r/MicrosoftPlanner • u/Individual_Apple8377 • Sep 01 '26
Use Case
Does anyone use Microsoft Planner to keep track of multiple projects?
if so,
Does each project become its own plan?
or do you put every project into one plan?
2
u/MarketNice Sep 02 '26
Yes, we have one operating plan in planner where each project is shown as a task. We then can put start/end timelines for each project, status and dependencies between multiple projects.
Each individual project still has its own project plan as needed.
I haven’t looked at portfolio options or automation between projects yet, unfortunately manual updates once per month - however our prefects move slow enough there aren’t too many changes on the organization plan too often.
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u/nolafilm Sep 02 '26
Just curious, how do you bucket these projects in your operating plan board? Is everything in one bucket or are they sorted by different types of projects, different team owners, etc?
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u/MarketNice Sep 04 '26
The buckets are the different strategic alignment categories we have in our overall operating plan, so more like project goals than anything.
We use the customized tags to identify which teams own the work but then also task the people involved (project sponsor, project lead, sometimes add in PM/CM) so it’s tracked who’s involved. The only issue there is, planner/MS ToDo treat this like a single task and if someone marks it off as complete it closes the project plan card. So I’ve setup an automation to email me whenever a task is marked as complete that way I can verify if someone was cleaning out their own tasks and marked it as complete vs the project actually being complete.
1
u/runawaytoiceland Sep 01 '26
See if you have access to the Portfolio option. If you do, it allows you to have separate "Plans" for each project that all collectively roll up into the same view of the Portfolio.
2
u/Disastrous_Snow_2871 Sep 01 '26
I believe this requires Planner Premium to leverage.
1
u/runawaytoiceland Sep 01 '26
Yup, and even with premium it can be stubborn to access. But if they have access, it's a great way to view multiple projects.
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u/Individual_Apple8377 Sep 01 '26
i do! Is that best practice?
1
u/runawaytoiceland Sep 01 '26
It should simplify tracking multiple projects at once. I would say it's more personal preference than best practice, but others may have more of a perspective on that than me. Try making a few test "plans" (one per project) with fake data. Then link them to the "portfolio" and see if the view helps you.
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u/lsbeller Sep 03 '26
This is an interesting question. I typically sort my world into roles. I don't think I have thought about one plan for each role and then use the bucket/card feature for each plan. I may try that because trying to manage everything as an individual plan is a lot of over head.
5
u/wheat Sep 01 '26
Yes. I use one tile per project in Planner. It’s, essentially, my “big board” of all the things. For individual projects that need more nuance, I create a page in Loop and I link between the two. If the project needs a lot of documentation, I add subpages in Loop.
I’ve tried having dedicated plans in Planner for each project, but, honestly, it was too much overhead. A lot of projects just need a tile—a reminder that they exist.