How to do project planning in Office 365 without MS Project
Organizations often refuse to buy MS Project licenses, forcing teams to rely on basic tools like MS Planner for complex schedules. This creates a terrible user experience because Planner lacks adequate resource management and time tracking features, making it nearly impossible to manage large budgets effectively.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Using alternative third-party project management tools like Smartsheet, Asana, or Monday.com
- 2Switching to Azure DevOps for development-focused workflows
- 3Combining Microsoft Lists and Power BI for custom reporting and Gantt charts
- 4Upgrading to expensive higher-tier licenses like Microsoft Project Plan 3 or 5
In their words
Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.
“Having spent 20mins using the basic, web-based version of this app, I'm sinking into a pit of depression.”source ↗
“Seriously though, where did everyone move onto for project planning in an Office365 dominated workplace? Help me out pls!”source ↗
“Everything out there refers to some older version of Planner or it's specific to Planner for Web vs Planner for Teams... it's a gigantic mess and a terrible user experience.”source ↗
“I got muppets trying to manage a schedule for an $18 million dollar program using MS Planner. All because the Org doesn't want to spend money on MS Project licences supposedly.”source ↗
“Go look at the dumpster fire that is time tracking in planner. I have no words.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
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- 7How do you keep track of clients, projects, deadlines, and follow-ups?