Microsoft Planner

Microsoft Planner is a lightweight Kanban-style task-board tool built by Microsoft and bundled into Microsoft 365. It sits around #19 among collaboration tools at roughly 2.9% usage share — modest globally, but common inside large enterprises already paying for Microsoft 365. Teams use it because it's already there: it plugs directly into Teams channels, Outlook, and SharePoint without adopting another vendor or bill.

Example

Planner tasks are managed through the Microsoft Graph API. This request creates a new task on an existing plan bucket — the same call Teams itself makes when you add a task from a channel tab.

# POST https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/planner/tasks
# Header: Authorization: Bearer <access_token>
# Header: Content-Type: application/json

{
  "planId": "xqQg5FS2LkCp935s-FIFm5cAFkHM",
  "bucketId": "IK8CEBn3s0-Aq9DLcvE_j5cAFYq2",
  "title": "Review Q3 launch checklist",
  "assignments": {
    "8b081ef6-4792-4def-b2c9-c363a1bf41d1": {
      "@odata.type": "#microsoft.graph.plannerAssignment",
      "orderHint": " !"
    }
  }
}

Getting started

If your organization already has Microsoft 365, go to tasks.office.com (or the Planner app inside Teams), sign in with your work account, and create a new plan. To automate task creation, register an app in Azure AD and call the Graph API with delegated Tasks.ReadWrite permission.

# get an access token (client credentials flow) then call Graph
curl -X POST https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/planner/plans \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"owner":"","title":"Website Redesign"}'