Guest access in Microsoft Planner

Applies To
Microsoft Planner

Guest access in Microsoft Planner lets you and your team collaborate and participate with people from outside of your organization by granting them access to view and interact with your plan. Guest users can create and delete buckets and tasks, edit task fields, and edit the plan name. If you grant the guest user additional permissions, they can also attach a file or link to a task. Guest users will also receive some of the notifications associated with your plan.

Note

Planner email notifications for task assignments are not supported for guest users.

How it works

Planner builds on the Microsoft 365 groups guest access feature. If Microsoft 365 Groups guest access is turned off, you won't be able to add guest users to plans. For more information, see Guest access in Microsoft 365 groups.

  • Step 1 A group owner adds a guest to the group.

    Note

    To find the group associated with a plan, go to outlook.com, and in the Folders pane, scroll down to the Groups folder and find your plan name.

  • Step 2 The invited guest gets a welcome email from the group. If they don't already have a guest account with the organization, they need to accept this invitation to create one. In the welcome email, under Read group files, select the Access files link and following the instructions to create a guest account.

  • Step 3 To access a plan, guests either need to use a specific plan URL or go to https:⁠//planner.cloud.microsoft/[organizationdomainname]. You can find the organization's domain name in any non-guest user's email address; for example: nonguestuser@organizationdomainname.com. The general Planner URL, https:⁠//planner.cloud.microsoft/, takes non-guest Microsoft 365 users to Planner, but won't know from the guest user name which organization they want to sign in to.

  • Step 4 The guest can leave the plan at any time using a link at the bottom of each email and calendar invitations.

Permissions

The following table summarizes what group owners, plan members, and guests can and can't do.

Task Non-guest owners and members Guest user members
Create tasks and buckets Yes Yes
Edit task fields Yes Yes
Attach a file or link to tasks Yes Yes. However, an admin must allow it through the Microsoft 365 Groups settings. For more information, see Allow guests to be added to all Microsoft 365 groups.
Invite guest users Yes No
Comment on a task Yes Yes
Create a plan Yes Yes
Delete a public plan Yes No
Delete a private plan Yes. Group owners only. No
Add members to a public plan Yes No
Add members to a private plan Yes. Group owners only. No
Edit plan name Yes Yes
Edit public plan settings Yes No
Edit private plan settings Yes. Group owners only. No
View public plans Yes Yes
Join public plans Yes No