What's new in Microsoft Planner - February 2025

This month, we’re excited to announce the rollout of several new AI capabilities integrating Project Manager agent with your task management processes, as well as feature updates that address some of your most requested features. Thank you for continuing to share your thoughts as we continue to improve and build on the Planner experience!

New AI capabilities with Project Manager agent 

Project Manager agent now launching in Europe

We’re excited to announce that Project Manager agent is now rolling out to European-based customers with eligible licenses in public preview, following our initial release to Planner users in North America and Asia-Pacific. 

The Project Manager agent is an AI-powered virtual assistant designed to enhance planning experiences by streamlining workflows and managing tasks on your behalf. Read more about Project Manager agent in our blog post, “Unleashing the power of agents in Microsoft Planner.” 

Generate tasks from a PDF

We've heard a strong desire from customers to automate the creation and execution of tasks using attachments. Now, you can upload PDF files to generate and complete tasks with Project Manager agent.

Explore more collaborative experiences with Project Manager agent 

With a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, you can generate and execute tasks in plans alongside Project Manager agent. We are now rolling out functionality to enable users with a Microsoft 365 license to view and comment on content generated by Project Manager agent, so that you can better collaborate on these plans with others in your organization. 

Automatically create dependencies when generating tasks 

Tasks generated with Project Manager agent will automatically include task dependencies to recommend the order in which the tasks should be executed. To visualize these task dependencies, select the Timeline view of your plan. With this update, Project Manager agent can generate better content when executing tasks, as these dependencies help it understand the relationship and context between tasks in your plan.

Create plans generated by Project Manager agent in a Microsoft Teams channel 

With the new update to the Planner experience in standard Teams channels, you can now quickly kickstart a plan in a Teams tab with the assistance of Project Manager agent. 

The latest enhancements to Planner 

Differentiate your plans with custom backgrounds 

With custom backgrounds, you can customize the theme of your basic plans to more easily distinguish between your projects. To add a background, open the Plan details of any basic plan by either selecting the plan name or the dropdown menu next to it in the plan header. From there, a side pane will open with suggested backgrounds tailored to your plan. This feature is still rolling out, so if you don’t see it yet we encourage you to come back and try again next week.

This was a popular feature request when we launched the new Planner, and we’re excited for you to check it out! Note that if you previously had a plan with a custom background, that background should reappear in your plan with no action necessary.

A screenshot of Planner shows the Grid view of a plan. The Plan details pane is open to the right with different background options.

Organize your tasks with Board view, now in My Day and My Tasks 

With Board view now available in My Day and My Tasks, you can manage and prioritize your tasks in a more visual way. Read more about Board view in My Tasks and My Day and how you can use it to better organize your top priority tasks and help manage your workload.

Join plans in public groups

Plans created in public groups will now include a Join button, so you can easily add yourself to the plan.

Recover recently deleted tasks

You can now undo the deletion of a task by either selecting CTRL + Z or selecting Undo in the toast that appears at the bottom left of your screen.

Share your feedback 

Your feedback helps inform our feature updates and we look forward to hearing from you as you try Planner’s new capabilities! Provide feedback about Planner by using the Feedback button in the top right corner of the app. We also encourage you to share your feature ideas by adding them to our Planner Feedback Portal. 

Resources 

• Check out the Planner adoption page. 

• Sign up to receive future communication about Planner. 

• Check out the Microsoft 365 roadmap for feature descriptions and estimated release dates. 

• Watch Planner demos for inspiration on how to get the most out of Planner. 

• Watch the recording from September's What’s New and What’s Coming Next + AMA about the new Planner. 

• Visit the Planner help page to learn more about the capabilities in Planner.