Introduction To Microsoft Office 365 Planner

Microsoft has introduced a new app (Team management tool) in Office 365 to help plan efficiently, collaborate with the teams effortlessly, and track tasks and timelines in an easy manner. This app is available in Office 365 app launcher and it is called Microsoft Planner.

This Planner is structured and maintained by different components. These  components are:

1. Planner Hub
2. Planner
3. Board
4. Bucket
5. Task

Planner Hub

Planner Hub is a dashboard used to view all the plans and favorite plans in each sections.

• All plans list out all available plans created within the Planner.
  
  
• Favorite plans shows the plan details in the chart format, based on the task progress.
  
  
• If the plan is marked as favorite, that plan information is not shown under all plans, instead it is shown in favorite plans. This is reciprocated between these two sections.

Figure 1 - Planner Hub

Planner

Planner is a virtual place holder to contain the task details and enables the user to integrate with other tools for each plan.(Ex: Create a new plan for an event).

Planner has two different views and an integration section.

1. Board
   
   Lists the tasks, based on the different parameters. 
   
   
2. Charts
   
   Shows the instant visual representation of everyone’s progress.
   
   
3. Integration with other Office 365 tools
   
   During the creation of a new plan, a separate group will be created within Exchange, and a new site collection will be created with in SharePoint online to store the documents and OneNote documents.
   
   
   1. Conversations - Opens a new Window and shows the mail conversations.
      
      
   2. Calendar - Opens a new Window and shows the calendar information for the planner group.
      
      
   3. Members - Opens a new Window and shows the members associated to the planner group.
      
      
   4. Files - Opens a SharePoint Online site for the plan in new Window and shows the documents associated to the Ppan.
      
      
   5. Notebook - Opens a OneNote in new Window for the planner.
      
      
   6. Plan - Shows the plan information (Shows same page)
      
      
      
      Figure 2 - Planner Chart View

Board

Board is one of the views to show the tasks/ activities created within a Planner. This provides a user-friendly UI to create and manage the tasks with the parameters. This also provides an option to the group, based on the Buckets assigned and progress parameters.


Figure 3 - Planner - Board View

Bucket

Bucket is one of the primary and default parameters to categorize the created task/activities within a Planner.
Task.

A single piece of activity is created, assigned to a member and to keep track based on the progress. It can be grouped in to the Bucket within a Planner.

Office 365 Planner provides a lot of options to people. It is a simple way to plan, collaborate and succeed by tracking and managing the tasks and activities with the integration with different office 365 tools.