Planner premium 1 task capabilities

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Planner premium 1 task capabilities

Joanne Almayah 20

I recently upgraded and am testing different capabilities within the premium version.

Comments in tasks: The free version you were able to add a comments section to tasks, in the upgraded 1 level up premium version, there's no comments section. Is there way to add this back in?

tagging in tasks: Are we able to tag different team members within the same plan or company to review a task by tagging them directly in the task itself?

Channels for tasks: There's a feature where you can create a channel pertaining to specific tasks however how does this work? Every time i try to test it and create one, it just takes me to teams without creating an actual channel or chat pertaining to that task i tried creating it from. Does a channel need to be created first in order for this to work? Would this mean hundreds of channels for every day tasks? I'm trying to understand the functionality of this new feature before introducing it to my team.

Thanks

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Answer 1

Anonymous

Hi @Joanne Almayah

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A forum.

Thank you so much for taking the time to sharing your situation.

I really appreciate that you’re testing the Premium capabilities first before introducing them to your team. That’s a smart approach, because the Premium experience changes where collaboration happens compared to the classic (Basic) experience.

Below is a clear breakdown of each item, plus the most practical setup to make it work smoothly for your team:

1/ Comments in tasks (why you don’t see the Comments box)

In the current Planner experience, comments behave differently depending on the plan type:

Basic plans: comments are written directly inside the task card in Planner (traditional “Comments” box).
Premium plans: Microsoft’s intended approach is to handle task discussion through Teams conversations linked to tasks.

At the moment, there isn’t a way to “turn back on” the classic in-task Comments box for Premium tasks. Instead, discussion is designed to happen in the Teams conversation associated with the plan/task.

How to discuss a Premium task (expected workflow):

Ensure the plan is connected to a Teams channel (see section 3 below).
Open the task details.
Use the Conversation option (e.g., “Open in channel”) to post and reply in Teams.

You can find more details here:

Practical recommendation:

If your team needs comments directly on the card: keep that workflow on a Basic plan.
If you want Premium features (dependencies, custom fields, etc.) and discussion: use the Teams conversation thread model.

2) Tagging team members inside a task (@mention / notifying someone to review)

You can notify specific people, but the best experience is usually through Teams:

Inside Planner task details: Planner’s “classic comment @mention” behavior is limited.
In the Teams conversation thread for the task: you can @mention individuals (and they’ll receive notifications in Teams).

Since Premium task discussion is designed to happen in Teams, you can use Teams @mentions in the task’s conversation thread:

Type @ before a name to notify them, and Teams will alert them in Activity.
You can also mention @<team name> or @<channel name> (if enabled by the Team owner).

This keeps the review request visible, trackable, and properly notified.

Best practice for “review” requests

Assign the reviewer as an additional assignee (so it shows on their task list)
Then in the task’s Teams conversation, post: “@Name can you review this by EOD?” (they get a clear notification).

3/ “Channels for tasks” (why it opens Teams but doesn’t create a new channel/chat)

That option is not meant to create a brand-new Teams channel or a new chat for every task. Instead, it’s designed to route task discussion into an existing Teams channel where the plan is hosted (usually via a Planner tab).

Recommended setup (so task conversations work correctly)

In Microsoft Teams, go to the channel where your team collaborates (example: “Operations” or “Project X”).
Click the + (Add tab) at the top of the channel.
Add Planner as a tab and select your Premium plan (or create it there).

Once the plan is hosted in a channel, task “conversation” actions can correctly post into that channel’s conversation area (as a thread).

I hope this information is useful. As other users will also be searching for guidance in this community, clicking “Accept Answer” would be a wonderful way to amplify your impact. Your action not only helps others with similar questions find the right solution faster, it also highlights your role in shaping a more helpful and informed community.

Thank you again for your time and for raising this important usability concern. If you have any further questions or need additional assistance, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

I look forward to your thoughts on this.

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable email notifications if you want to receive notifications related to this thread.

Joanne Almayah 20 Reputation points

2026-02-20T19:43:53.6466667+00:00

Hi,

Thank you for the detailed response this definitely helps. I have to say, it's VERY disappointing to upgrade a plan only to find out a feature like 'comments' in the task itself is removed. It is actually an extra step, and annoying to have to then create a conversation in teams to discuss a task, when you could simply @ someone in the comments to review said task. I hope this feature is revised and considered in near future upgrades.

That being said - i followed your instructions regarding question 3 (channels/tasks) and nothing is happening. I've attached a screenshot for a visual example of the issue i'm running into:

I created a new board to test the premium features compared to the free board. It's called 'PREMIUM' - went into teams and created a channel for the team i would like this board/workflow to pertain to. In this case, it's the marketing team. After creating a channel, i go to select the name of the existing board as i want to link it to the new channel and nothing comes up. I can't find it. How do i solve this issue?

I am also curious, once linked - and i select a specific task to start a conversation about - will everyone in that group be notified? or just the assignees to the specific task? I want to know if this will cause bombardment or a chaotic layout which we may want to avoid using. Thanks.
Anonymous

2026-02-20T23:46:20.2733333+00:00
Hi @Joanne Almayah

Thank you for taking the time to explain everything so clearly.

Being able to @mention someone directly inside a task was incredibly convenient, and I agree that having to start a separate Teams conversation adds unnecessary steps.

I truly wish I could resolve this directly for you. As a forum moderator, I don’t have the ability to modify Planner features or make changes on the product side, and I’m really sorry for the inconvenience this causes. What I can do is make sure your feedback gets to the right place.

However, I strongly recommend submitting this scenario as official feedback through the Microsoft 365 Feedback Portal. This is the most effective way to ensure your experience reaches the Planner engineering team and is considered for improvements.

Once you’ve submitted your feedback, feel free to share the link here. I’ll gladly upvote it to help bring more visibility to your request.

Regarding your question about task-related conversations, you can refer to the following information:

When you start a conversation on a task in a channel, the message becomes part of that channel’s conversation. This means everyone in the channel can see it, not just the task assignees.

If your goal is to avoid overwhelming the entire group with notifications, that’s something to consider before relying heavily on channel-based task chats.

Lastly, if my response helps clarify what’s happening and how to move forward, please consider marking it as the Accepted Answer. That will help other community members who are running into the same issue discover the guidance more easily.

Thank you again for your time and thoughtful feedback, it truly helps highlight areas where the product experience can be improved.
Joanne Almayah 20 Reputation points

2026-02-23T14:38:30.98+00:00

Thanks for your response. Makes sense.. You just didn't answer my question regarding the channel not linking to the board. Does the channel need to be created before the board in order for the conversation to show up in the channel? Because I created the channel after the board, and nothing is happening or popping up for me. Please see my previous post regarding this (where the screenshot is). This is the most important thing I need help with right now so that i am able to decide if this functionality is worth spending more time on.
Anonymous

2026-02-23T23:18:48.2466667+00:00
Hi @Joanne Almayah

Thank you so much for your patience while we worked through this.

I understand how important it is for you to confirm whether the Planner board can connect to your Teams channel before you invest more time into building everything out, and I appreciate you bringing this back up.

I took another careful look at the details you shared, including your previous message and the screenshot, and I want to give you a clear and direct answer:

When using Planner inside Microsoft Teams, the channel needs to already exist before the board is created in order for conversations or task updates to appear inside that channel. Since your Planner board was created first and the channel was added afterward, Teams isn’t able to retroactively link the two together. That’s why you’re not seeing any updates or posts show up in the channel now.

I know this behavior can feel limiting, especially when you're testing out the functionality and deciding whether it fits your workflow. To help you move forward, here are the options available:

If you want the board to post updates into the channel: You would need to create a new Planner board from inside the channel and rebuild the tasks there. This ensures the board is fully connected to the channel’s conversation feed.

If you'd prefer to keep your existing board: You can still add it as a tab in the channel for quick access, but it won’t be able to post updates or comments into the channel since that link wasn’t created at the start.

I hope this clarifies things for you.

Thank you once more for taking the time to share your feedback. Should anything else come up or if you need further assistance, I’m here and happy to help.

Wishing you have a wonderful day.
Joanne Almayah 20 Reputation points

2026-02-24T14:57:53.86+00:00
Hi Hani,

Thanks for confirming. That's very helpful because i was losing my mind trying to figure out what i was doing wrong when following youtube tutorials on how to link channels to boards and my board wasn't appearing in 'existing plans'.

Since it is a new board, i could create a new one from scratch to make sure it links but i have to be sure it would be worth doing so.

can you please reconfirm the following:

If i were to indeed link the channel to the new board:

will everyone get notified every time someone 'starts a conversation' from a task? or will it only notify those that are assigned to said task? I want to be sure we won't be bombarding a whole team for every single task that not everyone is working on if that makes sense.

would it be better to create sub-teams or chats (not sure what they're actually called) within a channel instead? My only concern is how do people then work cross functionally within the greater team? i.e. We are a marketing team, and within marketing we have a digital team, content team and operations/automations team. If operations were working on something alongside digital - would we able to go if i create sub teams/chats within a channel? I'm basically trying to get around having the comments section that was available in the free version - how would we work on specific tasks cross functionally with the way channels and boards are set up now?
Anonymous

2026-02-24T22:51:31.6433333+00:00

Hi @Joanne Almayah

I hope you are doing well.

In Planner Premium, the classic in‑task Comments box is removed and replaced with Teams‑based task conversations, which means discussion now happens through the linked channel rather than inside the task itself. Because of that shift, linking your Premium board to a standard Teams channel is important; otherwise, the board won’t appear under Existing plans, and the task conversation feature won’t activate properly.

Once the board is correctly linked, notifications stay controlled, because task assignments still notify only the assignees, not the whole team. Meanwhile, when someone starts a conversation from a task, it simply creates a channel thread, and who gets notified depends on each person’s Teams channel‑notification settings, meaning only people who follow the channel, participate in the thread, or are directly @mentioned will receive alerts. This makes it easy to avoid overwhelming the entire team, especially if you keep broad mentions like @team or @channel for rare, truly relevant situations.

With this setup, you also don’t need separate teams or dozens of channels. You can keep one Marketing team with a few well‑structured channels (Digital, Content, Ops) and still collaborate smoothly across functions by using @mentions inside the task’s conversation thread. This lets Digital + Ops + Content coordinate on the same task without cluttering the workspace, while keeping notifications focused only on the people who actually need to take action.

Here’s resources that provides more insight:

Create tasks from Teams chats or channel posts - Super Simple 365

How to Create Tasks in Microsoft Teams 2026

How to assign tasks in Microsoft Teams channels?

Please note that this information is being provided by the moderator solely for your convenience. The referenced sites are not managed or overseen by the moderator, and therefore we cannot guarantee the accuracy, security, or suitability of any software or content available there. We recommend reviewing all information carefully and ensuring you understand any associated risks before following suggestions from the provided link.

I hope this information is useful. If you have any further questions or need additional assistance, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Wish you have a great day.

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Planner premium 1 task capabilities

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