[New Feature] Linking Project tasks to Planner boards

If you are familiar with Microsoft Project and Planner, you must have wondered, how these two ways of planning can be connected. Last week, Microsoft announced that users will soon be able to connect Planner boards to specific Microsoft Project tasks.

For those of you running “Office Insider” release cycles in your Office/Project software, you might already be able to use the feature now.

As this is a first release of a new feature, it is somewhat limited in its functionality, but a great start of something, that will hopefully evolve a lot going forward.

Lets try it out quickly!

Step 1
Lets open a Project plan in Microsoft Project and create some tasks. Now select task A, and click on the new “Planner” icon in the ribbon:

Step 2
Now search for a Planner plan and select “Create Link”. This will now connect “Task 1” to the Planner board “New Flyers”. (and yes, your Planner board must be created in advanced)

Step 3
A “Planner” icon will now show up next to the task. Remember this is only a “soft link” and doesn’t move your tasks around (yet).

Step 4
When clicking on the hyperlink the Planner Board will open up your browser. From here, further breakdown of the task can be done Kanban style.

You can learn more about this new feature from this blogpost made by Brian Smith: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/brismith/2017/08/29/microsoft-planner-linking-plans-to-a-project-task/