I was recently asked how to report on resources in Planner Premium. And this got me thinking, could I do reporting on both planner (only cards and no hours/capacity) and Premium in one go?
Turns out you can, but… it takes some work to get there. Let me show you what to do, and at the end I’ll tell you where to get the template file.
Microsoft is accelerating the transformation of its project management offerings with a significant evolution of Planner set to take place between late April and early September 2025. For organizations invested in Microsoft’s project management ecosystem, understanding these updates is crucial for a smooth transition and to take advantage of new capabilities.
In this article, I will look closer at each of the upcoming enhancements to Microsoft Planner, highlight key migration changes, and clarify which features will not carry over from Project for the web.
I’m happy to share this new initiative I started!
Voices of the Neighborhood is a podcast where I talk with the Microsoft MVPs that work in The Digital Neighborhood.
Projectum, the company I work for, joined TDN a few years ago. And with that, we got access to so many great people.
And since I am not shy when it comes to sharing knowledge (blog, YouTube, newsletter 😉). I wanted to try my hand on a format I personally use on a daily basis: only audio format podcasting!
In this podcast, in each episode, I’m going to talk with one of our many (18 and counting) Microsoft MVPs. The podcast will probably be all over the place, spanning AI, Dynamics security, Intune, AR, and more. But, if you are a bit like me, you don’t mind getting interested in new topics.
So, for something completely different, take a look at the website for the podcast recordings to date:
The Voices of the Neighborhood Podcast
Or, you can even listen to the first episode (and others) right here:
My next guest is Magnus, from the sister company Delegate. I’ve always enjoyed my talks with him and look forward to the opportunity to dig into his work.
For some reason, I can’t get my profile picture in the right format to share it on the major podcasting platforms. So, the logo might change a couple of times in the near future while I figure out what to do.
But once I have that figured out, Voices of the Neighborhood will become available on the big streaming platforms as well!
Let me know if you listened in on the podcast and what you thought, I’m eager to learn.
A few years ago, I’ve shifted my attention from Project Online towards the modern “Model Driven Power Apps” solutions. And with this switch there’s a lot of new information to learn. One of the most steep learning curve was/is regarding the permissions structure of Model driven Power Apps.
This article is as much here to help you along the way when you are pressed to work with security topics in model driven power apps. As it is a reminder for myself on “how did that work again?”.
This is a more technical article than you might be used to on The Project Corner, and I can fully understand if this is not something to your taste. Please, take some time to explore the other articles on the site.
From Copilot to Commander: Redefining Business with Generative AI by Aki Antman and Rozzyn Boy is a fascinating exploration of how AI is transforming the business landscape. As someone who works for the same company as the authors (The Digital Neighborhood), I found their insights particularly relevant and inspiring. The book takes a birds-eye view on the complete AI landscape. And don’t be fooled by the title, the book covers more than just Generative AI. Let’s dive into the review of this lovely 158 page book.
Microsoft recently improved Planner by adding new features to the baseline! You can read the official documentation here, but hey, why not stick around and read my opinion on the topic first? I’ll add the link again down below so you won’t even have to scroll back 😉.
Sidetracked a bit, but does Dall-E know what a Gantt chart is? Let’s see: “Create an image of a gantt chart, include baseline and milestones as well as a critical path”
I asked it to improve, and the result is at the end of this post. Let’s get back to the topic at hand.
I’m very happy about this, and you might already be aware of the baseline articles on the blog. I’m a bit of a Baseline fan boy.
So, I was delighted when the topic came up while I was testing out a new GPT prompt. The prompt was tasked to help me draft new YouTube videos. I copied the URL of the last Planner blog article without looking and the result was a script about baselines!
Oh and… drum roll please… this is also available on named orgs! So your project accelerator (or Power PPM) is also updated.
Planner with premium features (available for users with a Planner Plan 1, 3 or 5 license) will now have 3 2 additional features added to the schedule baseline:
Closer inspection of my reporting quest turned out that there wasn’t an improvement on reporting.
The baseline comparison side pane is in a much better shape than we used to have. Now we get a full list of variances that we can use to analyse the status of our project:
The best thing about this side pane is the clear distinction between things that are on track or behind. In the case where I’m doing better than the baseline I will also get a green indicator telling me the variance in a positive way.
I’m a bit surprised that none of these fields got a spot on the project information page. To me, it would make sense if we added at least the effort and finish date variances to the main project information pane.
On the Baseline side pane there’s a new tab called the Spotlight. It contains 3 useful new values to use in your baseline vs current schedule comparison: Critical path variance, upcoming tasks, Overdue tasks. And there is a button available to compare all tasks.
The compare all tasks feature is the closest thing to a Tracking Gantt we currently have. Clicking on the button will add 3 new columns to your grid that are NOT available using the + Add column option.
The visualisation on Finish variance is great. I’d hope they will also provide the other variances from the baseline details on the task level soon.
There’s a hide baseline button that let’s you remove the 3 columns again. But there is no show baseline button if you’ve clicked on it (meaning that you will first have to click on baseline and then on compare all tasks again).
Last time we looked at the baseline for Planner premium (or Planner, with premium features or Project for the web) we didn’t have Power BI access to the baseline tables.
We still don’t:
Are we done? Do we have parity with MS Project or Project Online? No, there are still items on my wish list when it comes to good support for the Project Managers and the PMO.
The 3 biggest things on that list are:
Here’s that link again to the official documentation. Thank you for sticking around. I’m happy with the improvements from Microsoft, it’s definitely a step in the right direction. It’s still not “there” yet though.
And I hope Microsoft keeps improving the solution until we have something closer to MS Project (and better) to show.
If you like my article, you might also like the feature release video’s I do on my YouTube channel. And my bi-monthly newsletter is coming up again soon.
This was my last attempt to get a decent Gantt chart out of ChatGPT btw:
Well well ChatGPT, I think I’m not out of a job just yet…
Wow! I was looking through my stats the other week. And I found out that this is Blog Post number 200!
Nope, ChatGPT is still not able to follow prompts to the letter when it comes to image creation. The initial prompt was “Create an image, of a 42 year old white male, sitting at a desk happily writing blog articles. A big “200!” sign floats on top of the image”
Continue reading Post #200, it’s been a journey!