Is your organization using Microsoft Planner? If you’re a Microsoft 365 user, you have access to this powerful tool for organizing tasks and working collaboratively across systems and projects. Unfortunately, many organizations don’t know how to use Microsoft Planner to its full potential.
Microsoft Planner connects you with many tools your business already uses, including Microsoft Teams. But that’s not all. You can even use it for reporting — provided you know how to connect Microsoft Planner to Power BI.
Learn more about Microsoft Planner’s features, common uses, and benefits. Plus, explore how to use Microsoft Planner and Power BI to improve visibility, streamline communication, and foster collaboration.
Microsoft Planner is a collaborative task and project management tool that allows teams to organize, assign, and track tasks. It seamlessly integrates with other Microsoft Office 365 applications, including Outlook and Teams. The tool is available on desktop by signing into Microsoft 365 or by downloading the Microsoft Planner app for iOS and Android.
Microsoft Planner offers a host of benefits that can help you and your team stay organized and productive.
The tool allows you to manage all of your team’s tasks and projects from one location. Centralized task management lets individuals and teams view, filter, and update tasks. They can also note progress made on any individual task.
Microsoft Planner integrates with many Microsoft applications, including Outlook and Teams, making it easy to collaborate on projects and stay up-to-date on business initiatives. For example, you can create tasks directly from an email in Outlook or assign tasks within a Teams conversation. This integration streamlines communication and eliminates the need to switch between tools.
While Microsoft Planner was initially a task manager, it’s expanding to become a project management tool, as well. Take advantage of Planner’s intuitive interface for creating plans and assigning tasks to project members. Set due dates, priorities, and labels for tasks, ensuring that everyone knows what needs to be done and when. Additionally, real-time notifications inform participants about task updates, allowing for better coordination and organization.
Microsoft Planner is a great way to communicate about ongoing tasks and projects in a centralized location, especially when integrated with other Microsoft tools. Team members can collaborate on tasks through co-authoring, leaving comments, and sharing meeting notes.
Power BI empowers teams to unlock the full potential of their enterprise data. Users can leverage Power BI’s features to create insightful dashboards without technical expertise or software development skills. When combined with Microsoft Planner, project managers and business leaders gain a comprehensive overview of their work, improve communication, and make data-driven decisions.
Once you’ve connected Planner and Power BI, go to Planner’s home page and click on the “New plan” button. After selecting a plan type (such as “blank plan”), a dialog box will appear, prompting you to enter a plan name, choose whether to add it to an existing group, and select a privacy setting. Once you’ve filled in the details, click on the “create” button to bring your plan to life.
Clicking on the “add task” button opens a dialog box to type in your task’s title. You must name the task, and you can give it a due date and assign it to someone. After creating the task, you can move it to a task bucket and edit details, including the priority level, task description, and whether the task repeats.
Microsoft Planner also enables you to involve your colleagues. To add team members to your plan, click on the “members” tab and start typing their names or email addresses. Team members have full access to add and edit tasks, contribute their ideas, and collaborate.
Click on the “create report” button in the Power BI ribbon to create a Power BI report from the Microsoft Planner tasks you’ve imported. This action opens the Power BI Report Editor, where you can drag and drop fields from the Microsoft Planner tasks table to create charts and visualizations.
You can customize your Power BI report in many ways, such as focusing on task completion rates, task durations, or task priorities. To do this, drag and drop fields into the “values” section of the chart or visualization. You can also filter data to only show tasks that meet certain criteria, such as overdue tasks or tasks assigned to a specific team member.
Click on any task in the chart or visualization to open the task details page, where you can view information including the task description, due date, and priority level. You can also add comments to the task or assign the task to a different team member.
Share your Power BI report with team members and other stakeholders by clicking on the “share” button in the Power BI ribbon. This will open the “share dialog” box, where you can enter email addresses for direct sharing. You can also set viewing and editing permissions for the report.
By embracing Power BI analytics, teams can improve their productivity, streamline collaboration, and achieve exceptional results. Let’s explore some of the ways businesses can improve performance with Power BI.
One of the key features of Power BI analytics is the ability to create customizable dashboards. Give your team a holistic view of project progress, track key performance indicators (KPIs), and make data-driven decisions. With a comprehensive overview of performance insights, teams can effectively manage projects and stay on track.
Power BI’s robust reporting capabilities help teams analyze resource utilization. By looking at resource allocation and utilization data, teams can optimize workflows, reallocate resources effectively, and ensure maximum productivity. Share these reports with stakeholders to create transparency, accountability and a single source of truth.
Seamless integration with Microsoft Teams is another powerful feature of Power BI analytics. This integration facilitates real-time collaboration and lets you assign tasks and adjust projects within the Teams platform. Teams, Microsoft Planner, and Power BI together improve productivity and keep everyone aligned on project requirements and progress.
Power BI’s data analytics capabilities allow teams to monitor task completion rates and analyze employee performance. Managers can recognize and reward high performers, while employees always know where they stand and where they’re making progress toward goals.
Tailor Power BI to specific project requirements, creating custom reports and dashboards that align with your objectives and workflows. Optimize workload and maximize productivity whether they’re using Power BI for FP&A, resource optimization, or project management. Custom reports and dashboards help teams focus on the most important metrics and insights for any given project.
Combining Microsoft Planner with Power BI helps companies streamline and simplify task and workflow management. With millions of global users already using Microsoft 365, integrating Planner with Power BI can be a seamless solution that improves the tools you’re already using.
Enterprise organizations not only need efficient task management; they also need to consolidate data that’s scattered across many platforms and tools. They need everyone working with the most up-to-date information to make the best possible decisions. By using Acterys to integrate Microsoft Planner with Power BI, organizations can consolidate their data into a centralized hub, providing a single source of truth for task management and reporting.
After you’ve connected these tools, there’s much more you can achieve with Acterys. It’s a comprehensive solution that helps organizations use advanced analytics, forecasting, and modeling capabilities to gain deeper insights into workflows and make data-driven decisions. Acterys also provides robust data governance features, ensuring data integrity and security at every step.
Want to see Acterys in action? Sign up for a free trial today to experience the seamless integration of Microsoft Planner and Power BI, take control of your data, and make it easier than ever to manage tasks.
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