Microsoft is bringing Project and Planner closer together next year

Microsoft has announced some important updates for Project and Planner, its popular work management tools in Microsoft 365. If Planner and Project currently serve a slightly different audience, the company also plans to introduce a more seamless experience between the two apps in 2022.

“Planner helps you manage and monitor team tasks in a shared plan while Project takes managing your tasks and projects to the next level with more flexibility and power. Over the next year, our plan is to simplify and bring the experiences of these two apps closer together so that moving from one to the other is effortless,” the company explained in a blog post.

In the meantime, Microsoft plans to introduce a new feature that will let users schedule their frequent Planner tasks to occur at a regular interval. Microsoft Planner is also getting support for rich text and images, allowing users to insert bold, italicized, or underlined text and images into task notes. Microsoft says that its task management tool is also getting some new integrations with other Microsoft 365 apps, though the company has yet to share the details.

Microsoft Project is set to add new project management features in the coming months: The Project app in Microsoft Teams will enable users to start conversations on specific tasks with their colleagues and mention them. Project for the web will also allow Microsoft 365 users to view the progress of their assigned tasks and provide status updates. With Guest Access support in the Project web app, team leaders will be able to add guest users and assign tasks to them.

Microsoft keeps adding new features regularly to its project management tools, and the company will keep listening to feedback to improve the collaboration experience for employees. If you’re interested to learn more about these updates, we invite you to check out yesterday’s “Coming soon to work management tools in Microsoft 365” Ignite session.