Microsoft Planner to Add Support for New Personal Plans Next Month

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Key takeaways:

  • Microsoft is adding support for “Personal plans” in Microsoft Planner next month.
  • Personal plans are designed for exclusive use by the creator, ensuring privacy and control, and can be later shared with Microsoft 365 groups if necessary.
  • Some limitations include a lack of support for attachments, links to SharePoint/OneNote, and task comments in Personal plans.

Microsoft is gearing up to introduce support for Personal plans in Microsoft Planner. These new Personal plans will provide users with a more tailored approach to managing tasks, granting creators exclusive ownership and access to their plans.

Microsoft Planner is a popular task management service that allows enterprise teams to create, assign, and organize work in order to execute projects. As of today, Microsoft Planner supports two types of plans: Group-based plans and Lightweight plans.

Group-based plans are associated with Microsoft 365 groups and Microsoft Teams. These plans allow users to collaborate within a group or team. Lightweight plans are individual plans that are not connected with any specific group or team. They are shared via a list of members stored in Microsoft Planner (rosters).

Currently, all plans must be contained by a Microsoft 365 group or a roster. With this release, Microsoft will introduce a new type of container in the Planner service called “user containers” The user who creates the Personal plan will be the only member/owner, and these plans will be associated with Planner user containers.

Basic Functionalities of Personal Plans in Microsoft Planner

Microsoft Planner users will be able to create Personal plans via Graph APIs. Once created, these plans will be visible alongside all other plans in Planner. However, the Personal plans won’t support some features such as uploaded attachments, links to SharePoint site/OneNote, and comments on tasks.

Furthermore, Microsoft Planner will let users link a Personal plan at any time to a Microsoft 365 group container. However, it won’t be possible to move the plan back to a user container.

“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,” Microsoft explained in a message on the Microsoft 365 Admin Center.

Personal plans will begin rolling out in Microsoft Planner in mid-October. The feature is expected to be generally available for all customers in late October. However, keep in mind that the timeline is subject to change.