Export and manage Planner custom template data

When users create custom templates in Microsoft Planner, the template data is stored as a file in SharePoint. This enables organizations to manage templates using existing Microsoft 365 group membership, permissions, compliance, and discovery capabilities.

This article explains where Planner custom templates are stored, how administrators can discover and manage them across the organization, and what to expect when exporting or copying template data.

What happens when a user saves a custom template

When a user selects Publish as template from an existing Planner plan:

• Planner creates a serialized template definition of the plan.
• This template includes the supported plan content selected during publishing, such as:
  • Goals
  • Buckets
  • Task notes
  • Task labels
  • Task attachments
  • Task checklists

Templates can be created from plans and shared with a specific Microsoft 365 group. Premium plans are not currently supported. Access to the template is restricted to members of the group. By default, external users cannot access or use the template.

Creating and editing templates outside of Planner

Because templates are stored as .plat files in SharePoint, users can create additional templates outside of Planner by authoring .plat files into a SharePoint document library, edit templates directly in SharePoint, and relocate templates to any folder in that SharePoint site collection.

Default storage location

Custom templates are stored in the group’s SharePoint site associated with the plan used to create the template.

Templates are saved to the following default location:

<Group SharePoint Site>/
    Shared Documents/
        Microsoft Planner/
            Planner – Custom templates/
                <TemplateName>.plat

Each published template is stored as a file with the .plat extension, which contains the serialized definition of the template used to create new plans.

Permissions and lifecycle

Custom template files and the folders that contain them inherit the permissions of the SharePoint site collection where they are stored and follow the same permissions and lifecycle as that site collection.

A template is independent of the plan it was created from. Deleting the originating plan does not delete the template, and the template remains available as long as its SharePoint location exists.

Copying or moving template files outside of their original folder may affect template usability due to permission inheritance or storage location changes.

Discovering templates across your organization

Users can locate Planner custom templates by using SharePoint search to find .plat files in the sites they have access to.

For example, users can search document libraries for:

*.plat

Template discovery is subject to the limits of SharePoint search:

• Discovery covers SharePoint site collections and Microsoft 365 group sites only. OneDrive for Business locations are not searched.
• Newly created templates may not appear immediately in search results.
• Templates become searchable after SharePoint indexing completes.