What's new in Microsoft Planner - January 2025
Are you ready to take your planning game to the next level? This month, we’re excited to share some impactful features designed to help you organize, track, and manage your tasks more efficiently. Your input helps shape our updates, and we appreciate your feedback in driving this latest set of features. Thank you for being a part of our journey! Start plans more quickly Additional out-of-box premium templates Get started quickly with new out-of-box templates. We’ve added new premium templates—Goals & Objectives, Project Retrospective, Event Planning, Training Plan, and Sprint Retrospective—that can help you set goals, organize sprints, plan events, and more! A cropped screenshot of the Templates window where users can select from one of more than a dozen templates to create a new plan. Project Manager agent reaches public preview The Project Manager agent, announced at Ignite, is now available in public preview to Planner users with eligible licenses in North America and Asia-Pacific regions. We will be rolling it out to our European customers in the upcoming weeks. The Project Manager agent is an AI-powered virtual project manager designed to enhance your planning experience by streamlining workflows and handling tasks on your behalf. The Project Manager agent integrates AI directly into your plans, empowering you to focus on strategy, while enabling smarter team collaboration. Collaborate on tasks where you work Updated Planner experience in standard Microsoft Teams channels You can now seamlessly create and add both basic and premium plans directly to your standard Teams channels. This includes the ability to start a plan in a standard channel from any of our out-of-the-box templates. This unified experience means everything you need is now in one place, making it simpler to collaborate on shared projects right within your conversations. Get started by searching for Planner in the Open Apps icon of a standard Teams channel. A video demonstrating how to pin a tab for Planner and create a shared space for using the app in a Teams channel. Focus on the most meaningful tasks Add tasks from My Tasks and plans to your calendar You can now sync your Planner tasks with your calendar, making it easier to view your deadlines, meetings, and appointments together. To try it out, select Add plan to Outlook calendar in the drop-down menu in My Tasks or basic plans. A cropped screenshot of the My Plans drop-down highlighting where users can select the option to “Add plan to Outlook calendar.” Reorder columns in Grid view Personalize your Planner experience with the ability to reorder columns in My Day and My Tasks. Whether you prefer to see tasks by priority, due date, or any other criteria, reordering columns gives you the flexibility to set up Planner just the way you like it. Removal of default completed tasks filter Planner now gives you more control of your tasks – the default filter to hide completed tasks is no longer being applied in My Tasks and basic plans. Instead, you can choose which tasks to show by using the filter settings. We understand that changes can be challenging, especially when they affect your preferred way of working. When we released the new Planner, a default filter to hide completed tasks was introduced as a temporary measure to help manage clutter in existing plans. However, this made it difficult for many users to find their completed tasks. With the recent update that saves your filter settings, you now have more control over your task visibility - you no longer need to change the filter to match your preference each time you visit a plan. The default filter has now been removed. To hide completed tasks in My Tasks or a basic plan: Open the Filters menu. Apply the Not started and In progress filters under Progress. Manage more complex projects Convert your basic plans to premium You can now convert your basic plan to premium by selecting Timeline or any of the premium views in the plan header. With in-place plan conversion, you can now easily modify your plan to meet the needs of your team. This includes capabilities such as: Task dependencies: View and manage the relationship between interconnected tasks. Task history: Review all progress and changes made to tasks. Custom fields: Keep track of important information specific to your plans and workflows. Subtasks: Break down complex deliverables into smaller, more actionable tasks Check out the full list of advanced capabilities with premium plans in Planner. If you don’t have a premium license, you can still try the feature by acquiring a free 30-day trial. A cropped screenshot of a basic plan highlighting the Timeline drop-down where users can select one of three premium views to upgrade their basic plan: People, Goals, or Assignments. The Portfolios feature is generally available in Planner Portfolios can help simplify complex plan oversight by giving you a consolidated view of all your premium plans and tasks, ensuring nothing slips through the cracks. Now, users with a Planner and Project Plan 3 or Planner and Project Plan 5 license can create, view, and edit portfolios; users with a Planner Plan 1 or Microsoft 365 commercial license can view portfolios shared with them in read-only mode. For more information, check out our blog on how to manage multiple plans effortlessly with the new Portfolios feature in Planner. New enhancements to Baselines Baselines capture your original project plan so you can compare it against actual progress, helping you monitor deviations and make informed decisions. Our most recent updates feature two new capabilities: Plan-level variance tracking: Track start, effort, and duration variances at the plan level. Spotlight tab: Focus on critical insights like critical path variance, upcoming tasks, and overdue tasks. For more information, check out our blog on how to use baselines. This functionality is available to all users with a Planner and Project Plan 3 or Planner and Project Plan 5 license. Features coming soon We’re looking forward to shipping more features to facilitate your task management processes! The following list represents features shipping soon. For a full list, check out the Microsoft 365 roadmap. Board View in My Day and My Tasks: One of the most requested features from our customers is now rolling out in Planner! The Board view offers a more visual and organized way to manage your tasks, helping you stay on top of your priorities and improve your productivity. Custom backgrounds: Get ready to customize your plans like never before! With smart backgrounds, you’ll be able to quickly spot the right plans. This feature was part of our legacy Planner experience, and we’re now enabling it for basic plans in the new Planner. Customize columns across Planner: Users will soon have the ability to reorder and toggle the visibility of columns in all Grid views in Planner. This feature follows the recent introduction of reordering columns in My Day and My Tasks. Share your feedback Your feedback helps inform our feature updates and we look forward to hearing from you as you try Planner’s new and existing capabilities! Provide feedback about Planner for the web by using the Feedback button in the top right corner of the app. We also encourage you to share your feature ideas by adding them to our Planner Feedback Portal. Resources Check out the Planner adoption page. Sign up to receive future communication about Planner. Check out the Microsoft 365 roadmap for feature descriptions and estimated release dates for Planner. Watch Planner demos for inspiration on how to get the most out of the new Planner app in Microsoft Teams. Watch the recording from September's What’s New and What’s Coming Next + AMA about the new Planner. Visit the Planner help page to learn more about the capabilities in the new Planner.What's new for Planner in Teams in August 2024
The Planner team is excited to share some fresh new updates in the Planner app for Microsoft Teams. We thank you for your valuable feedback that helps shape feature updates, and hope these capabilities significantly enhance your experience managing tasks and coordinating team initiatives.What's new for Planner in Microsoft Teams – July 2024
The Planner team is excited to share some fresh new updates in the Planner app for Microsoft Teams. We thank you for your valuable feedback that helps shape feature updates, and hope these capabilities significantly enhance your experience managing tasks and coordinating team initiatives.What's new in Microsoft Planner – June 2025
Discover the latest enhancements in Planner, designed to help you manage your work more efficiently. This month, we’re excited to highlight new features and updates that make planning, organizing, and tracking tasks simpler than ever. Get real-time task notifications for Project Manager agent via email In May, we introduced real-time task notifications for Project Manager agent in Planner in Teams, alerting you when a task is completed and ready for review or when your input is needed to move it forward. We’re now expanding these capabilities to send you notifications via email. This enhancement gives you more flexibility in how you stay informed, helping you maintain momentum on critical tasks—even when you’re away from Teams. Whether you prefer to manage your day from your inbox or your Activity feed, these notifications ensure you never miss a beat on the tasks assigned to Project Manager agent. Boost efficiency with Planner's bulk editing feature Planner’s new bulk editing feature is here to simplify task management. In the Grid view of any basic plan, you can now update multiple tasks simultaneously—assign tasks, adjust priorities, update progress, and modify start and due dates—all in one go. To get started, navigate to a basic plan and select the Grid view. Then, select a set of tasks you want to update by either selecting and dragging the tasks or by using Ctrl + the up arrow or down arrow. Use Project Manager agent to generate status reports - now in public preview The new Status Reports feature in Planner in Teams enables you to auto-synthesize your plan's progress, milestones, risks, and next steps, ensuring everyone on your team has shared visibility. All report features, including the ability to share the status report as a newsletter, are now available in public preview for all English users. Support for additional languages is being rolled out in the coming days. Learn more about how to generate status reports in minutes with Project Manager agent in Planner. Project Manager agent now supported in 40+ languages We’re excited to share that Project Manager agent is now multi-lingual! With this update, you can now use the Project Manager agent to generate and execute on tasks in any language that is also available for Microsoft 365 Copilot, excluding Arabic and Hebrew for now. Note that Arabic and Hebrew support, as well as the ability to generate status reports in these languages, will be available later this week. See the full list of supported languages for Microsoft 365 Copilot. ICYMI: A look back at what we shipped earlier this year Now that we’re halfway through the year, our team would love to recap some of our favorite Planner features that have shipped recently: Project Manager agent in public preview: The Project Manager agent is an AI-powered virtual project manager designed to enhance your planning experience by streamlining workflows and handling tasks on your behalf. The Project Manager agent integrates AI directly into your plans, empowering you to focus on strategy, while enabling smarter team collaboration. See our announcement blog post to learn more. Custom backgrounds: Personalize your workspace with images or themes, enhancing visual appeal and organization. To add a background, open the Plan details of any basic plan by either selecting the plan name or the dropdown menu next to it in the plan header. Board view in My Day and My Tasks: With Board view now available in My Day and My Tasks, you can manage and prioritize your tasks in a more visual way. Reorder columns across all plans: Previously, reordering columns was only available in premium plans. With this update, reordering columns is available across all Grid views. To try it out, simply select and drag the column headers to rearrange them, or use the CTRL + Shift + < and CTRL + Shift + > keyboard shortcuts. Generate status reports using Project Manager agent: The new Status Reports feature in Planner in Teams enables you to auto-synthesize your plan's progress, milestones, risks, and next steps, ensuring everyone on your team has shared visibility. Learn more about how to generate status reports in minutes with Project Manager agent in Planner. Retirement of Microsoft Project for the web: We also wanted to take this opportunity to remind everyone that starting August 1st, 2025, we will be transitioning all users to Microsoft Planner. As an effort to provide a unified work management experience, we are retiring Project for the web, as well as the Project and Roadmap apps in Microsoft Teams. No actions are necessary in preparation for this change as all licensing should carry over seamlessly. Learn more about this change in our announcement blog post. Do you have a Planner feature you’ve been enjoying recently? Let us know in the comments! Share your feedback Tell us what you think about the new Planner using the Feedback button in the top right corner of the app. 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 as you try Planner’s new and existing capabilities! Resources Check out the Planner adoption page. Sign up to receive future communication about Planner. Check out the Microsoft 365 roadmap for feature descriptions and estimated release dates for Planner. Watch Planner demos for inspiration on how to get the most out of Planner in Teams. Visit the Planner help page to learn more about the new Planner.What's new for Planner in Teams in September 2024
This September brings bug fixes, accessibility improvements, and labels in Grid view for the Planner app for Microsoft Teams. We’ve been listening to your feedback and hope these latest features that will make managing your tasks even easier. Also, check out our recent AMA to learn more about what's coming next for the new Planner!What's new in Microsoft Planner – December 2024
We’re excited to wrap up the year with some major updates, including the rollout of the new Planner for the web, portfolios, and Project Manager agent, to name a few. Customer feedback continues to inform improvements to our product, so be sure to check out the updates we have in the works at the end of this article! A look back at Planner’s Microsoft Ignite announcements We recently announced several new capabilities at the Microsoft Ignite conference to make it easier for you to coordinate your projects. Planner for the web: The new Planner for the web is now generally available, and it’s packed with features to help you manage all your work seamlessly across Microsoft To Do, Microsoft Planner, and Microsoft Project, while leveraging the AI capabilities of Microsoft 365 Copilot for Planner (preview). To try out the new Planner for the web, you can go to planner.cloud.microsoft today. Portfolios: With portfolios, users with a Planner and Project Plan 3 or Planner and Project Plan 5 license can easily group related plans, track progress from a high-level view, and organize tasks visually with the Roadmap view. This means you can keep an eye on all your plans in one place and ensure nothing falls through the cracks. Read more at: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/plannerblog/manage-multiple-plans-effortlessly-with-the-new-portfolios-feature-in-microsoft-/4342145?previewMessage=true Project Manager agent: With Project Manager agent, we’re bringing the power of AI directly into your plans. As your virtual project manager, Project Manager agent serves to streamline your workflow by handling tasks so you can focus on the big picture. Learn more about Project Manager Agent in our Ignite blog: Unleashing the power of agents in Microsoft Planner | Microsoft Community Hub App-powered tasks in public preview The app-powered tasks feature offers your organization more control over what users see when they open their tasks in the Planner app in Microsoft Teams. Instead of showing only the standard set of task fields, you can provide users with an experience tailored to the task at hand. That experience might be a workflow-specific set of fields or step-by-step guidance to walk the user through a workflow from beginning to end. To use this feature, your organization will integrate a Teams app with the task, which will enable app-powered task functionality. Learn more about the public preview of tailored task experiences with app-powered tasks or how to manage app-powered tasks in Planner for tailored task experiences. Project Operations and Project Online plans in the new Planner You can now view Dynamics 365 Project Operations and Project Online plans in the My Plans section of Planner. This update makes it easier than ever to keep track of all your work in one convenient place. Bugs fixed in the new Planner We wanted to take a moment to thank you for your customer feedback, and this month we wanted to highlight two notable bug fixes that you helped us identify. Now, labels associated with tasks get transferred over when you copy a plan. Furthermore, you should expect date formats to match your locale settings. Coming soon Based on your valuable feedback, we’re rolling out new features to make your planning experience even better. Here’s a sneak peek at what’s coming soon: Smart backgrounds: Get ready to customize your plans like never before! With smart backgrounds, you’ll be able to quickly spot the right plans. This feature was part of our legacy Planner experience, and we’re now enabling it for basic plans in the new Planner. Board view for My Tasks: Board view in My Tasks offers a visual representation of your tasks similar to a kanban board, making it easier to track progress and manage your workload. See all your tasks at a glance and move them between columns to update their progress. Board view will be available in addition to the existing grid view in My Tasks in early 2025. New Planner tab in Teams: Collaboration just got easier! With the new Planner tab, you can add any plan—basic or premium—directly to a Teams channel. This means you can work on shared projects seamlessly, right alongside your conversations. Removing the default filter: We understand that changes can be challenging, especially when they affect your preferred way of working. When we released the new Planner, we introduced a default filter to hide completed tasks as a temporary measure to help manage clutter in existing plans. However, this made it difficult for many users to find their completed tasks. With the recent update that saves your filter settings, you now have more control over your task visibility - you no longer need to change the filter to match your preference each time you visit a plan. We are now removing the default filter to give you full control over your plans. Additional column customization options: We’re currently rolling out the ability to reorder your Grid columns in the My Tasks and My Day views and are planning to launch the ability to hide columns after. Stay tuned for next month’s update on how you can use this feature to focus on the most important details of your plan. Share your feedback Tell us your thoughts on the new Planner for the web by using the Feedback button in the top right corner of the app. We also encourage you to share any features you would like to see in the app by adding it to our Planner Feedback Portal. Your feedback helps inform our feature updates, and we look forward to hearing from you as you try Planner’s new and existing capabilities! Resources Check out the Planner adoption page. Sign up to receive future communication about Planner. Check out the Microsoft 365 roadmap for feature descriptions and estimated release dates for Planner. Watch Planner demos for inspiration on how to get the most out of the new Planner app in Microsoft Teams. Watch the recording from September's What’s New and What’s Coming Next + AMA about the new Planner. Visit the Planner help page to learn more about the capabilities in the new Planner.What's new in Microsoft Planner - February 2025
This month, we’re excited to announce the rollout of several new AI capabilities integrating Project Manager agent with your task management processes, as well as feature updates that address some of your most requested features. Thank you for continuing to share your thoughts as we continue to improve and build on the Planner experience! New AI capabilities with Project Manager agent Project Manager agent now launching in Europe We’re excited to announce that Project Manager agent is now rolling out to European-based customers with eligible licenses in public preview, following our initial release to Planner users in North America and Asia-Pacific. The Project Manager agent is an AI-powered virtual assistant designed to enhance planning experiences by streamlining workflows and managing tasks on your behalf. Read more about Project Manager agent in our blog post, “Unleashing the power of agents in Microsoft Planner.” Generate tasks from a PDF We've heard a strong desire from customers to automate the creation and execution of tasks using attachments. Now, you can upload PDF files to generate and complete tasks with Project Manager agent. Explore more collaborative experiences with Project Manager agent With a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, you can generate and execute tasks in plans alongside Project Manager agent. We are now rolling out functionality to enable users with a Microsoft 365 license to view and comment on content generated by Project Manager agent, so that you can better collaborate on these plans with others in your organization. Automatically create dependencies when generating tasks Tasks generated with Project Manager agent will automatically include task dependencies to recommend the order in which the tasks should be executed. To visualize these task dependencies, select the Timeline view of your plan. With this update, Project Manager agent can generate better content when executing tasks, as these dependencies help it understand the relationship and context between tasks in your plan. Create plans generated by Project Manager agent in a Microsoft Teams channel With the new update to the Planner experience in standard Teams channels, you can now quickly kickstart a plan in a Teams tab with the assistance of Project Manager agent. The latest enhancements to Planner Differentiate your plans with custom backgrounds With custom backgrounds, you can customize the theme of your basic plans to more easily distinguish between your projects. To add a background, open the Plan details of any basic plan by either selecting the plan name or the dropdown menu next to it in the plan header. From there, a side pane will open with suggested backgrounds tailored to your plan. This feature is still rolling out, so if you don’t see it yet we encourage you to come back and try again next week. This was a popular feature request when we launched the new Planner, and we’re excited for you to check it out! Note that if you previously had a plan with a custom background, that background should reappear in your plan with no action necessary. A screenshot of Planner shows the Grid view of a plan. The Plan details pane is open to the right with different background options. Organize your tasks with Board view, now in My Day and My Tasks With Board view now available in My Day and My Tasks, you can manage and prioritize your tasks in a more visual way. Read more about Board view in My Tasks and My Day and how you can use it to better organize your top priority tasks and help manage your workload. Join plans in public groups Plans created in public groups will now include a Join button, so you can easily add yourself to the plan. Recover recently deleted tasks You can now undo the deletion of a task by either selecting CTRL + Z or selecting Undo in the toast that appears at the bottom left of your screen. Share your feedback Your feedback helps inform our feature updates and we look forward to hearing from you as you try Planner’s new capabilities! Provide feedback about Planner by using the Feedback button in the top right corner of the app. We also encourage you to share your feature ideas by adding them to our Planner Feedback Portal. Resources Check out the Planner adoption page. Sign up to receive future communication about Planner. Check out the Microsoft 365 roadmap for feature descriptions and estimated release dates. Watch Planner demos for inspiration on how to get the most out of Planner. Watch the recording from September's What’s New and What’s Coming Next + AMA about the new Planner. Visit the Planner help page to learn more about the capabilities in Planner.What's new in Microsoft Planner - March 2025
We're excited to introduce a range of updates designed to enhance your planning and task management experience. In this release, you'll find improvements such as the ability to reorder columns in basic plans, a comprehensive view of all due date categories in Board view, persistent filters in premium plans, and a fix for the default view in basic plans. These changes aim to provide you with greater flexibility, better organization, and a more seamless user experience. Let's dive into the details of these exciting new features! Reorder columns in basic plans You can now reorder columns in basic plans! This capability allows you to prioritize and organize your tasks in a way that best suits your workflow. Previously, reordering columns was only available in premium plans. With this update, reordering columns is available across all Grid views. To try it out, simply select and drag the column headers to rearrange them, or use the CTRL+Shift+< and CTRL+Shift+> keyboard shortcuts. Show all due date categories When you group by Due Date, the Board view will now show all due date categories, such as Today, Tomorrow, This week, Next week, and Future, regardless of whether there are tasks assigned. Previously, only categories with assigned tasks were displayed. This change provides a comprehensive overview of all potential due dates and helps you and your team in planning ahead by visualizing all time frames. Save filters across sessions in premium plans When using a premium plan, you can now persist filters across sessions. This means that any filters applied will remain active even after logging out and back into the application. This feature ensures consistency and saves time by maintaining your preferred view settings without needing reconfiguration each time you log in. Bug fix: Opening basic plan defaults to Board view We have fixed an issue to ensure that when you open a basic plan, it continues to default to Board view. Thank you for your feedback in helping us identify and catch this issue! Share your feedback Tell us your thoughts on the new Planner by using the Feedback button in the top right corner of the app. We also encourage you to share any features you would like to see in the app by adding it to our Planner Feedback Portal. Your feedback helps inform our feature updates, and we look forward to hearing from you as you try Planner’s new and existing capabilities! Resources Check out the Planner adoption page. Sign up to receive future communication about Planner. Check out the Microsoft 365 roadmap for feature descriptions and estimated release dates for Planner. Watch Planner demos for inspiration on how to get the most out of the new Planner app in Microsoft Teams. Visit the Planner help page to learn more about the capabilities in the new Planner.
