How to Use Planner in Teams (Shared Task Boards for Your Team)

"Who was doing that?" is a question Planner answers before anyone has to ask it. It's a simple board of cards: each card is a task with an owner and a due date, and the whole team can see it inside Teams.

1. Open the channel and click + at the top.
2. Choose Planner (it may be listed as Tasks by Planner and To Do).
3. Pick Create a new plan and give it a name, or Use an existing plan.
4. Click Save.

The board appears as a tab. Everyone in the team can see and edit it.

1. Click + Add task under a bucket.
2. Type the task name.
3. Set a due date and click Assign to pick a person (you can assign more than one).
4. Click Add task.

Click any task to open it and add a description, a checklist of smaller steps, attachments, labels and comments. Set Priority to Urgent, Important, Medium or Low.

Buckets are the columns. Rename the first one and add more by clicking Add new bucket. Common set-ups:

• To do / In progress / Done
• Stages of a project: Planning / Design / Build / Launch
• One bucket per person

Drag tasks between buckets as work moves along.

• Board — the cards, grouped by bucket. Click Group by to see them by Assigned to, Due date or Priority instead.
• Grid — a spreadsheet-style list, quick for editing dates.
• Charts — how many tasks are late, in progress and done, per person.
• Schedule — tasks on a calendar.

Mark a task complete by ticking the circle on the card. Overdue tasks turn red.

Click Apps on the left, open Planner and pin it. My Tasks shows everything assigned to you across every plan and every team, plus your personal To Do list.

When you're assigned a task or one is due, Planner posts in your Activity feed. Tick Post to the channel about this tab when you create the board and new tasks can also be announced in the channel.

I can't see Planner in the + list. Your organisation may have turned it off. Ask IT, or use a Loop task list in the channel instead.

Someone outside the team can't see the board. Planner follows team membership. Add them to the team, or create a separate plan for the project.

Tasks disappeared. Check the Group by and filter settings. Someone may have filtered by their own name.

Add a Planner tab, create buckets for your stages, give every task an owner and a date, and tick them off as they're done. The Charts view is the five-second answer to "how are we doing?"