Back in November 2023, as part of Microsoft"s Ignite conference, the company announced plans to launch a new Planner app for Teams. This week, that app is now available as a public preview version.
If your company"s Microsoft 365 subscription includes Planner, and if the admin has set up so that your Teams client can access public preview apps, you can get the Planner public preview now. Access to the app"s Premium plans can be done by signing up for a free trial or paying for a premium license. Project for the web users with a Project license can get immediate access to the new Planner premium features.
In a blog post, Microsoft goes over the new Planner app"s features. In basic terms, it merges the capabilities of the older To Do, Planner, and Project for the web apps into one product. That means you will see a much-simplified list of plans that would normally be spread out over three apps.
It also has the new My Tasks view, which is designed to view all of your tasks in one place. Filters and new search features should make it easy to go over those plans. My View can show tasks from basic and premium plans in one place. It can also show your tasks from other Microsoft apps like Loop, Teams, and emails.
The new Planner app adds more features with a premium plan. That includes access to Copilot, which allows users to ask questions about project tasks and more. The premium plan for Planner includes Goals, People, and Timeline views, and more.
More features to the new Planner app will be added in the coming weeks and months. They will include being able to upgrade from a basic to a premium plan within the app, a way to move tasks from My Day and My Tasks to a plan, and more. There"s no word on when the app will hit general availability.