M365 Changelog: Personal Plans in Planner

MC677519 – Today in Planner, two types of plans are supported: group-based plans, which are shared through a Microsoft 365 group, and Lightweight plans, which are shared through a simple list of members stored in Planner (rosters). Planner now also supports a new type of plan called Personal plans. Personal plans are shared only with the creator, who is the sole member and owner of the plan. These plans can be shared with a Microsoft 365 group at any time but will not be accessible by anyone other than the creator until then.

To enable Personal plans, Microsoft is introducing a new type of container in the Planner service, which is called “user containers”. Personal plans are simply the plans attached to Planner user containers.

The basic functionality of Personal plans is: 

• Personal plans can be created through Graph APIs. There is no current way to create them in the Planner UI.
• Once created, Personal plans appear in Planner alongside all other plans in Planner and can be interacted with via the UI the same way.
• All plan features are available for personal plans with the exception of comments on tasks, uploaded attachments, and links to OneNote/SP Site. To get access to these features, you must be in a plan linked to a Microsoft 365 Group.
• A Personal plan can be linked at any time to a group container. At that point all members of the group can access the plan and all functionality of Microsoft 365 Group plans are available.
• Once a plan has been linked to a Microsoft 365 group container, it cannot be moved back to a user container. It is possible to remove members from the group, but the plan is now tied to the lifecycle of the group. 

Additional notes: 

• There are no changes to Planner licensing or storage for Personal plans compared to existing Microsoft 365 group plans.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 171611

When this will happen:

Standard Release: Microsoft will begin rolling this feature out in mid-October 2023 and will complete by late October 2023.

How this will affect your organization:

When this feature is released, plans can be created outside of Microsoft 365 Groups groups. Personal plans are not subject to existing Microsoft 365 group controls. 

What you need to do to prepare:

There is no action needed to prepare for the release of Personal plans.