Earlier this month, the Office 365 team announced that Microsoft Planner, a new Trello-like organizational planning tool, would be available to all eligible Office 365 customers in the next several weeks. Today, the team has shared in a new blog post on the Office blog a video showcasing how the standalone app can help teams to organize teamwork in a visual way and also how Planner integrates with other Office 365 experiences.
You can watch the video below following Microsoft’s description:
This show demonstrates how to get started with creating plans, assigning tasks and the things you can do while working through a plan. We walk through the integrated experiences with Office 365 Groups, board and chart views to visualize tasks and monitor progress—and finally what the team is building in the coming months.
In its blog post, Microsoft explains that Planner fits in the middle ground between its tools dedicated to manage personal task lists including Outlook and Wunderlist and more complex apps used to manage projects like Project or Project Online. The company is suggesting different use cases for Planner such as “managing events, office moves, user training or other team projects” and you can also give your feedback on the Uservoice website to tell the team what are the new features you would like to be implemented in the future.
Lastly, if you’re wondering how to get started with Planner, we remind you that the tool will only be available to Office 365 customers with eligible subscription plans (Office 365 Enterprise E1-E5, Business Essentials, Premium and Education subscription customers). Like we said previously, Microsoft is still rolling out the tool to eligible customers right now, but once you’re granted access you will just a new icon or tile appear in your Office 365 launcher upon start up.
If you already had the chance to try Planner, let us know in the comments if you think Microsoft’s new organization tool could become a good challenger to the well known Trello app that is currently more accessible thanks to its freemium business model.