A little known, highly useful application included with Office 365 (now Microsoft 365) is Planner. It is great for organizing a team to collaborate on tasks for new projects. You can create tasks with applied checklists, assign them to team members, sync them to a calendar for scheduling, and more. It’s very intuitive and ties conveniently in to the greater Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Here is a quick run-down of the basic use of planner, directly from Microsoft:

Open Planner

  1. Select the App launcher, All apps, then Planner.
  2. To pin Planner to the top level of the app launcher, select the three dots, then Pin to launcher.

Planner and Microsoft 365 groups

Planner works with Microsoft 365 groups. When you select New plan to create a plan in Planner, a new group is created with the same name, unless you select Add to an existing group.

Select or favorite a plan

  • Select a plan in your Planner hub in Recent plans or All plans.
  • To make a plan a favorite, select the three dots … next to the plan name, and then Add to favorites.

Add a plan in Teams

Add a Planner tab in Teams to make it convenient to collaborate with your team on your plan, have conversations, and share files all in one place.

Add buckets

  • Select Add new bucket and type a name.

Add a task

  1. Select + and give the task a name.
  2. Select Set due date and select a date.
  3. Select Assign and select a team member.
  4. Select Add Task.

Set notifications

  1. Select the Settings gear icon and then Notifications.
  2. Select or clear the checkboxes to select your notification preferences, and select Save.

Filter tasks

  1. Select Filter.
  2. Enter a key word or select a Due date, Label, Bucket, or Assignment.To clear a filter, select Clear.

Use Group by to sort your tasks

  • Select Group by and select an option: Bucket, Assigned to, Progress, Due date, or Labels.

Change due date, status, or details

  • Select Group by, Due date and drag the task to another bucket to change the due date.
  • To complete a task, select the checkmark on the task card.
  • Select a task to add more details: assign, progress, due date, description, checklist, attachments, comments.

View status, calendar, and all task assigned to you

  • Select Charts to visually see the status of tasks, progress of tasks in each bucket, and availability of team members.
  • Select Schedule to see where your tasks are on a calendar.To add the schedule to Outlook, select the three dots … next to Schedule and then select Add plan to Outlook calendar.

  • To see all tasks assigned to you across all plans, select My tasks in the left pane.

    Or, in Microsoft To-Do, turn on Assigned to Me.

 

That’s it! As always, we are available to help with all of your organizations Office 365 needs. Want to start using SharePoint? Thinking about switching to Office 365? Just want more information? Give us a call, we would love to talk.

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