Upgrade from Planner to Microsoft Project for the web with new ‘Copy plan to Project’ feature

When your Planner plan needs an upgrade

We all love Planner; it is great for managing small projects such as operational “keep the lights on” projects where you need to track resources and basic day-to-day functions. However, sometimes what begins as a simple project becomes much more complex and requires additional project management capabilities. To assist with these situations, Microsoft has added the Copy plan to Project function in Planner that will allow you to copy a Planner plan to Project for the web, providing access to additional functionality. Note that the Copy Plan function in Planner is different from the Copy a Plan to Project function. When you use Copy Plan, you are continuing to work inside Planner. Our focus in this blog is the Copy a Plan to Project function in Planner.

Copy a Plan to Project in Planner

In our example, the 2024 IT Production Support and Enhancements plan is a relatively simple project; however, as planning has started for the upcoming conferences, there are many more tasks with dependencies than Planner can support. Simply choose the ‘Copy plan to Project’ option to import the plan into Project for the web.

Figure 1 – Copy a Plan to Project

Using other Project for the web functions

All the functions in Project for the web are now available to the Project Manager. Key functions that you can now take advantage of are:

• Duration and % Complete, for more details around progress on tasks
• Sprint functionality, bucket tasks into backlog and sprints
• Effort: Complete, Remaining and Total for a task
• Dependencies to other tasks, with Finish to Start, Finish to Finish, Start to Start and Start to Finish, as well as Delay type and Span (in days)
• Conversation: when a plan is copied from Planner to Project for the web, it is not part of a Teams Channel; if you want it to be in a Teams Channel, you could make that association
• Connect to Goals, providing the ability to connect tasks to organizational goals.

Figure 2 – Other Project for the web functions

Project for the web – additional benefits

Another compelling reason to use Project for the web, in addition to the enhanced features and capabilities, are the integration points:

• Access to the Power Platform with Power Apps, Power Automate, CoPilot Studio, Power Pages and Power BI
• A new Power BI template that provides a complete view of an organization’s portfolio of projects and resources: Power BI template for Microsoft Project for the web – Sensei Project Solutions
• Teams provides a richer experience with a channel for each project and enables the ability to collaborate with conversations, documents, and posts.

Conclusion

With the Copy Plan with Planner function, a Project Manager can track to a greater level of detail the steps needed to complete the project, as well as using other Project for the web benefits provided by the Power Platform and Teams.