Based on 7 verified reviews published in the last 18 months
TrustRadius Community Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when relevant, HG Insights data.
Overview
Synthesised from 7 reviews | Last Published April 23, 2026
This product assessment synthesizes insights from 7 recent reviews covering overall satisfaction, strengths, weaknesses, and ROI related to Microsoft Planner. Microsoft Planner is primarily used for task and project management, often across multiple teams or for individual projects. A majority of reviewers find it suitable for basic project tracking, with 5 out of 7 reviews reflecting this utility. The tool's value proposition centers around simple project planning and team collaboration, but it falls short for organizations needing advanced features. Indeed, 2 out of 7 reviewers consider its functionality too limited for sophisticated business needs. While some users report improved team efficiency (2 of 7 reviews), others cite reduced productivity due to functional limitations (2 of 7 reviews), indicating a variable ROI depending on the complexity of the use case.
Pros
Facilitates basic project planning, particularly using Kanban-style boards.
Enhances team collaboration through integrated features.
Improves team efficiency in some contexts, especially when aligned with Agile methodologies.
Cons
Lacks advanced project management features such as Gantt charts.
Offers limited customization options.
Can reduce productivity if users expect more advanced functionality than it provides.
Microsoft Planner was used to track action items and provide visibility across the organization of team members workload capacity. It was helpful in prioritizing daily tasks, keeping the team organized and focused, and preventing things from “slipping through the cracks”. It was very helpful to managers to see what the team had accomplished in a given day/week and what outstanding items remained.
Pros
Being able to assign/reassign a task to a particular team member was super helpful. Sometimes when a particular person has too much to do, it was easy to move it to someone else with more availability.
The customizable board view was also very helpful so that a pipeline could be created to prioritize tasks based on multiple factors like due date, priority level, or what sub tasks remained.
Being able to add a collaborator on tasks was also super helpful so that each of us could work on individual subtasks but know that we have visibility on the main task that we’re both responsible for.
Cons
Being able to add custom tags to be able to sort the tasks more easily would be helpful
A “search function” within the tasks feels like a pretty basic need that wasn’t provided
Being able to set more complex “rules” for tasks like other softwares provide
Likelihood to Recommend
Great for organizing daily tasks but works better for a small team. As our team started to grow, we ultimately decided to purchase a software that could be customized to accommodate our specific needs.
Microsoft Planner gives my team an intuitive, collaborative, and visual task management experience to get the job done. It's a simple tool to use but it adds a lot of productivity, allowing better performance. Like any organization[al] tool, it requires constant updating.
We are already using the kanban panel, but we are not yet integrated into MS Project. We plan to use this feature soon.
Pros
Easy and intuitive kanban panel.
Very beautiful visualization dashboard.
Great integration for iOS system.
Cons
Does not allow you to view all tasks and sub-tasks (checklist) in a nested view.
Comments have character limits that can make it harder for teams to communicate exactly what they want to share.
There is no way to mention a teammate in a comment and share files and documents in the conversation (collaborative tool???).
Likelihood to Recommend
Since it is part of the Office 365 suite of products, you’ll end up paying for plenty of tools you’ll not be using. To function properly, we must use all the other tools in Office 365 plus Microsoft Project. It's interesting for medium and big teams and it's a good tech resource for Microsoft users. It is a suitable product for companies that have a good Microsoft product contract.
Our Marcomm department uses Planner to organize tasks and workflows. We also use the forms function to allow other departments to submit a request that we can then assign to the correct user for execution. This allows the team to prioritize requests instead of taking orders.
Pros
Organize tasks by person
Cons
Assigning dates to sub-tasks
Making tasks dependent on one another
Calendar
Likelihood to Recommend
I think this is a good built-in option for someone using Office 365 and doesn't want to spend additional money on a project management tool.
