Microsoft is all-in on Work Management as Microsoft Project becomes part of Planner

Microsoft Planner is getting a major upgrade to its existing Collaborative Work Management (CWM) capabilities and adds support for Enterprise Work Management (EWM) through the addition of Microsoft Project for the web as Premium features, all while enabling customers and partners to build on top of the platform to support more advanced Project & Portfolio Management (PPM) scenarios.

Microsoft announced at the Ignite Conference on November 15, 2023, that their work management tool, Planner, will be getting some changes and new features soon. Microsoft released a blog post on this announcement that can be found here. We at Sensei would like to summarize these changes and talk about how it impacts organizations seeking Modern Work and Project & Portfolio Management solutions in the Microsoft 365.

Changes coming for the new Planner

First, here is a summary of the changes announced for the new Planner:

• Planner, To Do, and Project for the web will merge into one product called Planner
• Project for the web features will require a Premium license of Planner
• Planner with Premium features will use the Power Platform, with a Dataverse backend, providing the ability to use Power BI reporting, Power Automate workflows scenarios, and Power Apps extensions
• A Teams app for Planner will include the current features of the ‘Tasks by Planner and To Do’ app and later include other Planner features
• A new web experience for the new Planner is being developed
• Copilot (Microsoft’s Artificial Intelligence companion) is being added to Planner as a Premium feature
• The new Planner ‘Assigned to me’ view will include your tasks across existing Planner plans, new Planner Premium tasks (previously Project for the web), To Do items, Microsoft Loop assigned tasks, flagged emails, and Teams meeting follow-ups

NOTE: Microsoft also announced that Project Online, Project Desktop,
and Project Server will continue to be available and supported.

Rollout timeline for the new Planner:

• Spring 2024: The new Planner app in Teams will be generally available. The current Tasks by Planner and To Do app in Teams will be renamed to Planner. Microsoft Project for the web will be renamed to Planner as part of the Premium experiences.
• Later in 2024: The web experience of the new Planner will be generally available. The features you know and love in Microsoft Project for the web will be available in the new Planner app in Teams and the Planner web app.

It’s good to see that Microsoft is simplifying their work management experience into a single solution that pulls together personal tasks and assigned work from schedules and meetings. We believe more people will adopt the Premium experiences of Planner with it being the same product, rather than separated as it today with Project for the web. With Planner being part of Office 365 Enterprise plans, many more users will have access to Planner and a seamless transition to Premium experiences.

It’s also worth noting that existing Project for the web users will NOT see any changes to their licenses or decrease in functionality. On the contrary, Microsoft will be adding new Planner Premium features in 2024.

Work Management as the foundation for Project & Portfolio Management

A solid Work Management foundation is key to deploying full-blown Project & Portfolio Management (PPM) capabilities in organizations. With the new Planner, Microsoft provides that foundation with CWM/EWM. Microsoft then enables customers and partners to build on top of that foundation with the Power Platform, which unlocks more advanced PPM scenarios, additional reporting capabilities, and advanced AI.

Sensei IQ sits on top of the CWM/EWM foundation and provides a turn-key PPM managed solution built on the Power Platform that works inside of Microsoft Teams and lives entirely inside of your own M365 tenant. That means no data ever leaves your tenant and authentication uses Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory).

Conclusion

Aside from some short-term pain around getting used to another name change, this is the consolidation we’ve been waiting for. Microsoft customers now legitimately have a work management grow-up story. Let information workers manage the daily grind in Planner for M365 (CWM), and enable teams to build dynamic schedules and manage work in a consistent manner with visibility across the organization through Planner Premium features (EWM). Then empower the PMO to manage projects, programs, portfolios, and resources effectively and connect strategy to execution on the Power Platform with Sensei IQ (PPM).

These changes will no doubt improve the marketing story for Microsoft with a scalable solution to Modern Work and Project and Portfolio Management in Microsoft 365.