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Personalize your plans with custom backgrounds

NancyatMSFT's avatar
NancyatMSFT
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Mar 06, 2025

We’re excited to announce that you can now use custom backgrounds for your basic plans in both Planner in Microsoft Teams and Planner for the web. This addition was a top feature request when we launched the new Planner, and it aims to make your planning more visually appealing and organized. 

What are custom backgrounds, and why use them?

Custom backgrounds allow you to easily distinguish between different plans. Powered by AI, background suggestions are tailored based on the name of your plan, so you can quickly identify and navigate to the specific projects you are working on without confusion. Furthermore, backgrounds enable you to customize your team projects in a way that’s fun and aesthetically pleasing. 

How to add custom backgrounds 

To add a custom background to your plan, follow these steps: 

  1. Open the plan details of any basic plan by either selecting the plan name or the dropdown menu next to the plan name in the header.
  2. The Plan details pane will open to the right with suggested backgrounds tailored to your plan.
  3. Select the background you want to apply. 

 

Try it today 

Smart backgrounds are available in the Planner app in Microsoft Teams and Planner for the web. Try it out today and let us know what you think! There are several ways to share your feedback with us—either via the Planner Feedback Portal or directly in the Planner app by selecting More (the question mark) in the upper right corner, then Feedback. 

Resources 

  • Sign up to receive future communication about Planner. 
  • Watch Planner demos for inspiration on how to get the most out of Planner. 

 

Published Mar 06, 2025
Version 1.0
  • Ami_diamond's avatar
    Ami_diamond
    Brass Contributor

    This feature have been there for more than a year , lately was removed and now it is back 

    Can you explain what the point of do such thing 🤔?

    • NancyatMSFT's avatar
      NancyatMSFT
      Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft

      You are correct that this feature previously existed in Planner - as we consolidated the To Do, Planner and Project experiences into the new Planner we had to make decisions on which features to ship in the first version, so custom backgrounds was not part of that initial release. Bringing this feature back alongside others like the Board View in My Day/My Tasks and Export to Excel was a result of evaluating customer feedback to identify the top functionality to bring back from our previous Planner experience (you can imagine it's tough to bring back all the capabilities we had before across all 3 of these apps - we try our best, but there's lots of competing priorities to sort through!) Thanks for the question Ami_diamond!

  • MikeK90's avatar
    MikeK90
    Copper Contributor

    Wait - only "basic" plans? So - people that paid extra for enhanced functionality - nothing? That's horrible.

    • MikeK90's avatar
      MikeK90
      Copper Contributor

      Honestly you should add a line item in your "basic vs premium" breakdown to show how you lose some functionality when you use premium.

      • NancyatMSFT's avatar
        NancyatMSFT
        Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft

        Hi MikeK90 - I hear you, there's not perfect feature parity between basic and premium plans right now. We're working to close these gaps alongside our other product priorities and our goal is to continue improving the value of our premium offering for customers who choose to upgrade. Thank you in advance for your understanding.