Copilot Mastery
Pro+
~9 min read
Updated · August 2026
Assign the task. To nobody.
Planner Agent is the first Microsoft agent that shows up in your project plan as an assignee. You give it a task the same way you'd give one to a colleague, it works, and the task lands in a review queue. That single design decision — work goes to Ready for review, not to Done — is what makes it usable on real projects.
01 Where it lives now
Planner Agent runs in two places, and people routinely confuse them. There is the agent built into the plan — task assignment, status reporting, task generation from goals — and there is the Planner Agent chat experience inside Microsoft Copilot, which you add from the Agent Store. This lesson is about the first one, because that's where the work happens.
It is available in all premium plans and all basic plans, in both cases shared with a Microsoft 365 Group. In shared basic plans it is enabled by default for Microsoft Copilot-licensed users; in shared premium plans it is enabled by default too.
Licensing, plainlyYou need a Microsoft Copilot licence to access Planner Agent at all. Add a Planner Plan 1, Planner and Project Plan 3 or Planner and Project Plan 5 licence and you get premium functionality on top. People without a Copilot licence can still collaborate on the plan — they just can't interact with the agent or assign it anything.
02 Assigning work to it
Open a plan shared with a Microsoft 365 Group. A private plan isn't in scope — the group share is the requirement.
In a basic plan, use the floating action button in the bottom-right of the plan to reach the agent. That panel is also where you upload files as Knowledge sources, which is how you stop it guessing.
Assign a task to Planner Agent. Note what happens next: you get assigned to that task as well, so its progress stays on your radar rather than disappearing into a robot's queue.
Watch Board view. Set Group by to AI agent tasks and the board reorganises around the agent's progress.
Those Board view buckets are the whole operating model in four labels:
| Bucket | What it means | Your move |
|---|
| All pending tasks | Not assigned to the agent | Decide what's delegable |
| Assigned to Planner Agent | Handed over, not started | Nothing — wait |
| Couldn't complete | The agent needs more information | This is your real queue. Answer it or reassign |
| Ready for review | Execution finished | Review before it counts as done |
“Couldn't complete” is the bucket that decides whether this tool works for you. An agent that stalls silently is worse than no agent; one that tells you exactly what it's missing is a colleague. Check that column on a cadence, the same way you'd check a blocked ticket.
03 Status reports that write themselves
The Reports tab is the feature most likely to pay for the licence, and it has a hard gate: your plan needs at least 10 tasks before you can generate one.
Set the reporting period — last week, last two weeks, last month, or last quarter.
Choose your sections from the Report sections menu, and use Show more options to steer it: “Create a comprehensive update on high-priority items for the leadership team.”
Pick a length — Concise, Standard or Detailed — then Generate report.
Keep it or discard it. The report appears in a Loop canvas with an in-app notification, and you explicitly choose to save or delete. Nothing is published behind your back.
Share as newsletter if it's going to a wider audience — it publishes as a SharePoint newsletter.
Every Loop file the agent creates, reports included, is stored in the SharePoint site of the plan's associated group. That is a governance fact, not a trivia fact: your AI-generated status reports inherit that site's permissions, retention and eDiscovery. Check who can read that site before the first executive report lands in it.
04 Goals, and the premium line
The Goals tab is premium plans only. There you generate a task list for each goal, and use the built-in file picker to add resources as context so the agent's output is grounded in your material rather than its assumptions. Task generation from goals does not exist in basic plans — if a demo you saw featured it and your plan can't do it, that's why.
A two-week Planner Agent trial that proves something
- Week 1: pick one shared plan with at least 10 tasks. Upload the two documents that explain the project as Knowledge sources.
- Assign the agent three genuinely delegable tasks — research, drafting, summarising. Not decisions.
- Check Couldn't complete daily. Log what it asked for; that list tells you how good your project documentation really is.
- Week 2: generate a status report for the last two weeks at Standard length. Compare it to the one a human wrote.
- Confirm where the Loop files landed and who can see them.
- Decide the only question that matters: did it save more time than it cost to review?
Planner Agent pairs naturally with Channel Agent — one holds the plan, the other holds the conversation. And both sit under the approval pipeline described in the Agent Store and Agent Registry.
Up next in Copilot Mastery
SharePoint agents
The agent that only knows your documents — and answers strictly within the asker's permissions. Read the lesson →
Questions people ask
Straight answers
What licence do I need for Planner Agent?
A Microsoft Copilot licence gets you access. Adding a Planner Plan 1, Planner and Project Plan 3, or Planner and Project Plan 5 licence unlocks premium functionality. Users without a Copilot licence can still collaborate on plans but cannot interact with the agent or assign tasks to it.
Is Planner Agent the same as the Project Manager agent?
Planner Agent is the current name for the in-plan agent that assigns tasks, generates tasks from goals and writes status reports. Microsoft also documents a separate Planner Agent chat experience inside Microsoft Copilot, which you add from the Agent Store — the two are related but not the same surface.
What happens when I assign a task to Planner Agent?
The agent takes the task, and you are assigned to it as well so you can track progress. In Board view you can set Group by to AI agent tasks, which sorts work into All pending tasks, Assigned to Planner Agent, Couldn't complete, and Ready for review.
Why can't I generate a status report?
The most common reason is task count. Your plan needs at least 10 tasks before the Reports tab will generate a report. You can then set a reporting period of last week, last two weeks, last month or last quarter, choose report sections, and pick Concise, Standard or Detailed length.
Where do Planner Agent's reports get stored?
All Loop files the agent creates, including reports, are stored in the SharePoint site of the plan's associated Microsoft 365 Group. That means they inherit that site's permissions and governance, which is worth checking before executive reports start landing there.
Can I use Planner Agent in a basic plan?
Yes. Planner Agent is enabled by default in all shared basic plans for Microsoft Copilot-licensed users, reached via the floating action button in the bottom-right of the plan, where you can also upload files as knowledge sources. Task generation from goals, however, is premium-only.
Can I give Planner Agent my own documents as context?
Yes. In basic plans you upload files as Knowledge sources from the agent panel. In premium plans the Goals tab has a built-in file picker for adding resources as context, which Microsoft says produces more accurate and contextually relevant responses.