Guide to using Microsoft Planner

Background 

What is planner? 

Planner is free task management tool for teams. It allows us to manage the work associated with a project by breaking it down into small pieces of work, assigning people, setting due dates. It is a powerful, flexible tool that is usually included in an organisations Microsoft suite, making it secure and uses your Microsoft account so no need to remember another password. 

Accessing Planner 

Planner can be accessed in your browser by going to https://tasks.office.com/, or by clicking on the nine dots in the top left corner of any Microsoft application (e.g., Word) and clicking on the Planner button. 

The Planner Android app is available in the Google Play store and the iPhone app in the Apple app store. 

Creating a board 

Boards are associated with Groups in Teams. If a project has a Teams site, then it can have a Planner board. All those who are members of the Teams will be members of the Planner. 

Naming the board 

The board should be named in such a way that it will make sense when viewed away from the project it is associated with. For example, ‘Project plan’ would be a poor name but ‘Data migration project’ would be better. This is because boards and the names of boards can be viewed out of context of the Teams that they are part of. 

Adding the board to Teams 

Planner boards can be added as a Tab in a Channel on Teams to make it easier for everyone involved in the project to see what work is happening.  

All work for the project should be on the Planner board. If some work is managed off the board, then the board cannot represent the full picture of the current state of the project. 

Adding to a board 

Buckets 

Buckets group cards together that are associated. A card can only be in one bucket at a time, which means buckets can be used to depict workflows, e.g., where a card moves from one to the next, or as sub-projects within the project of the planner board. Buckets shouldn’t be used for Status, e.g., To do, Doing, Done as the Progress view shows this.  

Buckets can be created at the start of a project and during a project as the need arises. If project reporting is standardised based on the buckets, then this should be taken into account to avoid disrupting reporting. 

Cards 

A card should represent a distinct and separate piece of value. For example, ‘CRM Training’ might be a good name for a card because although the training requires lots of tasks to be completed it is an independently valuable thing to deliver. The card could make use of a checklist to record progress for tasks such as ‘Write training material’ but that alone wouldn’t deliver any value, which is why it isn’t a card of its own. 

1. Title – Every card must have a title. Title should be descriptive enough to understand what work the card represents but not too specific as to not be an independent item of value. 

2. Assigned – All cards should be assigned to a member of the Planner group. Cards can be assigned to multiple members. Cards that are not assigned to anyone will show in reporting as Unassigned. 

3. Progress – All cards have to have a progress status; either Not started, In progress or Complete.  

4. Priority – All cards have to have a priority; either Low, Medium (which is the default priority), Important or Urgent. It can be helpful for teams to agree what they mean when using priorities, especially Important and Urgent. 

5. Start date – Cards can have a start date, but it is not mandatory. It can be misleading to have cards with a start date in the past, but no active work done on the card recently as it can make the reporting charts look fuller than they are, so it’s important for teams to agree their practices around using dates on cards. 

6. Due date – Cards can have a due date. The due date is displayed on the card when viewing the planner board and is coloured red when the due date have passed, so it can be useful for teams to use Due date as a way to manage workload and priorities. 

7. Labels – Labels can be added to Cards to connect types of activities across the different buckets or sub-projects. An example of this might be to add the label ‘Training’ to cards that are about training even though they are in different sub-project Buckets. The Group By Label view shows all cards with each label. As a card can have multiple Labels, this view will show a card in multiple Label columns. 

8. Notes – Each cards have a notes section. This is editable and can be used flexibly for things like providing the most recent update or summary of the work. 

9. Checklist – Checklists can be used to breakdown tasks for the work that the card represents. Checklist items can’t be assigned to members of the planner. Items in a checklist can be promoted to cards by clicking on the up arrow that shows when you hover over the checklist item. The card is created in the same bucket as the card with the checklist but has no associated attributes such as due date, status, or assignee.   

10. Attachments – Attachments and links can be added to cards. Although it can be useful for finding files quickly it shouldn’t be thought of as a replacement to organising files in Teams and SharePoint. 

11. Comments – Comments can be used to record progress and information about a piece of work. They are not editable and tagging of members is not available in comments. 

Using a Planner board 

Assigned to me 

In the left menu if a planner board is a button called ‘Assigned to me’. Clicking on this shows only the cards that are assigned to you, from all the projects that you are involved in. 

Search / Filter 

There is no search. But you can filter by keywords to get what are effectively search results. Filtering is a better approach than searching as it also enables you to filter by when a card is due, who it’s assigned to, and which bucket it is in, etc. 

As planners get more and more cards, all with different status and assigned to different members, etc., it’s usually better to always apply a filter to see only the cards that matter to you. 

Group by 

The ‘Group by’ menu allows you to sort the board in different ways. 

1. Bucket – This is the default grouping. 

2. Assigned to – Groups cards by who the cards are assigned to, including a list of cards that are unassigned. This view can be used to see who is working on what, and check for cards that aren’t assigned to anyone. 

3. Progress – Groups cards by not started, in progress and completed. This view means that buckets can be used to group cards by things like sub-projects rather than a status such as to-do, doing, done. 

4. Due date – Groups cards by date into lists such as Late, Today, Tomorrow, and Next week. 

5. Labels – Labels differ from buckets as a card can have multiple labels but only one bucket. This means that when cards are grouped by labels the same card can appear on multiple lists. 

6. Priority – Groups all the cards with Low priority into one list, all those with medium priority into another list, all important cards into another list and urgent cards into another. 

Using ‘Group by’ allows different views of the cards and 

Using ‘Filter’ and ‘Group by’ together allows a specific view of things like what important priority cards each person working on, or what cards have a particular label and have passed their due date. 

Notifications 

Planner notifications can be set by clicking on the settings icon in the top right (it looks like a cog) to open the Settings menu, and then click on Notifications. This will open a popup window that allows you to select whether you receive an email when a task 

Reporting 

Charts 

1. Status 

The Status chart shows a breakdown of all the cards in a plan by their status. In an ideal scenario, we could expect that a project that is fifty percent  

2. Priority 

The priority chart shows the number of cards by their assigned priority and status. 

3. Bucket 

The bucket chart shows the number of tasks in each Bucket along with their status. This could be used to quickly check if the status of cards moving through a workflow looks approximately correct at any given point in time. 

4. Members 

The members chart shows the number of cards assigned to each member and the number of cards not assigned to anyone. 

Schedule 

The schedule chart shows a Week and Month view of which cards have either a Start date, a Due date or a Start and Due date. This chart can be particularly useful when looked at from the ‘Assigned to me’ view as it shows the tasks scheduled for the week that are assigned to you only. 

Export 

A Planner can be exported to an Excel spreadsheet for further analysis and reporting. To export a board, click on the three dots next to Schedule and then click ‘Export plan to Excel’. 

Display in Outlook 

A planner can be connected to Outlook to display tasks with dates in your Outlook calendar. 

1. Copy link to board 

2. Go to Outlook calendar 

3. Click Add calendar 

4. Click Subscribe from web 

5. Paster the board link 

6. Name the calendar 

7. Click import 

Outlook will now display cards from that calendar as all day events. 

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