What is Microsoft Planner?
Microsoft Planner is a to-do app that comes with Office 365. It’s used for personal and teamwork planning, with a simple card-based interface. Office 365 Planner provides a hub for team members to create plans, organize and assign tasks to different users and to check updates on progress through dashboards.
It also provides a centralized place where files can be shared and gives visibility to the whole team.
Microsoft Planner Benefits
Microsoft integrations
Planner natively integrates with all the other Office 365 applications and using a tool within the Microsoft ‘ecosystem’ is very efficient. Microsoft have created a suite of apps that all complement one another and work beautifully together. Using Planner means that you can easily integrate your tasks into Outlook, attach and view task documentation by linking to SharePoint, discuss a project within Teams while having you Plan open, hop onto a video call (with Teams, formerly Skype for Business) and much more! Using a third party tool requires switching in and out of applications and reduces productivity and can cause annoyance when trying to integrate or link to another well used application.
Cost
The other very simple reason to consider Microsoft Planner is cost. It’s included with all the business Office 365 subscriptions, so if you’re using Office 365 at work then it’s very likely you have access to Planner. Project or task management tools cost extra and add additional licence costs to your company, so adopting Planner can cut costs. It is definitely worth reviewing to see how it compares to anything you are paying for.
