Microsoft Launches Planner, A Trello-Like Project Management Tool

Microsoft Planner, a new tool that helps teams track and collaborate on projects, launched today for the Office 365 suite.

Planner lets you organise projects, share files, assign tasks and chat with other collaborators — all within Office 365. As shown in the video above, the app uses Cards and Boards to organise everything (something you’re probably familiar with if you’ve used Trello or Asana), and those Boards can even be organised into larger projects or columns called “Buckets”. Every card can be colour-coded, given due dates, carry attachments (like Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents, as well as photos) and have their own conversations for each task. Planner also has a main “Hub” where you can see an overview of your project and track its overall progress. From there, you can see who’s meeting deadlines, and navigate to your own assigned tasks.

The kicker here is that Planner is integrated with other Microsoft products like OneNote and Outlook, making it an ideal option for users and business who are already deep in the Microsoft ecosystem. Planner will be rolling out to Office 365 customers worldwide over the next several weeks. You can learn more at the link below.

Microsoft Planner ready for showtime [Microsoft Office Blog via TechCrunch]