Today marks the general availability of Microsoft Planner. Over the next several weeks, Planner will roll out to all eligible Office 365 customers worldwide. This includes Office 365 Enterprise E1–E5, Business Essentials, Premium and Education subscription plans.
All users with eligible subscription plans will automatically see the Planner tile appear in the Office 365 app launcher when it is available for them to use. No specific action by Office 365 admins is needed.
The addition of Planner to the Office 365 lineup introduces a new and improved way for businesses, schools and organizations to structure teamwork easily and get more done. With Planner, teams can create new plans; organize, assign and collaborate on tasks; set due dates; update statuses and share files, while visual dashboards and email notifications keep everyone informed on progress.
Charts in Microsoft Planner.
Board in Microsoft Planner.
Since we rolled out the Planner Preview, we have been working closely with a variety of Office 365 customers from around the world. Many of them have already experienced quantifiable benefits from increased collaboration and expedited time to value.
Câmara Municipal de Cascais has governed the town of Cascais, Portugal, for 650 years. This long history of service just got a boost after it transitioned to Office 365. More than 1,000 employees have quickly adopted Planner to better organize their teamwork and expedite the completion times for various government initiatives.
“With Planner, we improved collaboration by about 20 percent. We’re completing group initiatives approximately seven percent faster, and everyone stays aligned easily due to the added level of transparency.”
—Miguel Pinto Luz, deputy mayor of Câmara Municipal de Cascais
Read the Câmara Municipal de Cascais customer story to learn more about their innovative use of Office 365.
Hancock Askew & Co. is a public accounting firm that serves national and international clients. The firm recently adopted Planner to help team members in multiple offices manage client engagements in a more organized and collaborative manner resulting in reduced need for status meetings, greater visibility into progress of assigned tasks and more accurate client communication.
“We have consistently received the Sloan Award for Business Excellence in Workplace Flexibility, and Office 365 has been a great resource for us in maintaining that award even through rapid growth. By using Planner, we add to that flexibility, giving team members transparency into what’s getting done, no matter where or what time of the day it is.”
—Greg B. Ameden, director of IT Assurance Services at Hancock Askew & Co.
Let us know what you think!
We are committed to reading every piece of feedback we receive and turning that into action, so that we can continue to improve Planner. Some of the new features we plan to introduce over the next few months include the ability to assign a task to multiple users, external user access, plan templates, customizable boards and apps for iOS, Android and Windows.
Drop us a line on our Planner UserVoice to let us know what you think of Planner and what improvements you would like to see.
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Office Online—chat with your co-editors in real-time
We recently announced the ability for co-editors to chat with one another directly within a OneDrive document when working in Office Online. Today, we’re pleased to extend this capability to our Office 365 Business and Education customers for documents stored in OneDrive for Business or SharePoint Online. Built on the same technology as Skype for Business, the new chat feature is available in all the Office Online applications—Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote.
How to initiate a chat
When you share a document from OneDrive or SharePoint Online with your co-workers or classmates, they can view, make edits and even co-author with you in real-time. When multiple people are in the document at the same time, their names appear in the list of co-editors at the top right of the browser window. Next to the list of co-editors, you’ll see a blue Chat button (shown below).
Chat in real-time while working with others in Office Online.
Real-time chat is integrated with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote Online.
Use emoticons to liven up your conversations.
When to chat and when to add document comments
Use Chat when you want to communicate with others immediately, for example, to ask a quick question or divide sections among the co-editors. Chat history is not saved when you close the document but can be copied and pasted if desired. Use Comments (on the Review tab on the ribbon) when you want to attach a comment to a specific selection within the document, such as when you need to ask if a word or phrase should be changed. Comments are saved with the document and can be replied to, marked as done or deleted.
That’s all for now. We’re constantly working to improve Office Online and add new features. Leave a comment below or add new feature suggestions to our UserVoice sites for Word, Excel, PowerPoint or OneNote.
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