Planner Updates Introduce Mobile Apps

Microsoft Planner is a lightweight task management tool that can help organize and track small projects such as departmental initiatives. It provides collaboration features such as shared calendars and document storage from Office 365 Groups to help teams communicate the status of work more easily. Updates include more robust task assignment features and new mobile applications and administrative options. Planner is better for sharing task lists than distributing Excel spreadsheets; however, it is not a replacement for sophisticated project management tools, and it has several reporting and administration limits.

Capabilities and Limitations

Planner allows team members to create plans, assign and track tasks, share content, and receive automatic status updates via e-mail. The service leverages other Office 365 tools through the Office 365 Groups service, which provides user management, a shared calendar and e-mail notifications, document storage, and notebooks for sharing notes and information. (For further details on functionality, see the illustration “How Planner Works“.)