How to use the NEW Microsoft Planner PREMIUM 2024 to Manage Projects Effectively

planner premium formally Microsoft Project addresses some of the downsides to the new planner within Microsoft teams such as task dependencies subtask timeline view as well as custom field today we are going to take a look at five main stages for managing your project effectively when I worked in Property Management we had so many projects on the go and the missing piece was planner premium and this five-step process let's nerd out let's first create our plan planner premium is accessed via the new planner within Microsoft teams let's go down to new plan now from here at the top we will see basic or premium so if you want to start with a plan from scratch under premium then you can go with this option here but honestly I think that these templates are a great way to get started so if we go to see all templates and these are all of the templates that we have available you'll notice under the simple plan that we have a basic option only whereas if we go to project management and there's a basic option or a premium option at Amy anal shop we are developing a new dog trading app so this software development one looks like a good starting point we select premium and then use template from here we will give our plan a name so in our case it will be the new dog training app and this is a priority at the moment so I'm going to pck in this to my navigation for easy access down here add to group is optional and this is a new feature available in the new planner where we do not need to define a plan to a Microsoft group thereby creating a private plan now when I am creating these plans I do prefer to create the plan and tweak it and then assign it to a group later which is what we are going to do in this video so let's create and here is our plan template as you can see there is a lot of groundwork that has already been laid out for us and now we can just customize it from here and now we can move on to editing our plan here we are in Grid View and there are a few features that I want to show you for us to customize our plan let's first add a task there are a couple of ways to do this but the first one is by going down to add new task at the bottom you can give your task a name and I would love it if you comment if your organization is currently using planner premium this will help me get to know you better so that I can create better content for you then once you are done we can simply press enter now you'll notice that this task has automatically been added as a subtask at the bottom of the list if we want to make it the main task then we can select the ellipses and go up to promote subtask now you'll you'll notice that when you hover over any of the action items on this menu there is also a shortcut key and in this case it's shift alt left Arrow so if we select the task and go shift alt left Arrow then you'll notice that that subtask has now been promoted now let's add a second task so we'll click add new task give it a name and this time we will call it subtask now when we press enter this one is defaulted to a prim primary task but if we want to make it a subtask then we can select the ellipses and go up to make subtask or the shortcut key is shift alt right arrow select the task shift alt right arrow and that subtask has now being pushed over making this task the primary task with the drop- down arrow so adding subtask is a major benefit of planner premium over the basic version and if we scroll up just to the top here then you'll notice that we have testing and then we have two layers of subtask just contributing to the flexibility of planner premium now let's say that we want to move these tasks to a different location so if we hover over the left hand side then we can select the grid icon and then drag our task to a new location and the thing that I really like about this feature is that all of the subtasks move with the main task making it quite efficient but it might be easier if we can add a task to a precise location so this time if we right click in a task then we can go insert task above or the shortcut key is insert and then press the insert key and we're going to insert that task above the task that we had previously clicked on next we are going to learn how we can edit our Tas and the great thing about the grid view is that we can edit these fields right here make for a very quick and efficient way to update your tasks but there are times when we want to open up these task cards and if we hover over this little information icon then we'll see that the shortcut key is alt I if we select the task and go alt I then it's going to open up the task card now this task card might look familiar if you are used to using planner already we have the name of the task the assigned employee and then some labels so in this template the labels that they have defined are the Departments within their organization but you can edit these and customize them however you see fit down here we have the ability to add notes which is where you can add additional information about this task and next we have the start date finish date that are linked to duration percentage complete as well as this effort area towards the bottom so if we update this finish date make it August 24th then you'll notice that the duration of the task has also updated including the remaining hours for completion then as the assigned employee Works through the task then the remaining hours updates as well as the percentage complete next we have buckets priorities as well as checklist items which are familiar to the basic version of planner as as well as Sprints which we are going to cover in just a moment but the one area that I want to show you is towards the bottom where we have dependencies now this task doesn't have any dependencies because it is the first task within the plan but if we exit out of this task card and open up this task card then at the bottom under dependencies we can see that it depends on task number two which is the determine project scope Tendencies are a huge benefit to planner premium and we're going to Deep dive into these when we are on the timeline view so just a little bit but the one thing that I wanted to show you here is that when we update these starts or finish times then any dependent tasks will also update so your whole plan will update on one simple change the final piece that I want to show you in Grid view is how we can add custom fields to our tasks so if we go add column there are some predefined options here but if we go to New Field then we can select a type of column so in my case I want to add the departments in the contract company that our team will be working with so that they know who they will be assigned to we'll go choice we can give this a contract department and then we can call it nibbles Department we can assign it a color to create a really nice visual and then go on like that so if we create this then when we open up our task cards we scroll down to the bottom we will see that custom field which is that drop down so this is again a huge benefit of our planum premium because we are able to add additional Fields making it more flexible now we are going to move on to the board View and we can see that by default this is grouped by our buckets and this just creates a different way to visualize your plan if we select any of these task cards then we can open up the details and edit them directly from the board View and we can even update the buckets from the drop down here another way to update the buckets is we can easily just drag and drop tasks to different locations within the board now there's one little tip here that I want to show you if we go into grid View and if we scroll over we can add a column and this time we will go buckets and then if we select the bucket column we can drag it over and drop it to a different location now from here you're going to notice that the bucket matches the primary tasks we have scope and then we have analysis for software requirements which is that task there and then design so when you are creating your buckets and defining them then this is a nice way to set it up so that you can keep everything in sync back in board view we also have the ability to group our tasks by Sprints so Sprints are similar to buckets but they have a defined time frame so we can update this Sprint we can call it September and then we have the dates for September then we can locate some tasks that have that date for September we can drag and drop them into that Sprint so overall Sprints are similar to buckets but they have that defined time frame providing us with that alternative way to visualize our tasks in the timeline view we can easily update the time frames as well as dependencies starting with times we select this primary task we can click on it and drag it along and we'll see that these dates are updating on the top so if we want to start this on September 12th then we can click and we'll see that the whole whole plan has now updated based on that one adjustment or if you want to update just the time frame of an individual task then we can hover over the task bar and if you go to the edges you'll notice these little arrows populate you just select those and then we can just drag that task and we'll see the dates appear at the top that we can adjust the time frame and once again any of those dependent tasks will adjust as well moving on to dependencies if we hover over a task card this little popup kind of gets in the way but you'll see these little dots so if we select the dot and we'll see additional dots appear and so those are other tasks that we can make this task be dependent on so let's drag this up and we'll make it dependent on that first task we can now see that that dependency has been added to manage those dependencies we can open up the task card and then go down to depends on and here you could remove it or even add a new dependency alternatively we can select a task and then press shift and select a second task then from the ellipses we'll now have the option to either add a dependency or remove the dependency now in this case there's already a dependency so if we remove the dependency which the shortcut key you'll see is control shift F2 and we can see that those tasks dependency has now been removed or you can select the tasks press shift again and this time go contrl F2 to add that dependency we can also add tasks in the timeline view similar to grid view at the bottom here and you can just add your task and why not hit that like button if you are enjoying my video the next stage is defining our goals for our plans and from my experience managing multiple teams of all sizes the clearer we are with with our goals about what they are and the defined time frame the more likely we are to reach those goals here we are in the goals Tab and we can add a goal so the title will be completion of scope by August 27th we will give it a date of August 27th now we are defining the date but I do like to put the date here of course this is up to you and I'll show you why in just a sec we can press enter and now we have created our goal so we can add new tasks that are going to be specific to this goal but since we already have a plan in place then we can go up to connect tasks and from here this goal that I've created is specifically associated with these tasks now remember when I said that the clearer we are with our goals the more likely we are to achieve them when we open up these task cards and we scroll on down to the bottom then this is where we can see our connected goals so this is where we can create transparency for our goals having that clear date so that people know exactly where their tasks fits in the bigger picture now there's one tip that I want to show you in Grid view similar to buckets if we scroll on to the right hand side then we can add a column for our goals so this just keeps all of those goals nice and transparent for each of the tasks in Grid view we can also filter for our tasks by our goals so that we can focus on just those tasks to ensure that we are on track now that we have set up our tasks as well as defined our goals we are ready to share our plan on the top right here we have this little lock and it says private so that means that it's a private plan but if we want to share it then we can create a new group or you can add it to an existing group and then select one of your teams or SharePoint sites from the dropdown I'm going to create a new group and we are going to add Mike to the team so that we can start to assign some tasks and then now from the grid view we can also easily just assign tasks to our members just like this which creates a nice and fast way to allocate these tasks to the different members of your team and any of the tasks that are assigned will appear under that person's planner within the Microsoft teams under my tasks and the assign to me tab so here we are in Mike's planner and if we open open up one of these task cards then he can view all of these tasks this is like a snapshot view but if he clicks on this new dog training app at the top then he'll be redirected to the plan and then that task card as well so here he'll have access to those views that you have too and now we are ready to monitor our plan as your project progresses the goals area is a great place to come back to and just to see if you are on track to achieve those goals so here we have this completion of the scope and we have some of these tasks being completed and we can see that we are actually going to be a head of schedule for achieving this goal so once you've reviewed your goals and the tasks then we can go up to the status here and we can say that we are going to be on track the timeline view is also a great place to review the progress of your plan so you'll see that the red line is for today so you could see any task behind or ahead and your completed tasks are going to be this dark blue fill whereas tasks that are not complete yet are going to be this light and then this is really cool because it even shows you visually which tasks have been partially completed so ideally any of the tasks behind the red line would have this dark blue fill but for example if that red line was here on October 13th then we would know that all of these tasks here were behind schedule so you could touch base with those team members see if there's a hold up or any issues and then of course you're going to want to update your plan accordingly so once again we can just select those bars and then we could update the time frame um based on any of the changes that we have received and once again all of those dependent tasks are going to update accordingly within that one click the charts View is another great way to visualize the progress of your project and it's similar to planner the basic version but I find it particularly helpful to use the filters at the top here and we could filter for example those buckets and just filter that scope phase and then we can easily see the progress of that bucket the people view is an exclusive feature to planner premium and is a great place for you as a project manager to ensure that task are evenly distributed throughout your team that you can achieve your goals on time now on the left hand side you'll see unassigned tasks followed by yourself and then your team members in alphabetical order and for each of the team members we have a people card which summarizes their tasks and then below them we have a task column which breaks out all of the tasks that have been assigned to them we also have some different viewing options on the top right here so for example we can share the workload by hours or the number of tasks as we toggle those we'll see these cards update I do like to look at the number of hours because it's going to be the hours of work which you know one task might be 20 hours and one task might be 3 hours so looking at total hours can sometimes be a better indication we can also view those cards down here either in compact mode or in an expens exped View and the thing that I really like about the expanded view is that in this one for example we can see that 21% of that task has already been complete so it just provides you with a little bit more information on those specific tasks then I'm just going to compact this again um we can hide completed tasks so right now this is on so any task that has been completed is just ignored this is great for looking ahead and focusing on tasks that need to be completed in order to achieve your goals so if we fle that off then we can see you know what's complete and what's incomplete and if there's anything that is late so it's just going to update the layout all of these features are going to serve a different purpose when you're actually looking at Distributing your tasks now the cool thing about these bars at the top here is that the employee that has allocated the most workload so in this case is Amy is going to show as a a full Blue Bar whereas all of the other team members their blue bar is going to show as a percentage of their workload relative to the other team member that has a full workload so in our case we can see that there is a very big uneven distribution here of hours of work so to even that out we can grab a task from Amy and then drag and drop it over to mate so we can see how that has adjusted and how we can drag and drop tasks to try and balance out the workload now as a little tip here I do also find it helpful to use these filters or group by at the top so that you can narrow down your focus so for example we can go down to goals and then just focus on that goal that we defined earlier so that we can achieve it on time this is a quick summary of the five-step process that we have just gone over that you can manage your project effectively within Microsoft planner premium