After Ignite: Planner Goes Premium?

In this article, I'll unpack some of the announcements for Microsoft Planner from Ignite 2023, including the new 'premium' experience, the new app and private boards.

Microsoft announcing a ‘premium’ version of Microsoft Planner was not something I was expecting to see announced at Ignite this year.

After watching the announcement, reading blogs, and watching various demo video – I’m not sure if this is the update many of us were hoping for...

Let’s dive into what the new Planner experience will bring.

Project on the Web = Planner Premium

If you have licensed users for Project on the web, then you are the target audience of the 'Planner Premium' announcement as the brand and application is being folded into Microsoft Planner in late 2024.

This means that the majority of features coming to 'Planner Premium' come directly from Project on the Web.

Features such as custom fields, goals, timeline, sprints, people view, Power Platform support, task activity and more will all be available in the new Planner app. Of course, it wouldn’t be Ignite 2023 without Copilot integration, which will also be included for premium subscribers.

The New Planner App

Last September, you may have noticed that the “Tasks for Planner and To Do” app in Microsoft Teams was updated to a new Planner logo. While I was hoping for a more substantial update to the app, the logo change was seemingly all we got. The rest of the updates to the Planner app are scheduled for mid-to-late 2024.

So, what will change when the new app arrives? Surprisingly little, unless you are subscribed to Project on the Web or plan to subscribe to Planner Premium next year. For example, despite the name change - your tasks from Microsoft To Do will still be available in the new Planner app (good news!).

Microsoft To Do tasks can be found under “My Tasks”, where you can filter for ‘Private Tasks’, ‘Assigned to me’ and ‘Flagged Emails’.

I’m not sure if we’ll see support for custom lists in the future, but stay tuned.  For now, you can check out the new experience in this demo video from Microsoft:

In my opinion, the most significant update to the Planner app (that isn’t a ‘premium’ feature) is the ability to create private boards.

Private Planner Boards

Today in Planner, creating a new plan triggers the creation of a new Microsoft 365 group which includes a SharePoint Team site, Group inbox and the rest of the fixings. This setup can contribute to unnecessary SharePoint site sprawl, when all your users wanted was a single Planner board to work on a project.

The new Planner app will allow you to create boards that will NOT be associated with a group until you choose to share it. Check out the demo video below to see how this works:

It’s not yet clear to me where these private Planner boards will be stored. I can only speculate that they’ll use the same “Roster Containers" that Microsoft Loop uses to create Planner boards that are synced with the ‘Task List’ component.

On the subject, there IS a difference between the ‘Roster Container’ Planner boards generated by Microsoft Loop, and the private boards you’ll get in the new Planner app next year – board sharing.

With Loop-connected Planner boards, you can share the board and assign tasks to any individual across your organization. This means that you are in control of exactly who can access your Planner board tasks.

However, in the new Planner app, sharing a board requires you to add it to a Microsoft 365 group:

The takeaway here is that if you want to control exactly WHO has access to your Planner boards, you might be better off leveraging the “Task List” Loop component.

Learn More about the New Planner

As a closing thought, the 'New Planner' is basically still the old Planner with a new coat of paint and a new trick or two.  Unless you're in the market to subscribe to their new premium features next year, this update may not offer much for your users.

The new Planner app for Microsoft Teams is targeted for release in spring 2024, with most of the premium features targeted for later in the year. In the meantime, there are a ton of resources you can check out today to keep learning:

• The new Microsoft Planner: A unified experience bringing together to-dos, tasks, plans and projects
• Meet the New Microsoft Planner - YouTube
• Try advanced, premium capabilities in Microsoft Planner - YouTube
• Microsoft 365 Roadmap | Microsoft 365