Skip to main content
TrustRadius
Microsoft Planner

Microsoft Planner

Overview

What is Microsoft Planner?

Microsoft Planner is presented as a solution to organize teamwork with intuitive, collaborative, visual task management. With it, users can create Kanban boards using task cards with files, checklists, and labels. Users can collaborate in Planner and Microsoft Teams and…

Read more
Recent Reviews
Read all reviews

Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Return to navigation

Pricing

View all pricing
N/A
Unavailable

What is Microsoft Planner?

Microsoft Planner is presented as a solution to organize teamwork with intuitive, collaborative, visual task management. With it, users can create Kanban boards using task cards with files, checklists, and labels. Users can collaborate in Planner and Microsoft Teams and check visual status…

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Would you like us to let the vendor know that you want pricing?

6 people also want pricing

Alternatives Pricing

What is Trello?

Trello from Atlassian is a project management tool based on a Kanban framework. Trello is ideal for task-management in a to-do list format. It supports sharing boards and cards across users or teams. The product offers a free version, and paid versions add greater automation, collaboration, and…

What is Asana?

Asana is a web and mobile project management app. With tasks, projects, conversations, and dashboards, Asana lets an entire team know who's doing what by when, enabling workload balancing. Users can also add integrations for GANTT charts, time tracking and more.

Return to navigation

Product Demos

Demo of Microsoft Planner - Organise and Track Your Work

YouTube

How To Use Microsoft Planner For Meetings - Microsoft Teams Tutorial 2019

YouTube
Return to navigation

Product Details

What is Microsoft Planner?

Microsoft Planner Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo
Return to navigation

Comparisons

View all alternatives
Return to navigation

Reviews and Ratings

(91)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-16 of 16)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
Microsoft Planner is the project management software my small business has been looking for for quite awhile. Considered using Microsoft Project but it is too complex and not suited for the small projects we do and the type of projects we do. Microsoft Planner is the perfect project planning solution software for our needs because it is easy to learn, easy to use, and quick to setup.
  • Syncs with Microsoft 365 seamlessly
  • Simple but very useful interface
  • Has an app that syncs to mobile phones
  • Planner Tasks can be an app in Microsoft Teams
  • Be able to find where the Planner data is kept. Is it in SharePoint? If so, where?
Microsoft Planner is best suited for small businesses that need an easy to use project planning software solution that is quick to setup and not complicated to use. Microsoft Planner is useful for small businesses that don't need all the complexities and steps that Microsoft Project requires in order to use it.
francesca turra | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Microsoft Planner is used to organize activities in different projects, especially for the ones managed with Agile practice.
With Planner, the Scrum Master (but also the traditional Project Manager), has an immediate view about the different activities/objectives for every Sprint or deadlines and about the tasks assigned to every component of the group. So you can immediately understand if a team's member has more or less things to do respect the other members of the team. Moreover, you can immediately understand if there are activities with delay or with critical points that needed to rescheduled in the future.
In our company planner is integrated in MS Teams, so with only one platform we can manage projects both on the calendar point of view but also with interactions among team's members
  • It helps to give to every task a different priority level
  • It helps to check the job amount for every team's member
  • It gives an overall view about delays and done activities
  • When you mark a task as "done" it disappears from the checklist
  • There isn't a back up when you cancel tasks (maybe could be useful a confirm message before the cancellation)
  • The "note camp" can't be delete
I think Planner is a good platform for manage projects especially if I think that is integrated in MS Teams so, with a unique platform you can have the control about the project, about all the documents linked to the same project and at the same time, with the possibility to chat with other team members without change platform.
I think also there are other platform (like Jira or Trello) which are better in terms of layout
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Microsoft Planner is the best way to manage all my team tasks and deliver everything on time. Previously, I was using Asana for the same workflow. But Microsoft offered this tool within the package of our outlook mail. The tool made it easy to list all the day, week, and month tasks so we can keep a track of everything at the time [in] a single place. Moreover, we can add our team members, add deadlines, set priorities, and even assign tasks to members. We were able to track all the work of our clients, i.e. where we have reached the tasks and goals for a particular client. Multiple board options made it easier to differentiate various clients and their work. Thus, the software was very beneficial for [the] overall workflow of our marketing team.
  • Team tasks management
  • Deadline management
  • Easier workflow with different boards
  • Priority tasks to be highlighted
  • Should send a notification when a task is assigned to someone
  • There's no option to delete comments
  • Notification required when a task [has a] deadline
Appropriate: [Microsoft] Planner helped to remember the minor tasks that we used to forget. Helpful to manage the tasks of [the] team. Moreover, we can check the schedule of a particular board and thus know what tasks need to be done on [a] priority basis. Less appropriate: When we assign a task to someone, they do not get any email notification. Thus, have to convey [a] message through some other source.
Quratulain Habib, PMP | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
In my company, we do a lot of web projects and work with both clients and subcontractors. The planner was a Godsend mostly because it is operated via a mobile app and integrates with MS Teams so tasks show up in the app for each member. It gets the work done and keeps it out of a chat thread with minimal disruptions to your workday.
  • Add as many plans as you want
  • Keeps tasks organized via Buckets into each plan
  • Ability to create a plan directly within Teams via the Tasks app
  • Ability to assign an existing plan to a channel in Teams that was created in the mobile app
  • Reminders & alerts please!
You cannot use it for project management. It is suited for Kanban style task boards very much needed to keep everyone on the same page. Great for task management and operational activities It has zero ability to assign a time or integrate with a time tracking tool or calendar tasks. This means you cannot do a time & cost analysis on your ongoing projects or business operations.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Microsoft Planner was implemented so that we could use it in conjunction with our Office 365 subscription. It seemed to be the best route for our company to take since the majority of our office has years of experience using Microsoft software. We were looking for a software that would allow us to plan and schedule our current projects. Being a construction company that has anywhere from 30-50 jobs under contract at any given time, it is very important to us to be able to communicate efficiently from the office to the shop and field.
  • Scheduling
  • Integration of other microsoft programs
  • communication
  • The learning curve seems like it could be reduced
  • The layout isn't our favorite out of the other softwares we looked at
  • Digital clutter from not seeming to not being able to create folder trees
If you currently use Microsoft Office software and Office 365 then this is a must use. The integration of those items is very clean and smooth. The average age of our office is 50 and some of them had trouble swapping over. I am 32 and thought it was fairly simple. Communication and task management is where this software shines the most in my opinion
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The majority of our services use Microsoft Planner to manage their work efficiently. Its integration with Microsoft Suite and other products such as Microsoft teams/office365 makes it easier for you and your team to manage tasks.

We used it to view the project process and the assignments assigned to each team member. It also provides useful information about the progress of the project or if we don't meet our timelines.

It also helps you to create different team/groups for a common project and helps leads to manage multiple projects at one place with multiple groups
  • It helps you to create a proper project plan and multiple tasks
  • Integration with other Microsoft products
  • Easy task Management and progress tracking
  • Integration with other suites like Google/Gmail
  • User Interface
Microsoft Planner is a well-suited tool if you want it to be integrated with other Microsoft tools. It helps you to manage multiple projects with multiple different teams to manage their tasks and see the overall project status at a place. It also helps teams to share files in the respective group and everyone in the group will be notified of any newly added tasks.

However, If it is required to follow agile effectively with proper story points then would recommend going with more powerful tools like Jira to manage things in a more effective manner and (Jira cloud) have integration available now with team also which is a great add-on
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use the Microsoft Planner in our organization heavily to create, manage and orchestrate the simple to complex project plans / tasks. The ability to create, edit, view and share the plan, files and timelines with the internal and external team is helpful and versatile. The smooth integration of native Office 365 apps improves the usability of Microsoft Planner. It is amazing that each new plan created in Microsoft Planner automatically creates a new Office 365 group.
  • Project plan creation, managing, assigning the tasks within the team and tracking the status in real time
  • File sharing, orchestrating the communication
  • It enables us to communicate and collaborate with other users, and receive progress updates via various means.
  • Microsoft Planner has the basic and common set of features that most other project management software already have, MS should think of adding some exclusive features apart from the traditional feature sets
  • Microsoft Planner misses on native ability to manage and note the time expense of professionals working on the tasks
  • Existing Gantt chart layout can be improvised by adding navigation and clear from tasks dependent on each other
I would recommend Microsoft Planner to anyone who is using Office 365 apps and would like to leverage the best in class native connector to link the tasks, documents and conversation from the other Office 365 apps with their Planning platform. The ability of Planner to integrate and connect with Office 365 cloud is really commendable and highly useful. It has all the required features that one would need for creating, managing plans and tasks for simple - really complicated and large enterprise level projects!
Christie Carbone | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We currently use it for our content assignments. A piece of content is assigned to a user to create, from there it is then assigned to another user for editing and then to another user for publishing on the website, and then finally to push to our social channels. It is great to use in conjunction with our SharePoint as you can link documents to the tasks. We have our content grouped by product type so we know how much content for each of our products we are creating.
  • Categorizing channels and product types
  • Assigning participants allowing commenting
  • Attaching documents and files
  • Would be nice to see a calendar view instead of a list view
  • Permissions aren't configurable, anyone can delete any task at any time and there is no recycle bin
  • Notifications aren't great, you have to be attached as an owner to a task to see comments and be notified of changes, and even then notifications aren't shown for a lot of things
My rating is higher because as a tool that is included in our Office 365 / SharePoint account, it allows us to manage our content workflow from planning to publication without having to spend money on additional tools. With 80+ users needing to have access to this, purchasing an outside tool would be pretty costly, and this is a decent alternative. That being said, there are probably much better tools out there for content management/assignment.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Microsoft Planner is used to manage projects and initiatives for different teams inside the organization. It is also used to manage day-to-day activities of different teams working on a single project. Managers use it as a tool to manage roadmaps for different active and upcoming projects in their department.
  • Manage active items in progress with detailed information
  • Time planning and deadline management
  • Categorization of different projects
  • Tagging, labeling, and details for individual cards
  • Reporting and dashboards
  • User experience and interface
Microsoft Planner is well suited for task planning needs for managing different projects. It is well suited for tracking tasks, planning sprints, assigning tasks to other team members, viewing deadlines, and tracking timelines. It also helps with Microsoft Teams integration and sharing task details with other members via Teams.

It could be improved in terms of providing more details to individual tasks/cards, dashboarding, and export capabilities.
Fernanda Ministerio | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Microsoft Planner gives my team an intuitive, collaborative, and visual task management experience to get the job done. It's a simple tool to use but it adds a lot of productivity, allowing better performance. Like any organization[al] tool, it requires constant updating.
We are already using the kanban panel, but we are not yet integrated into MS Project. We plan to use this feature soon.
  • Easy and intuitive kanban panel.
  • Very beautiful visualization dashboard.
  • Great integration for iOS system.
  • Does not allow you to view all tasks and sub-tasks (checklist) in a nested view.
  • Comments have character limits that can make it harder for teams to communicate exactly what they want to share.
  • There is no way to mention a teammate in a comment and share files and documents in the conversation (collaborative tool???).
Since it is part of the Office 365 suite of products, you’ll end up paying for plenty of tools you’ll not be using. To function properly, we must use all the other tools in Office 365 plus Microsoft Project. It's interesting for medium and big teams and it's a good tech resource for Microsoft users. It is a suitable product for companies that have a good Microsoft product contract.
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
In our organization, MS Planner is used only (for the moment) by the software development team to follow shared dev tasks across technical domains or projects.
It suits us because these use cases required a very simple and accessible lightweight tool, dislike MS Project.
We also [chose] it because of its integration with MS Teams and Microsoft 365.
  • Simple and lightweight UI.
  • MS 365 integration, especially MS Teams.
  • Built-in MS 365 tool (no extra licencing).
  • Very user friendly Mobile access.
  • No timeline.
  • Impossible to link dependent tasks.
  • No notifications outside the portal (except mail).
Well suited for very light, quick and easy team tasks management. Not suitable for large project management, or enterprise context, in which MS Project-like software would be recommended.
John Bayerl | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
[Microsoft Planner is used for] task and workload management. Too often, I and others I work with utilize sticky notes, notepads, etc. to try and remember and keep track of immediate "To-Dos" and long term projects. Microsoft Planner not only makes it easy to quickly create tasks for an individual, it helps us assign tasks in larger projects, remember tasks on the go, keep track on the progress of tasks/projects, and so much more.
  • Task Management
  • Project Management
  • Team Collaboration
  • Task board layouts, especially for team collaboration
  • Creating tasks with complex details
For myself - Microsoft Planner has allowed me to keep track of everything I'm working on, the status of those projects/tasks, and see all the previous work I've done so much easier than I was doing before. Grouping my tasks in different buckets and using flags helps with me being able to prioritize my workload quickly and easily. Since I physically work at multiple different locations, having all my tasks/projects in a digital format also makes them easy to transport and access from anywhere that I may be.

For my teams - I regularly work in cross-functional teams and committees, and because of that I'll commonly integrate Microsoft Planner into Microsoft Teams
so that we can all access a Planner board together, assign tasks/projects accordingly, etc. It makes it that much easier to collaborate, especially when it comes to long term group projects.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Used across the whole organization to keep work tasks up to date and inform others of what one is looking for. Both between departments and intra-departmentally, Microsoft Planner was used to keep teams synchronized and up-to-date on tasks that needed completing. LIke access to see others to-do lists, can be a bit complicated/jumbled for those who are computer-challenged.
  • Tracks
  • Adjusts
  • Informs
  • Displays
  • Tasks
  • Need lots to login.
  • Clunky UI interface.
  • Expensive, used only by large orgs.
keeping a team on task for one cohesive project would be its best use. workers who work on different aspects of a project likely will have little use for this product. Though it is nice to be able to see what others are working on, this may add to the 'clunkiness' of the user interface.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our IT department has been using Microsoft Planner software to manage the activities of members. Some other departments of the company are also using it. In this space, we were able to create a list of tasks and organize them into tables and cards with deadline definitions, members responsible for a certain activity, attach files, images and view progress progress. The experience has been great so far to raise productivity, organize the assignment of activities that is passed on by the department head and keep track of everything.
  • Friendly, easy and intuitive interface.
  • Integration with Microsoft Office 365 and Teams.
  • Notifications and reminders of activities.
  • Graphics display.
  • File attachment.
  • Collaboration of activities in groups and visualization of the progress of these tasks.
  • Lack of tagging on the boards.
  • Research tool is not very effective.
I recommend this software for basic and intermediate use. For large projects it is not recommended because some resources are missing. But in my case it meets my needs. The Microsoft Planner tool has helped me a lot to stay organized, planned my activities that must be developed during the week, month, semester. Integration with e-mail allows reminder and pending notifications to be triggered. Collaboration with other members of the IT team is great for monitoring the progress of other activities in parallel and which are dependent on mine.
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our Marcomm department uses Planner to organize tasks and workflows. We also use the forms function to allow other departments to submit a request that we can then assign to the correct user for execution. This allows the team to prioritize requests instead of taking orders.
  • Organize tasks by person
  • Assigning dates to sub-tasks
  • Making tasks dependent on one another
  • Calendar
I think this is a good built-in option for someone using Office 365 and doesn't want to spend additional money on a project management tool.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use planner for blueprints of company policy and procedures, such as onboarding & offboarding templates, as well as the typical project management. It's used mainly by our HR and Marketing departments and works very well in conjunction with the entire Microsoft Suite. It's ease of use makes it a highly recommendable product.
  • Integration with other Microsoft apps
  • Team collaboration
  • Simplicity
  • Flexibility
  • Customisable backgrounds (very limited)
  • Displaying of information on cards
Our best use of Planner is the creation of an onboarding template that allows HR to assign multiple tasks to individuals across different departments and follow up to see that they're all done on time. Microsoft Planner falls short in its ability to allow users to customize their setups and edit backgrounds (beyond a few provided by the platform).
Return to navigation