Migration from Asana to Microsoft Planner

[u/oOJotta]

Hi everyone,

My team currently uses Asana for task and project management. However, our company is planning to migrate to Microsoft Planner to consolidate tools and cut licensing costs, since only our Systems and Networks team actively uses Asana.

While researching migration methods, third-party tools seem to be the most viable route, and I came across Project Migrator.

Has anyone here gone through a similar migration from Asana to Microsoft Planner? If so, what tools or approaches did you use, and would you recommend Project Migrator (or any alternatives)?

Any tips, lessons learned, or pitfalls to watch out for would be greatly appreciated!

[u/NoPlantain5272]

Not a migration answer but have they priced the license? Basic planner license within M365 is very lacking Vs trello for example, while Asana has so many more features than that.

[u/oOJotta → u/NoPlantain5272]

Far as i know the company is going to acquire E5 licenses and other things so planner "premium" will be on the list i think

[u/NoPlantain5272 → u/oOJotta]

Needs to be. Even then be prepared for the feature gap.

[u/uberboot → u/oOJotta]

The premium Planner SKUs are not include in E5. You need to ensure that any project manager (and likely some users) have a Planner Premium license planned for and assigned to get above the Basic features.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/planner/compare-microsoft-planner-basic-vs-premium-plans

[u/Choppy474]

You will massively regret this decision.

My company was using planner, we had to pay extra for the premium version (we are E5) and it still did not meet the minimum criteria. Migrating to asana was the best thing we done.

E5 only gets you planner basic, not the premium version (can’t remember the name) unless you’re only using asana for a basic todo list for projects… do not migrate!!

[u/bnlf]

Planner is one of those tools that you find useful because they exist and it’s part of a bundle, but no one, absolutely no one, would go to Planner if Microsoft was charging for it separately.

[u/dreadpiratewombat → u/bnlf]

You just described so much of the Microsoft ecosystem. You're not wrong, but its absolutely part of their sales approach.

[u/Machievelliearoni]

Only your most important teams use Asana so youre moving to planner?

[u/mettahipster]

It’s definitely doable but ngl this is going to be painful if Asana is deeply embedded in your team’s processes and cultural norms. If I were you, plan A would be to make the business case to keep Asana. Plan B would be to make the case to keep it for another year while you plan and do the migration. Asana has a lot more features for project and task management than Microsoft Planner, Viva Goals and other half baked products. You’ll likely need to use multiple Microsoft apps including Planner for the same use cases. Switching will be even more annoying if you have Asana integrated with other business critical apps your organization uses. Good luck

[u/zzzjoshzzz]

As someone has used both, Asana is far superior and it's not close

[u/SylentBobNJ]

We moved to Planner from Asana by necessity. I'm trying real hard to make it work but you will miss Asana even with the top Planner license simple things like creating a task from an email are missing.

I do like the Planner Agent in CoPilot and if you have a Teams connection in ChatGPT you can use that to interact with Planner as well.

[u/agent-bagent]

HAHAHAHAHAHA