If your company uses Microsoft 365, you already have a simple project tool: Microsoft Planner. It gives your team a shared board of tasks, with owners, due dates and progress charts, without buying another app. This guide shows you how to set up your first plan.
What is Microsoft Planner?
Planner is a board-style task tool for teams, similar to Trello. Each plan is a project, buckets are the columns, and tasks are the cards. You can open it at planner.cloud.microsoft, in the Microsoft 365 app launcher, or as a tab inside Microsoft Teams.
| Planner word | Means | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Plan | A project or team area | “Q4 Marketing” |
| Bucket | A column to group tasks | “This Week”, “Design”, “Phase 1” |
| Task | One piece of work | “Book venue for launch” |
Create your first plan
- Open Planner and click New plan.
- Give it a clear name. Choose a basic plan to start.
- Choose who can see it. A plan is usually linked to a Microsoft 365 group or a Teams team, so members get access automatically.
- Click Add new bucket and create 3–4 buckets, for example To Do, In Progress, Waiting.
- Click Add task under a bucket, type the task name, set a due date and assign a person.
Tip: buckets don’t have to be stages. Many teams use them for weeks, departments or project phases, because Planner already tracks progress separately (Not started, In progress, Completed).
Inside a task
Click a task to open its details:
- Assigned to: one or more people. One clear owner works best.
- Progress: Not started, In progress or Completed.
- Priority: Urgent, Important, Medium or Low.
- Start and due dates: late tasks are shown in red.
- Notes: instructions and context.
- Checklist: small steps inside the task. You can show the checklist on the card.
- Attachments: files and links from SharePoint or OneDrive.
- Labels: colored tags. Rename them (e.g. “Finance”, “Client”, “Blocked”) so they mean something.
- Comments: discussion stays with the task.
Use the different views
| View | Best for |
|---|---|
| Board | Daily work: drag tasks between buckets |
| Grid | A list view, easy to sort and scan |
| Charts | Progress at a glance: late tasks and who has too much work |
| Schedule | A calendar of due dates |
On the Board view you can also Group by Assigned to, Progress or Due date. “Group by Assigned to” is great for team meetings: each person sees their own column.
Add Planner to Microsoft Teams
- Open the Teams channel for your project.
- Click + (Add a tab) at the top.
- Choose Planner and pick an existing plan or create a new one.
Now the whole team sees the board inside the channel. More ideas in our Microsoft Teams tips.
Planner and Microsoft To Do
Tasks assigned to you in Planner also appear in Microsoft To Do under Assigned to me. That means you can plan your day in one list while the team works on the shared board. See our Microsoft To Do guide.
Good habits for teams
- Every task gets an owner and a due date. Tasks without them get forgotten.
- Write tasks as actions: “Send final quote to client” beats “Quote”.
- Review the Charts view weekly to spot late tasks early.
- Turn meeting actions into tasks right after the meeting. See how to take better meeting notes.
- Don’t over-label. 4–6 labels are enough for most teams.
Planner vs Trello
Both use boards. Planner is the natural choice if your team lives in Microsoft 365 and Teams, because access, files and notifications are already connected. Trello is often simpler for personal use or mixed teams. Read our Trello for beginners guide to compare.
Quick summary
- Plans are projects, buckets are columns, tasks are the work.
- Give every task one owner, a due date and a priority.
- Use Board for daily work, Charts for progress, Schedule for deadlines.
- Add the plan as a tab in Teams so everyone uses it.