Microsoft has released a new app, the Office 365 Planner, for people on the First Release testing program. The app works as a collaboration tool in which employees can work as a team, each sharing plans, files, updates on projects, chatting in real-time and assigning work to each other.

Planner works by making use of Boards and Cards to arrange how work can be done. When you start a new project you have a Board, and within that project there will be many smaller jobs to be done; these are all the Cards. Each Card will include things like deadlines, progress reports, attached documents and anything else relating to the task. If something happens within the Board you are involved with, you will receive an email notification to say so.

All this is integrated with other Office products so Word documents, for example, can easily be attached to your Cards. OneNote has also been integrated with Planner, so every Board already comes with its own notebook. Another feature is The Hub; here you can see how many assignments have been given to a certain individual and how much progress they have made on those assignments.

Microsoft says that admin on the First Release testing program will get an email first with instructions on how to set up an account, and then later other users can use the Planner after launching it in the Office 365 app launcher.

The app is available on: Office 365 Enterprise E1, Office 365 Enterprise E3, Office 365 Enterprise E4, Office 365 Enterprise E5, Office 365 Education, Office 365 Education E3, Office 365 Education E4, Office 365 Business Essentials and Office 365 Business Premium. There are some plans left out here but it’s likely only because Microsoft is looking for feedback before it makes Planner more widely available.

Photo credit: Microsoft