How to use Microsoft 365 PowerShell to manage Microsoft Planner licenses

Introduction

This article describes how to use Microsoft 365 PowerShell to manage licenses for Microsoft Planner.

Procedure

The management of Microsoft Planner licenses differs between the First Release experience and General Availability (GA). In First Release, Microsoft Planner is a top-level SKU, and licenses aren't assigned to users by default. Whereas in General Availability, Microsoft Planner is an available service under your main Microsoft 365 subscription, and licenses will be assigned to users by default. The following sections cover the First Release and General Availability scenarios. If you're in First Release and also see Microsoft Planner listed under your main Microsoft 365 subscription, you must use both methods.

First Release

Microsoft Planner requires licenses to be assigned to users before they can use the new Planner features. Therefore, it may be more convenient to use Microsoft 365 PowerShell if you have many users in your Microsoft 365 organization. This article discusses the prerequisites for using Microsoft 365 PowerShell to administer a Microsoft 365 organization, and it describes some options for assigning licenses to all users, to selected users based on metadata, and to selected users based on a list.

This article assumes that you're already using Microsoft 365 PowerShell to administer Microsoft 365. If you're not using Microsoft 365 PowerShell, see the following Microsoft website to make sure that you have the prerequisites to run the commands that are discussed in Connect to Microsoft 365 PowerShell.

The following command example assumes that you want to assign a license to all users. The cmdlet can be saved and executed as a .ps1 file. Or, you can run the script from the PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment (ISE), because this is a one-time requirement.

Connect-MsolService

$licenseObj = Get-MsolAccountSku | Where-Object {$_.SkuPartNumber -eq "PLANNERSTANDALONE"}

$license = $licenseObj.AccountSkuId Get-MSOLUser | Set-MsolUserLicense -AddLicenses $license

The license string will resemble <Contoso>:PLANNERSTANDALONE. In this string, the <Contoso> placeholder represents the name of your organization.

If you want to assign a license to a subset of users based on other metadata of the user record, you can add a Where-Object filter in the last line of the code. For example, if the Department field is populated and you want to assign a license only where the department name is "Support," you can use the following cmdlet:

Get-MSOLUser | Where-Object {$_.department -eq 'Support'} | Set-MsolUserLicense -AddLicenses $license

If you want to create a file that includes a list of users and then remove from that list the names of the users to which you don't currently want licenses assigned, you can use the following cmdlet:

Connect-MsolService

$licenseObj = Get-MsolAccountSku | Where-Object {$_.SkuPartNumber -eq "PLANNERSTANDALONE"}

$license = $licenseObj.AccountSkuId

Get-MsolUser | Select-Object Displayname, UserPrincipalName | `

Export-CSV -Path d:\ExportedUsers.csv -NoTypeInformation

# Edit the file d:\ExportedUsers.csv and remove users who shouldn't be licensed before you run the following command

Import-Csv -Path d:\Exportedusers.csv | ForEach-Object `

{ Set-MsolUserLicense -UserPrincipalName $_.UserPrincipalName -AddLicenses $license}

If you want to remove licenses from users, replace -AddLicenses with -RemoveLicenses in any of these scripts.

General Availability (GA)

After Microsoft Planner is GA, Microsoft Planner licenses are listed under your main Microsoft 365 subscription alongside services such as Sway, Office Online, Skype, and so on (depending on your subscription). You may already see this before GA if you're in First Release as we prepare for the GA release.

By default, the license for Microsoft Planner will be enabled for all users. You can use PowerShell to disable it if you prefer. For more information, see Disable access to services with Microsoft 365 PowerShell.

More information

For more information about how to use Microsoft 365 PowerShell to administer users and licenses in Microsoft 365, see the following Microsoft websites:

• Create user accounts with Microsoft 365 PowerShell

• How to use PowerShell to automatically assign licenses to your Microsoft 365 users