Microsoft Planner is a visual task management software for teams. It gives users an online Kanban board-style work organization and team collaboration application accessible from the Microsoft Home site, from other Microsoft productivity apps, and from mobile devices. Teams can manage simple projects, organize workflow, and centralize all related information from files, emails, calendars, and conversations.
Table of Contents
- Microsoft Planner : Features and Strengths
- Microsoft Planner Pricing
- Who Uses Microsoft Planner?
- Microsoft Planner Supported Languages
- Case Studies
- Why Choose Microsoft Planner?
- Company Info
- Explore Additional Project Management Resources
- Featured Partners: Project Management Software
Microsoft Planner : Features and Strengths
Easy-to-Use, Centralized Task Management
Microsoft Planner is an online task management software using Kanban boards. It is intuitive and interactive. As part of the Microsoft 365 suite, users can log in in several ways, such as from the 365 Home page, from Teams or To Do, and from a mobile device. Microsoft users can create a new board in minutes because of the familiar experience consistent in these products.
Tasks now follow users from whatever MS apps they are using. Planner lets users create buckets (or lists) and quickly add tasks (or cards) in each bucket. The tasks can contain rich content including task description, due dates, checklists, color-coded labels, and file attachments. Users can favorite frequently accessed plans or pin them on the top of their screen.
Visual and Mobile
Microsoft Planner lets users keep track of their team’s progress from any device. It automatically creates pie charts and bar charts to help visualize task status. From the Charts menu, users can see how work is progressing. It will show overall status in a chart by showing how many tasks are not started, in progress, late, and completed. It has filters to show a specific status.
The Bucket chart can show how many tasks are in each bucket with related color-coding to show progress. Planner can also show visual reports by priority and number of tasks assigned per team member to check for overload. Native mobile apps for iOS and Android devices are available.
Integrated and Secure
Planner works with Microsoft Teams and To Do so users can view tasks from any of these apps. Users can also create tasks from messages in Teams. Collaboration within Planner or Tasks in Teams makes it easy for project teams to get more work done.
As part of the Microsoft 365 environment, Planner is a secure application that teams can safely connect with other apps like To Do, SharePoint, Power platforms, and other apps.
Microsoft Planner Pricing
Microsoft Planner is available with an annual subscription of Microsoft 365 Enterprise plans and of Microsoft 365 for Frontline workers.
Under the enterprise work management features of Microsoft 365, Planner is available with the Microsoft 365 E3 plan starting at $36 /user /month, and with the Microsoft 365 E5 plan starting at $57 /user /month.
Microsoft 365 for Frontline workers offers plan F1 at $2.25 /user /month paid annually and plan F3 at $8 /user /month. Additionally, Office 365 F3 at $4 /user /month also includes Microsoft Planner.
Who Uses Microsoft Planner?
Microsoft Planner is ideal for groups and teams working on simpler projects with a few deliverables and dependencies. Users like management consultants, marketing and advertising professionals, engineers, finance professionals, and project managers who need a board-based task management system can benefit in using Planner. Customers include House of Lilac, Suffolk Construction, Dell Technologies, Maersk, Cahoots, and Giant Eagle.
Microsoft Planner Supported Languages
Microsoft Planner (within Microsoft 365 Online) supports the following languages:
Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Assamese, Azerbaijani – Latin script, Bangla (India), Basque, Belarusian, Bosnian – Latin script, Bulgarian, Catalan, Cherokee, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (UK), English (US), Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, French (Canada), Galician, Georgian, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish Gaelic, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Kazakh, Khmer, Konkani, Korean, Lao, Latvian, Lithuanian, Luxembourgish, Macedonian (North Macedonia), Malay, Malayalam, Maltese, Māori, Marathi, Nepali, Norwegian (Bokmal), Norwegian (Nynorsk), Odia, Persian (Farsi), Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese Brazilian, Punjabi (India), Quechua (Peru), Romanian, Russian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian – Cyrillic script, Serbian – Cyrillic script (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Serbian – Latin script, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Spanish (Mexico), Swedish, Tamil (India), Tatar, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uyghur, Uzbek – Latin script, Valencian, Vietnamese, and Welsh.
Case Studies
Michael Juer is the IT project manager working with the new management of a district council in northern New Zealand. The council was making good progress in becoming a modern and collaborative council when the Covid-19 lockdown hit. Improving project capability was a priority, and the use of Microsoft Teams and Planner enabled the project team to create project hubs and shift to task-based project management. Michael stated that with the help of Microsoft Planner, he has a much better handle of managing projects. He can find things faster, communicate more readily, track tasks, and know which tasks they are ahead on and which ones they are behind on.
Jess Karlsson is the CEO of an Australian community organization that hosts programs and camps for children and young people living with disabilities and facing exceptional challenges. When the pandemic forced many organizations to shut its doors, the community org realized even more people needed their support. Jess and her team took advantage of the interoperability of the different MS 365 products. Together with Teams, Microsoft Planner helped them work through their weekly sprints. The transparent digital dashboard allowed them to see what everyone was working on in real time. With a connected team, the org was able to implement innovative solutions throughout the pandemic.
Why Choose Microsoft Planner?
Microsoft Planner is an visual task planner and manager ideal for Microsoft 365 users. It is an intuitive task management software that enables groups to quickly create plans, assign tasks, and collaborate in real time. It can help remote teams organize fast without the need for training, communicate about work, generate charts and reports automatically, and access all these information from any MS 365 apps like Teams and To Do from the office or on the go.
Company Info
Microsoft Corporation is a publicly traded American company with headquarters in Redmond, WA. It was founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Microsoft Planner is a product included in Microsoft 365, an enhanced offering of productivity software and services beyond the core Microsoft Office family. Now, Microsoft 365 users are able to manage tasks and work that follow them across the different apps they use, including Planner.
Learn more about project management by exploring the following project management software reviews & project management software comparisons including Monday.com vs Jira, Monday.com software review, Aha! Software or Agile vs Waterfall.
Featured Partners: Project Management Software
1 Wrike
Wrike is the most powerful work management platform on the market, enabling teams to plan projects and collaborate in real time. Our award-winning software is trusted by 20,000+ companies across the globe, including Sony, Estée Lauder, and Siemens.
Wrike’s customizable features include Gantt charts, request forms, dashboards, cross-tagging, time tracking, and proofing. Integrate with 400+ apps from the likes of Microsoft, Google, and Salesforce. Automate repetitive tasks and achieve 50% faster planning. Work from anywhere with 100% access to your files via our mobile and desktop apps.
Whether you’re a small startup or an established brand, Wrike has the solution for you. Paid plans start at $9.80/user/month. Join our community of 2.3 million — start your free two-week trial today.
2 monday.com
monday.com Work OS is an award-winning no-code work management platform that helps teams manage projects and workflows more efficiently.
Used by 152,000+ customers worldwide, this fully customizable software lets you plan, manage, and track every project in one place. monday.com offers time-saving and easy-to-use features such as automations, time tracking, document sharing, and real-time collaboration. Multiple board views such as Gantt and Kanban help you structure and navigate tasks and projects the way you prefer, and dashboards give a high-level overview of your progress.
In addition, integrations with apps such as Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Gmail, and Excel, allow you to easily continue working with your favorite tools from within the platform. monday.com also offers dedicated solutions, such as monday dev and monday sales CRM, designed to answer the needs of specific industries.
3 Smartsheet
Smartsheet is a leading work execution platform that has real-time work management features, collaboration and automation tools. Users are presented with a familiar and easy-to-use spreadsheet-like interface. However, it has enterprise-grade capabilities that even Fortune 500 companies like Cisco, Bayer, HP, and PayPal are confident to adopt in their business. Strong project management features enable teams to utilize different views of real-time data, and switch easily from Gantt, card, grid and calendar views. Smartsheet has automatic update requests, and can be used for waterfall and agile projects, product launch, sprint planning, and more. The resource management feature provides users the visibility who is busy, and who is not, in real-time. They can also attach files, share sheets, get notified, view the activity log, export, email, and print.
