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Best practices for creating and managing plans on Microsoft Learn

This article explains the best practices for creating and managing plans. If you're unfamiliar with plans, review the Overview of plans on Microsoft Learn article first.

Planning your plan

  • Identify the learning outcomes first. See both Learning Objectives and detailed guidance about writing learning objectives for help.
  • Write descriptive learning outcomes. Don't describe the technology or feature. For example, "create a canvas app using Power Apps," or "Permit and administrate in Power Apps".
  • Communicate the value of the plan to the learner with the Title and Description fields. For example, the title, "How to build your first app using Power apps" with the description "Learn how to Power Apps to build and deploy professional-grade apps easily using templates, drag-and-drop features, and prebuilt AI components."
  • Create milestones of content intentionally and use the descriptions to clearly communicate what the learner should expect in each milestone. For example, "Learn how to start building your app from data with Power Apps, edit properties, insert new items and screens and create actions."

Content & structure

  • New: Avoid plans that exceed 20 modules. Data analysis shows that plans over 20 modules have far lower completion rates than shorter plans. The sweet spot for plan length is between 10 and 15 modules. If your plan also includes learning paths, count the modules inside the learning paths in your total.
  • Thoughtfully add skilling content to the plan to ensure the content supports the plan description and milestones. Prioritize Learn modules over learning paths, as the data shows higher completion rates for shorter form content.
  • Recommend a reasonable milestone length. Each milestone requires that you provide recommended days for completion. We recommend that no milestone exceeds 14 days and that no plan exceeds 30 days. Learners may not go through the entire plan or each milestone in a single sitting as they may prefer to go at their own pace. Avoid creating a plan that exceeds 30 days. We want plans to be long enough to support the acquisition of skills and learning outcomes but not so long that most users do not complete the plan within the published timeframe.
  • Organize your milestones and content in a linear fashion so that each progressive milestone builds on the previous one.
  • Expect that our learners have about one hour available in a day for skilling, so consider setting the number of days in your plan to be about equal to the number of hours of training included in it.

Inviting learners and learning groups

  • When you invite learners, they receive an email that explains what plans are. You may also inform them that the email is coming.
  • Creating learning groups simplifies your reporting and allows you to see how learners within groups are completing their plans.

Next steps

To learn more about plans and how to use them, visit these articles: