Microsoft Planner for Office 365 Begins Roll Out

Today Microsoft announced the availability of their newest tool for Office 365 called Microsoft Planner.

As I reviewed the video and the materials made available today about Microsoft Planner, I wanted to frame this tool as a replacement for Microsoft's Project software. However, that is not anywhere near the case as Project contains tools that help you track all aspects of projects including initial pan development, assigning tasks, monitoring workloads and defining the projects budget.

Microsoft Planner on the other hand is more of a collaboration and organization tool by comparison that is used alongside team projects. Planner still allows a team leader to make plans, assign tasks and track task completion plus all team members can communicate in one central location for all matters related to the project at hand.

Planner also takes advantage of all the collaboration tools already built into other applications in Office 365 such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneDrive and uses those features to bring together all aspects of the teams work and progress.

The idea is to have all discussions around a single team project in one place and easily accessible by all team members and not spread across multiple applications.

Microsoft Planner is just starting its roll out today so it will take several weeks for all Office 365 subscriptions (Enterprise E1-E5, Business Essentials, Premium and Education) to get the update. No action is required on your part and the Microsoft Planner tile will show up in your Office 365 tile layout when it is available on your account.

Moreinfo about Microsoft Planner is available here:

This is the three minute overview video I mentioned above:

But, wait...there's probably more so be sure to follow me on Twitter and Google+.

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