A Microsoft Planner Tutorial: Everything You Need to Know
Organize your team the easy way
Microsoft calls its Planner application “a simple, visual way to organize teamwork.” Among other features, this project management app helps you make a project plan, create and assign tasks in different categories, and view plan data and statistics.
Anyone who has a subscription to Office 365, whether it’s a personal subscription or an enterprise subscription via your employer, has access to the Microsoft Planner.
Microsoft Planner Tutorial
Microsoft Planner has multiple front doors. Begin by signing into your Office 365 account. You can do that at any of Office 365’s many points of entry including:
If you’re already signed into another area of Microsoft Office, you can find the link to the Microsoft Planner app by selecting the app launcher icon in the upper-left corner and choosing Planner. If Planner is not in the list, selectAll appsand findPlannerin the list.
Alternatively, you can sign into Microsoft Planner directly attasks.office.com.
Once you’ve signed in, your first stop will be the Planner hub. From there you can start a new plan, view recent plans, view all your plans, or view tasks assigned to you.
Note the link to get the Planner mobile app at the bottom of the left menu. Select the link and clickSendin the modal dialogue box.
The Microsoft Planner mobile app is available for both Android and iPhone.
How to Build a Plan in the Microsoft Planner App
Before you can assign tasks to yourself or other people, you must create a plan.
In the left pane, selectNew plan. Fill out all the information requested in theNew planwindow.
Next you will see the main dashboard orBoardfor the plan you just created.
The dashboard view is card-based,much like Trello. Before adding tasks, add members of your team to the plan.
From the plan dashboard, select theMembersdropdown. Enter a person’s name to add them as a member.
Your plan comes with one default taskbucketcalledTo do.
To add more details to the task, select the card on the dashboard. From there, you can add a label, change which bucket the task is in, and indicate the task’s progress, priority, start date, and due date.
You can also add notes, checklists, and attachments. Any team member can add comments to the task.
Staying on Track
Microsoft Planner offers a variety of ways to get a bird’s-eye view of your plan.
TheChartstab displays summaries of the status of all tasks in the plan, how many tasks are in each bucket, a chart showing how many tasks there are in each priority level (urgent, important, medium, and low), a list of the plan’s members, and how many tasks each person has been assigned.
TheScheduletab displays all the tasks on a calendar so you can get an idea of which task deadlines are approaching.
Select the three dots to the right of theScheduletab, and you will find many other features of Microsoft Planner.
You can also add the plan to your favorites, make a copy of your plan within Microsoft Planner, export your plan to Excel, copy the link to your plan, and add your plan to your Outlook calendar.
Group owners can selectPlan settingsto configure the group’s email settings and indicate whether the group should receive an email when a task is assigned or completed. This is also where the owner candeletethe plan.
When a task has been completed, the person assigned to the task can mark it as complete on its card on theBoard.
After the task has been marked as complete, you can find it again by expanding theShow completeddropdown.
Plan members can choose when to receive notifications from Planner by selecting the gear/settings icon, selectingNotifications, and specifying their notification preferences.
Other Task Management and Collaboration Tools
Sometimes the sheer complexity of Microsoft is unattractive to users. If you’ve decided that the Microsoft Office 365 software suite is not for you, there are many other excellenttask managementand collaboration tools available.
Whichever tools you choose, having an organized project plan will help you achieve your goals.
Maggie Marystone is a freelance technology writer, human rights worker, and storyteller based in Chicago.Read Maggie’s Full Bio
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