Microsoft has announced that Project Online will be reaching its end of life and stop functioning as of September 30, 2026. That means existing Project Online customers will need to transition to another platform by that date.
Microsoft has recommended two options to their PPM customers. Below, we outline those options and provide our recommendations
NOTE: The Microsoft Project Desktop is NOT being discontinued as part of the Project Online retirement.
Microsoft’s preferred option is that you move to using Planner premium plans for work management, with the Power Platform supporting your advanced PPM needs.
Under the covers, a Microsoft Planner premium plan is derived from the same scheduling engine that you’re used to from Microsoft Project and has many of the features that Project Online offers. It’s even available to you under the same license you already have.
You can use the native Planner app inside of Microsoft Teams or the separate web interface. Planner premium plans reside within the Microsoft Power Platform, thus making them extensible, with model-driven Power Apps, automations with Power Automate, and Power BI reporting connecting to the backend Dataverse database platform, which is much faster than the OData-based reporting in Project Online. You can also import an MPP file from Microsoft Project Desktop Client using the built-in Project model-driven app. Note: There is no ongoing connection between Microsoft Project Desktop Client and Microsoft Planner premium plans. It’s a one-time import only.
Think of Project Online as an umbrella term covering three pieces:
With Option 1, your Project Desktop ‘schedule’ (anything related to tasks and assignments) will be moved to a Planner premium plan and your advanced PPM scenarios from PWA are handled on the Power Platform (think reporting, risks, issues, change requests, governance workflows, resource management, programs, portfolios, and much more). Meanwhile, the data that was previously in the Content DB is now stored in Dataverse for much better reporting options.
Planner premium plans provide some benefits, such as an easy-to-use web interface and the native Microsoft Teams app. They also provide faster reporting with Dataverse and extensibility using Power Automate using the Dataverse connector. New features such as Portfolios with roadmap capabilities and integration with Microsoft Copilot are also great additional features to consider. For more information, see our blog posts ‘Unboxing’ the New Microsoft Planner for Enterprise Work Management and AI for Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) with Microsoft Copilot in M365.
We get a lot of questions about key Project Online features not immediately available in Planner premium plans. It was never Microsoft’s intention to create a Project Online replacement, but rather modernize the Collaborative Work Management (CWM) experience in Planner natively, and provide a platform for Enterprise Work Management (EWM) and Project & Portfolio Management (PPM).
Below is an overview of the features we’re asked about the most, along with our recommendations.
Project Online Feature |
Planner premium plans |
Sensei’s recommendation |
|---|---|---|
| Resource Management | No native resource management capabilities, such as Resource Engagements or Availability Heatmaps comparing availability vs. demand. | This can be handled nicely on the Power Platform. See how we do it in Sensei IQ™: Resource Management – 3 Levels of Maturity for PPM in Microsoft 365 |
| Enterprise Custom Fields | No enterprise custom fields for reporting. Only local fields are available to use and not accessible for reporting. | Our clients have the option to add enterprise custom fields to projects, tasks and resources synchronized from Planner premium plans into the Power Platform. |
| Governance workflows | No native governance workflows inside of Planner. | In Power Apps, you can use the Dynamics Business Process Flow for governance and approvals on projects, business cases and more. See examples in this PowerPoint presentation: Presentation: Sensei IQ™™ Brief (PowerPoint) |
| Project Artifacts | Project artifacts, such as issues, risks, and deliverables are not available in Planner. | Power Apps provides great extensibility options well beyond what you can do in PWA today. |
| Templates | Planner comes with standard templates from Microsoft, but no ability to create custom templates and make them available to your users. | In Planner, use the ‘Copy plan’ option to create a new plan from an existing one. Templates may be saved and shared with users for copying. |
| Timesheets | No native timesheet capabilities or ability to report actual effort in a time-phased manner. Team members can update percent complete across all project assignments using the Assigned to Me view if you are using Planner premium plans within your default PowerApps environment. | With Sensei IQ™, you get a consolidated timesheet with tasks/assignments from all your work management tools, including Planner (basic and premium plans), Azure DevOps, Jira, Smartsheet and Monday.com. |
| Baseline Support | Planner premium plans only support a single baseline. You can overwrite your entire existing baseline, but you cannot add a new scope of work to an existing baseline. | With Sensei IQ™, we take a snapshot of your key project data at each status entry. This can be customized further to meet your specific needs. |
| Due Date Field | Having a due date field, like the Deadline date in Microsoft Project Online. Note: Planner basic plans have a due date, but no scheduled finish date. Planner premium plans have a scheduled finish date, but no due date. | At the project and task level, we recommend using the Enterprise Custom Fields option listed above. |
| Cost | Planner premium plans do not support tracking project costs. | In Sensei IQ™, we have a Financials module to easily track project budget, planned spending, actuals, and variance. |
| Portfolio Analysis | Portfolio analysis capabilities. | In Sensei IQ™, we’ve created a scoring and prioritization process that’s modeled after portfolio analysis in PWA. |
If Option 1 doesn’t work for you, then you can migrate your Project Online configuration to Project Server Subscription Edition, ideally in your existing Microsoft Azure environment, which enables additional extensibility on the Power Platform.
Project Server Subscription Edition is the latest version of Project Server that can be installed either on-premises or hosted within Microsoft Azure or another hosting provider. With this method, you install your own servers for an entire SharePoint/Project Server farm and manage them internally. You would need to install a dedicated Microsoft SQL Server and have in-house Database Administrators (DBA’s) to manage these resources. The users and accounts used for this environment would come from your local Azure Active Directory on-premises or a Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) within Azure.
As of this writing, Microsoft has not yet published their data retention recommendations for Project Online clients. We will update this blog post when that information becomes available.
Sensei can help you with migration options from Project Online to Project Server Subscription Edition. You can also manually move over MPP files and reattach all your resources, which is a much cheaper option.
The following Microsoft document discusses how to install SharePoint/Project Server into Microsoft Azure: SharePoint Server in Microsoft Azure – SharePoint Server | Microsoft Learn.
NOTE: Microsoft has officially announced that they’re supporting Project Server Subscription Edition at least through 2031 and likely beyond.
Our turn-key PPM solution, Sensei IQ™, is a model-driven Power App that extends Planner premium plans, and other execution tools such as Azure DevOps, Jira, Smartsheet, and Monday.com. Sensei IQ™ has great features for resource management, project financials, portfolio and program management, timesheets, and strategic alignment that currently is not within these execution tools.
We are working to confirm that Sensei IQ™ can also support Project Server Subscription Edition so that our clients can migrate from Project Online. This blog post will be updated once we have confirmed.
It’s been 7 years since Microsoft first announced that they had stopped investments in new features for Project Online and were focusing on Project for the web (now rolled into Planner as premium plans). So, it’s hardly a surprise that Project Online has finally reached its end of life.
For years, we’ve been encouraging our Project Online clients to evaluate Planner premium plans and start thinking about a transition strategy. Now, the countdown has officially started!
At Sensei, we also strongly recommend Option 1 from above, if that’s possible for you. It’s less work and provides a more modern and integrated experience for your users. However, if you have very specific needs that require you to go with Option 2, then we can help you with the migration from Project Online to Project Server Subscription Edition (in Microsoft Azure) and add Sensei IQ™ to the mix for a turn-key PPM solution that allows you to grow over time and also allows your users to work across multiple work management tools
