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 Microsoft Edge browser, go to the Microsoft 365 home page, select Apps in the navigation pane, and then select Teams from the Apps menu.

  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 +New plan button.

  4. In the Create new window, select the Premium tile. Note the description that appears for this tile – “Timeline, goals, and new AI features.”

  5. In the Create a premium plan from scratch window, enter New organic snack line in the Name field. Leave the Add to a group field blank and select Create.

  6. In the Planner window for the New organic snack line plan, select the “Chat with your AI Project Manager agent” icon that appears in the bottom-right corner.

  7. The Project Manager agent pane that appears includes a Create prompt button, an Ask prompt button, several predefined prompts, and a manual prompt field. In this case, we want the agent to create a plan for Northwind’s new organic snack line, so select the Create button. Doing so inserts “Build a plan for” in the actual 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 Project Manager agent 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 to see if it created extra departments in your version as well. Feel free to add any tasks to each of 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 AI Project Manager agent if it can generate automated progress updates for stakeholders.

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

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

  13. After 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, then 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 AI Project Manager 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.