Category Archives: Microsoft Teams

The Evolution of Microsoft Project to Planner Premium

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TL;DR

  • Project Evolution: Project Server (on-premises) > PWA (SPO) > Project for the Web (Dataverse) > Planner Premium (M365+Dataverse)
  • Licensing: Planner Basic (included in M365) | Planner Premium (add-on P1, P3 or P5)
  • Customization: Currently supported for P1, P3 or P5 licensed users using Power Platform Microsoft Project Service Core solution in dedicated environments
  • Reporting: Use Power BI desktop client connecting to Dataverse tables
  • Teams Integration: Use Planner app for plans created in default environment (out of the box plans) & Project app for plans created in dedicated environments (customized plans)

Overview

Over the past few years Microsoft Project has been going through some major changes. Not just from a functionality perspective, but rather from an evolution, branding and re-platforming perspective. Microsoft Project has been one of the more challenging on-premises platforms for Microsoft to transform into a true cloud service. In this article I will review at a high level the re-platforming and evolution of the product into the service it is today and clarify some of the confusion around its branding and integration with Microsoft Planner and what Planner Premium really means.

Planner Premium on the Timeline view

Microsoft Project’s Transition to Project for the Web

For a full history of Microsoft Project, check out the Microsoft Project Wikipedia page.

The PWA era

In the early 2010s, along with the transformation of BPOS to Office 365 (O365), the predecessor to Microsoft 365 (M365), Microsoft started implementing Project Online as an O365 add-on service utilizing Project Web Access (PWA). PWA is essentially a SharePoint Online (SPO) site dedicated to hosting Project MPP files using a Project specific SPO site template. The site template includes pages and lists for things like projects, approvals, tasks, resources and reports.

PWA Landing Page

The idea was that Microsoft Project desktop client users would open the MPP files hosted in the dedicated SPO site and continue to work as they always have. Licensing was based on the on-premises licensing approach and didn’t change much. PWA is still supported today (as of 2025), and you will find that many current project management professionals are still using this approach.

Since most project management offices (PMOs) and project management professional were the typical heavy users of Microsoft Project, they tended to use Microsoft Project Server and were content to continue the use of Project’s on-premises implementations, even if they were hosting the files in SPO.

The Dataverse Era

In 2020, Microsoft moved to making Project Online a true cloud-based service and not just a holding area for MPP files in the cloud. They built a web application hosted at project.microsoft.com and re-branded that implementation as Project for the Web. You can find Microsoft’s features description on the What can you do with Project for the web? page and the service description on the What is Project for the Web page?. They used the Dataverse database in the Power Platform’s default environment as the backend storage for the service. You can find more on how to implement Project for the Web on the Microsoft’s Deploying Project page. You can find guidance on how to integrate Project for the Web and PWA on the Integrate Project for the web into your project management processes page. Also note that Microsoft also developed some Project for the Web accelerators which are documented at the Enhance your projects with the Project Management Office Accelerator page.

Before an organization gets a license for Project for the Web, they will get the following screen when visiting project.microsoft.com.

Project for the Web without a License

Once an organization enables & gets licensed for Project for the Web, a Power Platform solution called Microsoft Project Service Core gets deployed to Dataverse in the default environment automatically by Microsoft and your licensed users can start to make plans.

Project for the Web Landing Page

Notice the link at the bottom of the screen labelled “Go to Project Online ->”. This link will take you to the PWA page on SPO (where you can find previous MPP files hosted). This and Microsoft’s documentation refer to PWA as Project Online and Project for the Web isn’t Project Online. It’s important to note that it’s an evolution of the Project Online service offering, from cloud hosted projects (MPP files & associated pages/lists) to a true cloud hosted project management service application. Microsoft posted a page called Project for the Web and Project Online to help explain the differences. They also posted another page called Project for the Web and Project Online desktop client to explain how to use Project for the Web from the desktop client. A service description for Project Online, Project for the Web and the Project Online desktop client can be found at the Microsoft Project service description page. However, the rebranding doesn’t stop there.

Project for the Web’s Evolution to Planner Premium

Introduction of planner

Around the same time that Project for the Web was being rolled out, Microsoft added a new task management cloud service application called Planner hosted at planner.cloud.microsoft as part of the M365 suite of tool and was included as part of the standard M365 licensing scheme (not an add-on like Project for the Web). More information on managing Planner can be found on the Microsoft Planner for Admins page.

This application was targeted for project management “lite” scenarios. Scenarios where users don’t have or need deep project management capabilities and experiences. Of course, Planner and Project for the Web were seen by many as somewhat competing products, and it seemed that most of the new development was in Planner and not in Project for the Web. This added to the confusion already happening between Project for the Web and PWA. Not to mention that these weren’t the only Microsoft task management applications being offered either.

This year Microsoft is rebranding Project for the Web now as Planner Premium. The intent here is to consolidate the project management service offerings into one brand: Planner. The Planner plans that come with M365 are now called Planner Basic. The Planner Premium delineation is to designate that what used to be called Project for the Web is still going to be licensed as an add-on and are currently called Planner Plan 1, 3 & 5. You can find more details on each of these plans on the Compare work management offerings page.

The consolidation isn’t only about licensing, but also the interface as well. Below you can see that in the planner interface you can now create Planner Premium plans:

Planner Plans – Basic & Premium

Once you create these Premium plans, the feature set you will see will depend on the license assigned to you and will look like the first image in this post labelled Planner Premium on the Timeline view.

Integrations with the Power Platform Applications & other M365 Services

Non-Default Environments

Project for the Web solutions in the default environment have significant access limitations (generally read-only access) as the default environment is not intended as a development or custom solutions environment.

The Microsoft Project Service Core solution can also be deployed to Power Platform dedicated environments intended for development or hosting custom solutions. What this means is that you can provision Project for the Web plans using Dataverse tables in a dedicated environment where you have full control and can build other full control applications on top of the Project for the Web backend data. Users can still access all their plans on project.microsoft.com, whether the plan’s data is in the default or dedicated environments. More information can be found on the Deploying Project for the web page.

Dataverse & Power Automate

The backend data (whether deployed to the default and dedicated environments) is stored in Dataverse tables provisioned by the Power Platform’s Microsoft Project Service Core solution. This backend data is browsable if you have Power Apps maker rights. In addition, you can use the Dataverse connector in Power Automate to setup triggers and perform actions against the backend data in standard tenants (depending on tenant specific admin controls). Instructions to do this can be found on the following pages:

Power BI

Project reporting can be created in Power BI. Refer to the following pages:

Microsoft Teams

You can access all the flavors of plans and tasks in Microsoft Teams via all the following Teams apps.

TEAMS’ APPUSER CONTEXTCHANNEL CONTEXT
PlannerUsed to show all the plans and tasks the user is associated with from To-Do, Outlook Tasks, & Planner (including Premium plans) created in the default environment.Used to show a plan and tasks the team (M365 group) is associated with from Planner (including Premium plans) created in the default environment.
ProjectNot supportedUsed to show a plan and tasks the team (M365 group) is associated with from Project for the Web. This includes plans created in the default and dedicated environments.
SharePointNot supportedUsed to show a PWA site.

LIMITATIONS: Currently the Planner app only support Planner Basic & Premium plans and tasks created in the default environment. I would expect that plans and tasks created in dedicated environments will eventually be included, but not anytime soon.

Are we there yet?

As of the time of this post, the only significant or key limitation is the ability for Planner Premium to include with plans created in Power Platform dedicated environments in order to support plans that can be used with fully customizable applications and fully support Dataverse triggers and actions.

Related

  • Best practices for setting up Planner Premium plans…coming soon.
  • Configuring Power Automate triggers & actions for Project plans…coming soon.
  • Working with Dataverse choice fields in Power Automate…coming soon.
  • Provisioning Project plans in dedicated environment…coming soon.
  • To delegate or not to delegate, how best to provision M365 resources in Power Automate…coming soon.
  • Automatically adding Teams channel tabs for Project plans, Power BI reports & Lists…coming soon.

Create Multiple Edge Web Apps for each Microsoft Teams Guest Tenant

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Great article on creating profile distinct local apps via Microsoft Edge. You can use this approach for having separate multiple local apps for each tenant (whether you are a guest or have a host tenant identity).

This approach allows you to create apps not just for Teams, but any profile aware app.  For example I created ones for SharePoint, OneDrive, and PowerApps that exist in multiple tenants.

Finally, since this is done via Microsoft Edge, this means that you can do this in any Edge supported OS…I have done this in Windows, Android, and IOS.

https://tomtalks.blog/2020/03/create-multiple-edge-web-apps-for-each-microsoft-teams-guest-tenant

 

O365 Group created from Teams don’t show up in Outlook desktop and online

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Up until a few months ago, when I created a new Microsoft Teams team, it would also show me a mailbox and calendar for the underlying O365 group in Outlook 2016/2019 and OWA.  I then spent a lot of time baffled and trying to figure out what changed.

Finally I found the answer on a Tony Redmond post.  Clutch as usual, thx Tony!  The short answer was that Exchange Online has an O365 Groups setting called “HiddenFromExchangeClientsEnabled” that was used to be defaulted to false, but Microsoft changed it to default to true.

I get the rational…for most non-Exchange O365 services (Teams/Planner/others) default implementations/use cases (where there is no implemented governance controls on who can create a team/plan/etc.), users may not want/need or even understand that there is a mailbox tied to their new group when they create the team.  The problem is that there are many use cases where access to the mailbox was intended/needed.

The only current solution I found so far to this issue is to create the O365 group in Exchange/Outlook first and then when creating the Teams’ team, use the existing O365 group.  This however is a bit of a hassle and not at all practical in any organization where you want to allow users (non-IT staff) to create teams.

Others have proposed that Microsoft should allow the option to show the mailbox when creating the team in Teams (see User Voice post).  I agree with this, but also wanted to find a way to add this option as part of an automated controlled Teams creation/governance process.  Unfortunately other than using the Exchange PowerShell module, I haven’t found an API solution yet (including Graph/AzureADPreview).  If someone knows of or finds one, please hit me up!!!

If you are running into this issue as well and you want to use the Exchance PowerShell module for now, I found a few articles on the interweb, but Tony Redmond’s is the best explanation and Morgan TechSpace has the most concise directions.  Cheers.

 

Microsoft Teams / Skype for Business coexistence and interoperability

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For some time now Microsoft has made no bones about the fact that Microsoft Teams is the future replacement for Skype for Business (S4B).  In fact there isn’t much you can do in S4B that isn’t already in Teams today.

By default, you have S4B and Teams side by side and most organizations don’t change this at the onset.  Fortunately Microsoft has now published an article to Understand Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business coexistence and interoperability that can explain all the options on how this can work.  Note that best practices recommend a controlled rollout of Microsoft Teams, once a usage guidelines and governance strategy has been defined for the organization.

The issue that most organizations have is how to migrate their users over to Teams.  The default situation means that most users will continue to use S4B until they find the people they want to communicate with are already communicating on Teams.  At that point they will use both until all the people they communicate with are migrated.

This is generally okay as most organizations want some pilot or leading edge users to try it out before migrating everyone.  The trick here is that you may want to control who has access to Teams until you are confident or comfortable enough to migrate everyone.  This means a controlled rollout of Microsoft Teams, a topic intimately tied to how you manage Office 365 Groups and has been discussed and documented well in the last year.  Once the pilot is complete, then you can formalize a migration plan consistent with the usage guidelines and governance strategy.

QnA Maker

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Bots and AI are all the rage these days as the next technologies promising to improve productivity, build efficiencies and capabilities that don’t exist today, change how humans engage with technology, and change the world.

You can see these technologies in play today in Alexa, Google Home, Siri, and Cortana.  These technologies have been integrated into laptops, tablets, and phones.  These same technologies have also spawned whole new families of consumer devices such as the Amazon Echo and other personal assistant devices.  These Bots and AI will eventually be deeply integrated in every device, application, and service.

The most basic and common use of bots has been developing Question and Answer solutions, such as Knowledge Base information and FAQs.  You often see this in adds for the new class of personal assistant devices…”Alexa, what’s the weather tomorrow?”, “Google, who won the Super Bowl?”, “Siri, how far is the north pole?”.  In these cases, the knowledge bases are Search Engine results, which are queried, indexed based on relevance, and read/written back to the user.

The thing about bots is that they can outperform a search engine. Search engines don’t generally give you answers to questions. They give you the source of the answer to your question. You still have to read through the sources to find the answer.  A bot, on the other hand, can actually answer the question directly, providing a link to the source for reference.

As for Office 365 and other Microsoft applications and services, they released the Bot Framework for developers to integrate into their applications.  The first service that Microsoft natively integrated bots into was Microsoft Teams (using a variation of the Bot Framework). Rest assured that it wouldn’t be long before they are integrated into all of Office 365 and other Microsoft products (including SharePoint on premises) for basic application and service based questions.

What’s most important to businesses (i.e. Office 365 customers) however is that bots will allow employees to add frequently used, business relevant and critical knowledge bases to Office 365 (including Teams, SharePoint, Outlook, etc.).  This can all but solve the age-old findability problems for most of their business-critical content, resources, and other assets without employees taking the time to search and identifying relevant results.  This is a game changer for most businesses as they can see huge productivity gains!

Up to now, implementing the Bot Framework or bots into Office 365 requires a developer to implement a bot.  This is why most organizational bot development examples thus far have been FAQs.  Although developing bots allow for big capabilities and potential for business beyond Question and Answer problem, it is a too common use case to need development efforts at each organization.  Microsoft has recognized that re-inventing the wheel here for every organization isn’t wise and has come out with the “QnA Maker” (in preview) to address this common need.  It also allows organizations to start building bots without needing development projects.

With the QnA Maker, the time-consuming part is populating the list of questions and answers to start. Once it’s set up, it’ll be smooth sailing. And you’ll save massive amounts of combined searching time within your organization.

QnA Maker

I first learned about the ‘QnA Maker’ from the good people at BIZZY.  They have SPFx solutions to integrate bots into SharePoint Online, take a look…

Starting Microsoft Teams conversation on items from SharePoint list

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For as long as I remember, users have been asking for the ability to have conversations on SharePoint list items and documents.

And for years we have had not so good hacks to get this to work…Wiki Pages, Appending Comment Fields, Lookup Lists, SharePoint Newsfeed, Yammer, 3rd Party tools and Apps, and a ton of other kludgy solutions.

Finally Microsoft Teams comes to the scene and all of a sudden, you can have a conversation and tag a document from SharePoint or even embed the document in a conversation…Hallelujah!

But wait…What about SharePoint list items???

Well we still don’t have a simple coherent out of the box solution just yet.  However it looks like Microsoft didn’t ignore the problem.  It’ll take a little work, but a coherent solution is now here…

Starting Microsoft Teams conversation on items from SharePoint list

Best practices for user feedback methods in Microsoft Teams

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The adoption of a new collaboration experience is about changing the behavior of your users. Human change requires training, encouragement and positive examples. It is also critical for people to feel heard during the transition.

See also…