Featured Article: Microsoft Planner Redesign Rolls Out This Month - What Project Managers Need to Know
Course Spotlight: Project Scheduling Fundamentals with Microsoft Project
Video Tutorial: Custom 30, 60, 90 Day Lookahead Views in Microsoft Project
Live Event (10/7): Life After Project Online - A Community Roundtable
PM Best Practice: Tell Your Team Before the Interface Changes
Tuesday Brief: Microsoft is rolling out the redesigned Planner this month, and buried in the release notes is something more useful than a new look: Goals is moving into basic plans, so linking tasks to objectives no longer requires a procurement conversation. We've also pulled two things for anyone who wants to sharpen the scheduling side of the job, one that takes seven minutes and one in three lessons.
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Featured Article: Microsoft Planner Redesign Rolls Out in September 2026 - What Project Managers Need to Know
The refreshed Planner experience sits on the Microsoft 365 roadmap under ID 568791, with deployment beginning this month. It started reaching basic plans back in February, so September widens something already in motion rather than switching it on cold.
The interface work is real but modest: consistent navigation between Planner in Teams and Planner on the web, and responsive layouts that hold up from a docked monitor to a phone. The part that changes what you can do is Goals arriving in basic plans. That capability sat behind premium, and Microsoft has said no subscription upgrade is needed to reach it.
For anyone who has tried to show a sponsor how daily task work ladders up to something the business cares about, that traceability just got cheaper to build.
Course Spotlight:Project Scheduling Fundamentals with Microsoft Project
Eric Uyttewaal's three-lesson course is aimed at practitioners rather than beginners, and it takes a position: a schedule should be a forecast model, not a container for dates you typed in.
It covers the 4D approach of deliverables, durations, dependencies and deadlines, building dependency networks you can verify with filters and checks, Critical Path Method for compressing duration, and the Resource Critical Path once people rather than logic become the constraint. Members rate it 4.9 out of five.
Video Tutorial:Custom 30, 60, 90 Day Lookahead Views in Microsoft Project
Dale Howard, Microsoft Project MVP, builds filtered lookahead views from scratch so you can hand a stakeholder the window they asked about instead of the entire plan. It's the kind of change you make once and use every reporting cycle after that.
Live Event (10/7): Life After Project Online - A Community Roundtable
Erik van Hurck, Ira Brown, Nenad Trajkovski, Eric and Jeff Christoph, and Tim Runcie are confirmed, with more MVP guests possible. What makes the panel useful is that they did not all land in the same place. Between them they have moved organizations to Planner Premium, to Project Server Subscription Edition, and to Microsoft Project Desktop, and they will say plainly where each one hurt.
What You'll Learn:
Which destinations held up under real portfolios, and which created new problems
What migrating teams underestimated most often on time and effort
How reporting and integrations fared after the move, and what had to be rebuilt
Where the panel disagrees, and why your answer may differ from theirs
๐๏ธ Wednesday, October 7 ๐ 12:00pm - 1:00pm ET ๐ Live on Zoom ๐ 1 PMI PDU: Business Acumen
โLearn More + Register Hereโ โโ โMPUG members get live access and replays. Through September 30, your first year is $99 instead of $159, and past members can renew at $129. Join or Renew Today.
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September Membership Sale!
Through September 30, a first year of annual membership is $99 instead of $159. That includes live events, replays, and the full course catalog, including the scheduling course above.
First-time members use discount code: new2mpug
Returning members can renew at $129 using the code: mpugloyal26
PM Best Practice:Tell Your Team Before the Interface Changes
If your organization uses Planner, check which teams are on basic versus premium plans this week, since Goals availability and rollout timing differ between them. Then send a two-line heads-up before the new navigation appears.
