfolio managers need visibility across the entire portfolio.

Without cross-plan capacity management, portfolio planning remains incomplete because organizations cannot reliably determine whether they have enough available resources to deliver their commitments.

2. Generic resources and role-based planning

Project plans are often created before the final team members are known.

At the planning stage, organizations may know that they need a SAP consultant, solution architect, developer, business analyst, or infrastructure specialist, but they may not yet know the specific person who will perform the work.

Planner Premium should support generic resources or role-based placeholders that can be assigned to tasks before a named person is confirmed.

These resources should include information such as:

Required role or profile.
Skills and experience level.
Required capacity.
Planned participation period.
Estimated cost or rate.
Business unit or location.
Staffing status.

Once the appropriate person is identified, the generic resource should be replaceable without losing the planned tasks, dates, effort distribution, cost information, or dependencies.

This is essential for resource forecasting, staffing requests, project approval, and early-stage portfolio planning.

3. Baseline security and separation of duties

The project baseline is the approved reference used to measure schedule and effort deviations.

For this reason, baseline creation, replacement, and deletion should not remain freely available to every user who can edit the plan.

In many organizations, the project manager maintains the schedule, while the PMO, portfolio administrator, sponsor, or governance committee controls baseline approval.

Allowing the same person to modify both the current schedule and the baseline against which performance is measured creates a clear conflict of interest.

Planner Premium should introduce optional baseline governance capabilities, including:

A dedicated Portfolio Administrator or PMO role.
Separate permissions to create, replace, or delete baselines.
A baseline change request and approval workflow.
Mandatory justification for baseline changes.
Complete audit history.
Protection or locking of approved baselines.
Comparison between the original baseline, current approved baseline, and current schedule.
Integration with formal project change-management processes.

This should be configurable. Smaller organizations may prefer a simple model, while organizations with mature governance processes need stronger controls and separation of duties.

Why this is urgent

Microsoft Planner Premium is increasingly being positioned as a solution for project and portfolio management. However, portfolio management requires more than consolidating project status, dates, and progress.

It also requires:

Visibility of resource demand and availability across multiple plans.
The ability to plan resources before individual people are confirmed.
Governance controls that protect approved project baselines.

These are not minor enhancements. They are foundational capabilities for enterprise project, program, and portfolio management.

Microsoft has a major opportunity to make Planner Premium considerably more valuable for PMOs and organizations managing multiple concurrent projects.

I strongly encourage the Microsoft Planner product team to prioritize:

Enterprise resource capacity management.
Percentage-based allocation.
Generic resources.
Cross-plan workload consolidation.
Portfolio-level resource forecasting.
Controlled baseline permissions and approvals.

These improvements would significantly reduce manual work, prevent resource overcommitment, strengthen governance, and make Planner Premium a much more credible enterprise PPM platform.

Increase the maximum number of Goals in Microsoft Planner Premium

Marshall94 — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 07:18:57 GMT

Hi Microsoft Planner community,

In the new Microsoft Planner Premium, it seems that a plan can currently have a maximum of 10 Goals.

For our team, this limit is too low. We use Goals to structure our work around multiple sprint objectives, epics, deliverables, and larger initiatives. Since our Planner board supports several workstreams at the same time, 10 Goals is not sufficient for proper planning and reporting.

Could Microsoft please explain why the limit is set to 10 Goals?
And is there any possibility to increase this limit, for example to 30 Goals per plan?

This would make the Goals feature much more useful for teams that manage multiple initiatives, projects, or quarterly deliverables within one Planner Premium plan.

Thanks in advance!

Is using Planner for tracking OKRs a good idea?

HarryP — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 04:39:19 GMT

So our team has been trying to use Planner to track OKRs. We set up buckets for each objective and tasks for key results. It kinda works for a small team but now that leadership wants to roll it out company wide, its getting messy. Theres no way to show progress rollups from team-level OKRs to company-level ones, no percentage tracking on key results, and managers cant see a consolidated view across teams.

Has anyone found a decent way to make Planner work for OKR tracking at scale?

Cannot see Task Chat for Planner app on iPhone

CCS2026 — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 07:53:04 GMT

Hi,

I am testing using the Planner app and have added a message in the Task Chat area via the web browser on a PC.

I cannot see the message on the Planner app on the iPhone. I cannot see Task Chat anywhere on the iPhone.

I can create a new message in the Comments section on the iPhone (in the Planner app), but cannot add comments using the web browser on a PC. The web browser wants me to use Task Chat, but cannot see that on the iPhone.

Am I missing something simple here?

Thanks

Matt

Notifications settings missing

mateuszit11111 — Tue, 26 May 2026 12:37:16 GMT

Hello,

M365 Business Standard, global admin

I've created a couple of plans in Planner for a couple of users, however we don't receive any notification when a new task is created or completed.

Let's say I create a task - I assign this task to another user - the users completes the task - I don't get any notification. How come? It's like basic functionality, so I assume there must be something wrong with the set up.

In the web I found a couple of screenshots of the setttings but they are not available in my view:

My view:

What am I missing ? Is it possible to check/change the setting via powershell ?

Planner Plan 3 Subscription Cancelation and refund.

Akhan84 — Tue, 26 May 2026 10:33:12 GMT

Hello.

I have Microsoft planner plan 3 subscription which expired and has been automatically renewed which is against my intention , I tried to communicate with Microsoft support through email , live chat , phone call but without any positive progress , on phone they have an AI agent which is wasting of time , in live chat they just pass you to another departments and share wrong email address .

I have been trying to fix this issue since the first day of subscription renewal but so far nothing .

The subscription is under a twin alias email which I don't have access to and there is no admin , the email is under onmicrosoft domain.

I need a urgent quick help for this issue so that I can get refund .

Updated 2026 Planner Issues

fincleanairworldit — Thu, 21 May 2026 12:53:23 GMT

The new Planner initially seemed really great and useful, but over the past month a series of problems have occurred that make it difficult to use. I have already reported everything to Microsoft, but so far no support agent has been able to help me.

The issues are as follows:

When I tag a colleague in the chat, they do not receive the email with the message content — this is a feature that is supposed to work by design and was working fine until last month.
Often when I try to type in the chat, it either doesn't type at all, or it types in a different task.
When I click in a chat, it automatically tags all the people previously mentioned, or if I want to tag just one person, it ends up tagging all the others as well.

Are you experiencing these issues too?

Improve readability of Task Chat in new Microsoft Planner (full-width option needed)

Jaio — Tue, 19 May 2026 07:35:23 GMT

Hello,

First of all, thank you for the new Planner experience and the introduction of Task Chat. I think it’s a very welcome improvement over the legacy comments system, because it allows to edit already posted comments.

However, there is a significant usability issue that is affecting our daily work:

👉 The Task Chat is displayed in a narrow side panel, which makes reading longer conversations difficult and inefficient.

In many real scenarios, task discussions are not just short comments. They often include detailed explanations, decisions, or back-and-forth exchanges between team members. The current layout forces users to read long messages in a very constrained width, which reduces readability and slows down collaboration.

Suggested improvement:

(preferred) Provide an option to expand Task Chat to full width -maybe another button like the one that already exists for 'Comments'- (or open it in a larger, dedicated view)
Alternatively, allow resizing of the chat panel
Even a “pop-out” experience (similar to Teams chat) would be helpful

This would significantly improve usability, especially for teams, like mine, that rely heavily on Planner for collaborative work and decision tracking.

Thanks for considering this feedback. I believe this change would greatly enhance the new Planner experience.

Is there any way to connect Planner tasks to OKRs or company goals?

ElisaDelaney — Tue, 12 May 2026 07:57:35 GMT

We use Planner for task management, and there's no native way to tie a Planner task to a higher-level goal. I looked into Power Automate but the Planner connector doesnt have a field for "parent objective" or anything like that. Are other orgs just using spreadsheets for this? Feels like there should be a better way.

PLANNER WILL NOT PUBLISH THE SCHEDULES FOR MY PLANS, BY CREATING AN iCALENDAR LINK....HELP

MICHAELJOEHARRIS — Thu, 07 May 2026 20:17:44 GMT

🤙

users with office 365 E5 license can access the planner premium

johnjohn-Peter — Tue, 05 May 2026 21:41:22 GMT

I have a question if users with office 365 E5 license can access the planner premium but not all of its features? or they can not have any access at all? i read this documentation

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/planner/understand-planner-trial-and-license-assignments

but i felt a bit confused? if Office 365 E5 users can access some features of the Planner Premium? or they can only access the standard planner, can anyone explain this in more details? the license requirements for planner premium?

Thanks

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