Tasks in five plans, a few in To Do and some flagged emails: it's easy to lose track. With the Planner app in Teams you see all your tasks in one place, from every plan you work on, together with your personal tasks and the emails you want to follow up on. This article explains where to find what and how to turn it into a fixed daily routine.
What is the Planner app in Teams?
The app formerly called Tasks by Planner and To Do is now simply called Planner. It brings together three sources:
- Microsoft To Do for your personal tasks, which nobody else sees.
- Shared plans of your teams and Microsoft 365 groups, in which tasks are assigned to colleagues.
- Loop components with task lists from chats, meetings and Loop pages. Read more about Loop components in Teams.
So you no longer need to open separate apps. A task you complete in the Planner app is also completed in To Do, in the plan or in the Loop component it came from.
Open Planner in Teams
- Select Apps on the left in Teams and search for Planner.
- Select Add and pin the app via right-click > Pin. Planner then always stays in the left bar.
Your first steps in the app, such as creating a plan and assigning tasks, are covered in Planner in Teams.
My tasks
Under My tasks you'll find:
- My Day: the tasks you want to do today. This list starts empty every day; the tasks themselves stay saved in their own list or plan.
- My tasks: your personal tasks from To Do.
- Assigned to me: tasks from all shared plans and Loop components.
- Flagged emails: emails you flagged for follow-up in Outlook. Read flagged emails in Planner.
The exact names and layout can differ slightly between versions of the app, but the principle stays the same: personal, assigned and flagged, together in one overview.
Shared plans
Under My plans you see all your teams' plans. Open a plan to view its tasks as a board, list, chart or schedule. The board is handy for dragging tasks between buckets, the chart shows at a glance what's falling behind, and the schedule shows when the deadlines are.
A daily routine
- In the morning, open Assigned to me and sort by due date.
- Add the tasks that must be finished today to My Day.
- Check Flagged emails to see which messages still need a reply.
- Update your progress: set a task to In progress or complete it, so your colleagues in the plan immediately see the right status.
Tips
- Sort or filter by due date to see what's due this week.
- Turn a chat message into a task via More options > More actions. Read create a task from a message.
- Don't use everything as a task list. A message you only want to reread later is better saved for later than turned into a task.
Common problems
- I don't see a plan. You only see plans of groups or teams you're a member of. Ask the team owner to add you.
- Flagged emails don't appear. Check in the To Do settings whether flagged emails are turned on. New flags can take a while to show up.
- A task has disappeared. In a shared plan any member can delete tasks. Admins and owners can restrict that; read how to prevent deleting others' tasks.
For admins
Want to put Planner in the left bar for everyone? Use an app setup policy in the Teams admin center and pin the app there. Shared plans are linked to Microsoft 365 groups, so your organisation's group policy also determines who can create plans. Some advanced features, such as timelines and dependencies in premium plans, require an additional license.
Nederlandstalige versie: Overzicht houden over al je taken met Planner in Teams