Microsoft Planner Just Released as New Office365 Project Management Tool
For the last 5 months, our Professional Services team was given the opportunity to try out Microsoft Planner, a new visually stunning and easy to use project collaboration tool. As a Microsoft Partner, we are able to try out previews of products before general availability. Planner is a new addition to Office 365 that allows teams to track the progress of the project with visual dashboards and email notifications.
With Microsoft Planner, users can:
- Create new plans
- Organize, assign and collaborate on tasks
- Set due dates
- Update and track statuses
- Share files
- Add comments to chat with teams
- Schedule events
- Capture and organize meeting notes
Hate emailing back and forth with your team, writing to-do lists, and trying to keep track of SharePoint lists? Planner has you covered. Planner uses Microsoft Groups to create a Plan in Planner to keep your team organized. Once you have your Plan created, you will be able to add tasks, assign tasks to users, set due dates, and get email notifications.
"Planner allows our team to stay informed, connected. and involved with the work that matters most to our success. Planner creates visibility, accountability, and much needed status in a quick, convenient, easy to use way," says Wimmer Solutions Director of Strategic Initiatives, Corey Artherholt.
Microsoft Planner organizes each of your plans into "Boards," where users organize tasks into buckets and then assign each task. Planner will improve collaboration by bringing teams to one place and by creating visibility to both time and effort across organizations. "Microsoft Planner helped our Professional Services team create a sense of accountability to complete our commitments," says Wimmer Solutions Director of Strategic Initiatives, Corey Artherholt. Once a task is complete, users simply "check off" the task and it will be shifted to the "Completed" bucket. Users can easily see the status of each project in the Charts view, which creates easy to understand visual charts.
Take the stress out of team projects and get more work done with Microsoft Planner. If you're interested in learning more about how Office365 can help your team, contact us for more information.