Planner Released in Office 365

Planner is a lightweight task management tool that can help organize and track small projects, such as departmental initiatives. It provides collaboration features from Office 365 Groups such as shared calendars and document storage to help teams communicate the status of work more easily. Planner is a better solution for sharing task lists than distributing Excel spreadsheets, and it is less expensive than purchasing or subscribing to other project management services. However, Planner is not a replacement for sophisticated project management tools, and it has several reporting and administration limits.

Planner Overview and Benefits

Planner (full name: Microsoft Planner) allows team members to create plans, assign and track tasks, share content, and receive automatic status updates. The service relies on Office 365 Groups for user management and access to collaboration features, such as document storage, e-mail, messaging, and notebooks. (For details on functionality, see the illustration “How Planner Works“.)