What are Workback Plans in Planner and Teams?

Wedged between other new features on the planner blog, we read about “Workback Plans” in public preview. But not much more is shared, which is odd because it can be a cool feature. Well, there is an image, and a one liner with another link:

Workback Plan generation is now available in channels, helping teams quickly create reverse timelines based on a target deadline.

On the second page we get:

Workback Plans in Teams channels: Project Manager Agent and the Channel Agent together now support the creation of AI-powered Workback Plans, automatically generating a reverse timeline of tasks and milestones based on the target deadline and goal provided.

Asking the Channel Agent what it can do. Note: the channel is called Planner

Sufice to say, I had a couple of questions, so let’s dig in.

Prerequisites for Workback Plans

To work with this feature, a couple of licenses are required: Microsoft Teams license and Microsoft 365 Copilot license. In the article, there isn’t a mention of a Planner Premium license (Planner Plan 3 or 5). But I’m guessing that is also a requirement because the Gantt/timeline won’t show if you don’t have that.

You will also need the Channel Agent active in the Teams channel. This last step took me some back and forth between the IT admin to get aranged.

Find the Planner Agent in the Agents and bots menu inside the channel. — On a channel, select Agents and bots on the top right and add the <Channel name> Agent.

If there isn’t a channel agent yet, because you created the channel earlier, there’s a button to press that creates it for you:

Clicking Add will add the channel agent, with the name of the channel.

Now, if you aren’t seeing this button, you might be in the same situation I was in for a long time. I checked bassically all things I personally could check:

Did I have a Teams license – Check
Did I run a correct version of Teams, including the preview setting – Check (version: 26015.1702.4312.7010 in case you are wondering)
Did I have a M365 Copilot license – Check
Did I have a Planner Plan 5 license – Check
Could I create a Project Manager Agent plan (to check if I could create a plan) – Check
Was I allowed to create teams, channels and Loop components inside teams – Check
Did my admin allow Channel Agents to be created – uhmmm

Oke, so there I was, reaching out to my IT admin. I even found this very useful video from Laura Rogers describing exactly the setting that needed to be changed.

Change the teams administrator setting to allow channel agents in Teams. — The administrator settings as described by Laura Rogers.

And lastly, after failing to get channel agents in a channel again… ~~I found out that channel agents are only available from public channels!~~

Update: public channels aren’t required, but an additional action by the admin is needed: In the admin center I noticed it’s not showing the Teams icon for the channel agent. Add it to a team (red circle) and not it becomes available to other types of channels inside that team, but not the private ones.

Private channels aren't compatible with Channel Agents — Standard and Shared channels are compatible with Channel Agents. Private channels aren’t (yet)

Scenario before:

My agents and bots options before the channel agent setting was changed.

And the scenario after the change took effect:

The channel agent option is available from public teams channels only!

More info about channel agents — After clicking on the Add button the first time, a info screen shows up.

And a first greating from the agent once it’s succesfully added.

Let’s create a first Workback Plan in Teams

Now mind you, Workback Plans AREN’T created using the Project Manager Agent inside a already manually created plan inside a channel. Here’s what I get when attempting to create a Workback Plan just from a PMA chat:

The fact that it spaced the workback (space) plan suggests that it knows what it is supposed to do.

Let’s try that again but from a different angle, we need to use that Channel Agent, not the Project Manager Agent.

I’ve build a specific channel (that public channel) that revolves around migrating from Project Online to Projectum xPM. I added my lessons learned file and the questions that are relevant for such a migration. And I started a small discussion on the channel as well.

A short discussion and files help the channel agent build the Workback Plan.

And now, we ask the agent to create a Workback Plan for us:

@channel agent can you create a Workback Plan for the Project Online migration as mentioned here? Keep an eye out for the deadline on the 30th of September. This is an absolute deadline, and ideally I’d like to finish a month earlier just in case.

The channel agent responds with silence. — Speak to me agent… are you oke?

Oh wait, I should be less inpatient. After 2 minutes this shows up:

Let’s “Save to Planner”, which will change to “view in Planner” after the click.

Do you see the title? It remembered/used my prompt to be done a month before the absolute deadline! And, from these first tasks I can already see it’s using some of my documented best practices!

We have goals — It created goals that align with my documentation, prompt and chat.

We have tasks — It created a more detailed list of tasks with start and end dates.

we are in a basic plan :-( — And here I noticed it…

… oh no!

Workback Plans are created using the basic planner flavor (I recently recorded a video about the different flavors of Planner)!

And worse still, there doesn’t seem to be an upgrade to Premium option! That’s really too bad, because now we don’t see milestones, dependencies, resource assignments, baselines… should I go on?

Reverse timelines = backward scheduling?

In planning software (like Microsoft Project) you can plan chronologically, beginning-till-end. But you can also tell the software to work backwards, planning all tasks as late as possible, end-till-beginning.

I wrote about backward scheduling a while back, and it’s still a frequently visited article. The concept is solid, but requires a lot of thought to go into it, that’s why I opted for using deadlines instead.

The schedule from setting can be changed to Project Finish Date. This isn't however the same as the workback plan. — Reversing the “schedule from” setting. Now all task begin as late as possible.

But, Workback Plans aren’t the same!

The Workback Plan will build a schedule and base it on a deadline you state in the initial prompt. Or it will even grab the deadline from the conversation that was had in the channel regarding the prompt topic.

The tasks are all still scheduled As Soon As Possible (the default, and to my knowledge only mode in Planner).

Who is the target audience for Workback Plans?

While testing, I started to wonder who would be the main users of this feature? And it dawned on me that I should be excited for users that have little to know background in planning or Microsoft Project. The Workback Plan is our way to step away from the dreaded blank (schedule) page. As Generative AI is very good at giving you that first draft of “anything”.

I think seasoned scheduling experts will tend to use templates, or trust their own skills in designing a good schedule. More so, because we now know that no Premium features are available from these Workback Plans.

But for the people that need a schedule to get a “complexer than ususual plan” across it’s an excelent tool. Workback Plans will help them get started with a 80% done schedule, and the users will be able to amend or change specifics after the creation.

Future Improvements?

What does Workback Plans need to go from 80% to 95%? Well, that is clearly the request to have Workback Plans created using premium plans (if the user that requested it has a P3 or P5 license of course).

Who knows, maybe this will automatically happen based on what we saw last Ignite: the unification of all planner versions!

Final notes

I hope you enjoyed reading this article on the Workback Plans, the new feature in Planner and Microsoft Teams. I found other useful content related to channel agents, you might also like viewing/reading these:

If you’d like to get more, you could also subscribe to my newsletter or even book a meeting for a 1 on 1 to discuss a topic in detail.