Exercise 2, Task 3: Use the AI Project Manager agent in Planner to create a new project plan

Northwind Traders is preparing to launch a new line of organic snacks—a cross-departmental effort involving marketing, production, and sales. As the executive sponsor, you’re responsible for ensuring the project stays aligned with company goals and is executed on time. In this task, you plan to use the AI Project Manager agent in Microsoft Planner to create, organize, and monitor the product launch plan. This scenario highlights how executives can use Copilot to oversee complex initiatives, promote collaboration, and maintain visibility into progress without getting lost in day-to-day details.

[!IMPORTANT] Copilot in Planner first launched inside the Planner app in Microsoft Teams and has been progressively rolling out there. If you’re opening Planner on the web (planner.microsoft.com) or through older entry points, the Copilot button might not be present yet or it might require the plan to be set to Premium. For this training exercise, you should access the Planner app in Microsoft Teams.

Perform the following steps to complete this task:

  1. In your web browser, go to the Microsoft Copilot home page, select the App Launcher (grid icon) on the top-left corner, select More Apps, and then select Teams from the list of available apps.

  2. In the navigation pane in Teams for the web, select the View more apps (ellipsis) icon. In the menu that appears, select Planner if it appears in the apps window; otherwise, enter Planner in the Search box and then select Planner when it appears.

  3. On the Planner page, select My Plans in the navigation pane. On the My Plans page, select the + Create a plan button.

  4. In the Create a plan window, under Start from scratch, select the Premium plan tile. Note the description that appears for this tile – “Additional features for complex projects.” Select Create premium plan.

  5. In the Create a plan window, enter New organic snack line in the Plan Name field. Leave the Share with your group field blank and select Create premium plan.

  6. In the Planner window for the New organic snack line plan, select the Chat with Copilot icon that appears in the bottom-right corner.

  7. The Copilot pane that appears includes several predefined prompts and a prompt field. To have the agent create a plan for Northwind Traders’ new organic snack line, select the Build a plan for suggested prompt. Selecting it inserts Build a plan for into the prompt field at the bottom of the pane. Next to this text, enter a description of the plan you want the agent to create.

    For this task, enter the following text after Build a plan for: Northwind Traders' new organic snack line. The plan should include tasks for Marketing, Production, Logistics, and Sales departments. Assign deadlines, owners, and dependencies.

  8. Review the suggested project plan. In the Copilot pane, after Copilot’s note that it built the plan, select the Go to Board button. Review how the plan appears on the board. In our testing, the agent created other departments besides the ones mentioned in the prior prompt. Check whether it created extra departments in your version as well. Feel free to add any tasks to the columns on the board.

  9. Then select the Go to Goals button and review the results there. Make any adjustments as you see fit.

  10. Ask the Copilot agent if it can generate automated progress updates for stakeholders. The agent might respond that it can’t do that yet. If this happens, continue to the next step.

  11. Review the response. Note the suggested prompts that are displayed above the prompt field. Test out these prompts.

  12. Ask the Copilot agent to export a visual timeline of this project plan. You can then distribute this timeline to the Senior Leadership Team.

  13. If the agent generates the timeline, select the suggested prompt that tells it to provide a downloadable version of the timeline. If you don’t see this suggested prompt, enter this request manually.

    Does your version of Planner display the image or allow you to download the PNG file? At the time of this writing, our version of Planner didn’t include the image or download link. However, since the Copilot agent is a work in progress, this feature might be available at the time you perform this task. If so, download the timeline that was generated and save it to your OneDrive for use in Task 4.