Copilot in Planner

The blank-plan problem in Planner is the same one Copilot solves everywhere else: turning a project description into a working structure faster than doing it task by task.

Where to find it

Create a new plan and look for the option to build it with Copilot, or open the Copilot icon within an existing plan. Describe the project — "launch a customer webinar in six weeks, covering content, promotion, logistics, and follow-up" — and Copilot proposes buckets (groupings of related tasks) and tasks within them.

What it does

Drafts a plan from a description. One prompt produces a starter structure: buckets like Content, Promotion, Logistics, and a set of tasks under each, often with reasonable due-date spacing relative to the timeline you gave it. This saves the blank-page problem, not the thinking — you still need to adjust it to your actual project.

Suggests tasks for an existing plan. Rather than starting from scratch, ask Copilot to propose additional tasks for a bucket that feels thin, or to break a large task into smaller steps.

Summarises plan status. On a plan with dozens of tasks across several people, ask "what's overdue?" or "summarise progress on the Promotion bucket" and Copilot reads the plan's current state — due dates, completion, comments — and gives a short readout instead of you scrolling every card.

Rewrite task descriptions. A task created in the middle of a busy meeting often ends up as two words and no context. Select it and ask Copilot to expand it into a clearer description based on what you tell it, so the person picking it up later isn't left guessing what was actually meant.

What it needs

A Microsoft 365 Copilot licence for the AI generation and summarisation features. Planner itself is included broadly across Microsoft 365 plans without needing Copilot. As with other Copilot surfaces, it only reads plans you already have access to, and follows the tenant's general Copilot settings rather than having a Planner-specific toggle.

Where it falls short

A generated plan is a reasonable starting skeleton, not a project manager's judgement — dependencies between tasks, realistic effort estimates, and who's actually available are things you still need to apply. Assignment suggestions are only as good as the names or roles you give it; Copilot has no visibility into someone's existing workload unless you tell it. And status summaries reflect what's recorded in Planner — a task that's actually done but hasn't been marked complete will still show as open.

Planner Premium adds project-management features (timelines, dependencies, custom fields) beyond what basic Planner and this Copilot integration cover — see Microsoft Planner Premium: getting started for that layer, and Microsoft Planner: tasks and Project for how Planner fits against Project for the web.

Frequently asked questions

Can Copilot create a whole plan for me, not just individual tasks?

Yes — describe the project and Copilot can propose a full set of tasks, grouped into buckets, which you then review and adjust before the team starts working from them.

Does Copilot assign tasks to people automatically?

It can suggest assignments if you give it names or roles to work with, but final assignment is something to confirm manually — Copilot doesn't know your team's actual capacity or who's already overloaded.

Will Copilot update task status by talking to team members?

No. It can summarise the current state of a plan based on what's already recorded (completion, due dates, comments), but it doesn't chase people or update status on its own.

Is this the Planner app in Teams or the standalone one?

Copilot features are rolling out across the unified Planner experience, which spans the Planner app, the Planner app in Teams, and plans embedded in a Teams channel — check current availability if a specific surface seems to be missing it.