Want to know how to assign a task on Microsoft Teams through Planner – Microsoft’s convenient task management tool? No problem – it’s actually a lot simpler than you might think. As of March 2024, Planner is fully integrated into Teams, giving users comprehensive access to all of their plans, tasks, to-do lists, and work management tools in one place.
All you really need to do to get started is make sure you have the Planner integration set up in Teams, then you can start assigning tasks (with deadlines and extra information). Plus, you’ll be able to create comprehensive “plans”, share them with your colleagues, and track progress too.
Here’s everything you need to know about assigning and managing tasks with Planner in Teams.
Understanding the Planner App for Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Planner is Microsoft’s all-in-one solution for task management. In 2023, at Microsoft’s Ignite conference, the company announced that it was combining multiple pre-existing solutions into the Planner experience – including Microsoft Project, and Microsoft To Do.
The Planner app for Microsoft Teams, brings all of the core capabilities of this solution into Microsoft’s world-leading collaboration tool. It offers a streamlined way for users to manage all of their tasks and plans in one place, including plans built with To Do, and Microsoft Loop.
Once you add the planner app to Teams, it’ll introduce new sections to the Teams interface, such as:
- My Day: A daily overview of all the tasks that are due on a specific day, alongside any tasks that users choose to add to the list themselves.
- My Tasks: The complete overview of all the tasks you need to complete. There’s also a dedicated “Private tasks” section here, where users can create tasks, flag emails, and monitor tasks assigned to you from Teams meeting notes, chat, or Loop components.
- My Plans: This section includes all of your To Do lists, as well as basic plans and premium plans created with Microsoft Planner.
- New Plan: This is the tool that allows you to create new shared or personal plans (consisting of multiple tasks) directly in the Microsoft Teams app.
Plus, you’ll also be able to see notifications about Microsoft Planner tasks and plans within your Microsoft Teams interface.
How to Assign a Task on Microsoft Teams Through Planner: Accessing the App
The first step in figuring out how to assign a task on Microsoft Teams through Planner is actually adding the Planner app to Teams. If you’ve used apps for Teams before (either those created by Microsoft, or a third-party), you’ll know it’s pretty straightforward.
As long as you have the right permissions to add apps on Teams, and an admin hasn’t restricted you from downloading anything, you should be able to access planner. Just log into Microsoft Teams, choose the Teams instance you want to add Planner too, then click on the three-dot button (under Bookings) to access the app library.
You can either search for Planner in the search bar, or click on Get More Apps and search from there. Click on the Planner app when you see it, and select Get Started. Then follow the instructions. Once its installed, you should see Planner alongside other tabs when you click on the “…” button.
Assign a Task on Microsoft Teams Through Planner
Now that you have Planner installed in Microsoft Teams, assigning a task is simple. Click on the Planner tab in your Teams channel to get started, then click on “+ Add New Task”.
From there, you’ll need to:
- Enter a name for the task (we recommend making it pretty descriptive, so users reviewing their tasks will instantly know what the task is for).
- Choose a plan: You can add a task to an existing workplace plan, create a new plan, or just add it to your “private tasks” list.
- Set a due date using Microsoft’s calendar.
- Set a priority level (you can choose to color code your tasks to identify whether they’re urgent, low priority, or mid-level in importance).
- Select Assign to choose the team member you want to assign the task to.
- Set a progress level: Here, you can note whether a task has already been started (in progress), or whether it hasn’t started yet.
Click the Add task button to save it, and the assigned team member (or members) will receive a notification. The task will also appear on their individual “Planner” dashboard within Teams.
Creating Tasks from Teams Meetings and Messages
Notably, rather than creating a task from scratch within the Planner app, you can also use chat messages and meeting summaries to create and assign tasks. If you want to turn a message you’ve sent, or a message from a colleague into a task, hover over the message, and click the “…” button.
Select More Actions then click on Create Planner task. If you want to create a task from your Teams meeting notes, all you need to do is go to the meeting notes for the conversation, and click on Task Apps in the follow-up tasks section. From there, you can open the meeting notes in Planner, and use them to assign your tasks.
How to Create a Plan with Planner on Teams
Learning how to assign a task on Microsoft Teams through Planner is great if you just want to give one or multiple team members a specific job. However, if you want to create a comprehensive workflow, with multiple tasks and deadlines, you’ll need to create a “Plan”.
Plans in planner make it easier to manage and distribute team work loads, track progress towards goals, and even organize work into sprints using agile planning. There’s even a timeline view so you can see if everyone is working according to schedule.
