Publishing Planner Tasks to To-Do

Synchronize My Tasks from Planner to To-Do

Promised for Q2 CY19 in Office 365 Roadmap item 48624, the integration between Planner and To-Do is now rolling out (the option showed up in version 1.56.3 for the browser interface). The integration promises users can view, edit, and complete Planner tasks from To-Do, and that’s exactly what happens.

To enable To-Do to connect to Planner, set the Tasks from Planner slider in To-Do settings (Figure 1). Alternatively, accept the invitation to track tasks assigned to you in Planner that should appear in the lower left-hand corner of To-Do.

Enable Planner synchronization in To-Do settings
Figure 1: Enable Planner synchronization in To-Do settings

One-Way Traffic

The integration is one-way: Tasks assigned to a user in all plans in a tenant appearing in that user’s My Tasks list in Planner are synchronized to To-Do where they appear in the Assigned to Me list. All assigned tasks from all plans are synchronized, which means that the initial step to bring the tasks into To-Do can take a little time if, like me, you have hundreds of assigned tasks. Eventually, the synchronization completes and you can work with the Planner tasks (Figure 2).

Planner Tasks listed in To-Do
Figure 2: Planner Tasks listed in To-Do

To-Do does a good job of presenting Planner tasks in its interface. Some differences in nomenclature are obvious: Planner’s checklist for a task becomes steps in To-Do while a task description are shown as notes. Users probably won’t notice this because all they’re interested in is being able to work with tasks as if they were native To-Do items.

Some Compromises in Functionality

All integrations come with some compromises. In this case, you can work with tasks to:

  • Change the completion date for a task.
  • Mark a task as completed or mark a completed task as incomplete (but not mark a task as in-progress).
  • Add checklist items.
  • Update the task description.
  • Hide completed tasks.

To-Do synchronizes any updates back to Planner where they appear almost immediately. On the downside, you can’t use To-Do to:

  • Change the assignee(s) for a task.
  • Add an attachment (file or link).
  • Change the tab for a task.
  • Create new tasks.

If you need to perform these actions, click the Open in Planner link to open the task using the Planner app.

Planner in To-Do Mobile

To see Planner tasks in the To-Do mobile clients, you need version 1.56 of that app (Figure 3). The mobile app seems to be a little smoother than the browser client, which sometimes pauses slightly when moving from task to task.

Working with a Planner task in To-Do for iOS
Figure 3: Working with a Planner task in To-Do for iOS

Remember that you can also synchronize Planner tasks with Outlook. However, that integration is not as slick or easy to use as the To-Do integration is.


Planner is covered in Chapter 15 of the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.