I'm retiring, said Project for the web

Welcome to episode # 18 in this continuing saga of Planner premium knowledge search. Like last week I woke up drawing a blank about what I would post and today was the same even after the quad shot of espresso. Given the retirement of Project for the web (P4W) is fast approaching, I thought it'd be good to do a Public Service Announcement about that.

First off, welcome to a few new subscribers and thanks to each of you for joining this intimate club of Planner premium users.

If you're not using P4W, or you're reading this after September 2025 and you're not a historian, then as our amazing granddaughter says "Nothing here, move on!"😂

Well, OK there are other tidbits of info that you might find interesting in this post so keep on reading. Speaking of Historians...

If you're retired or have some spare time to do some reading, Microsoft Research released a 41-page "Working with AI: Measuring the Occupational Implications of Generative AI" in July which highlighted the occupations that AI is likely to be applicable to – replace? – and check out which one of those is second on the list:

I thought I might not be able to use Planner this morning since my trial subscription ended. I logged into the Microsoft 365 admin center, and this made me smile as I'd forgotten that I changed the admin username.

Even though my trial expired, I can still access the plans and that's kind of nice, so thanks Microsoft!

Retirement is such a major life event. Just last night, our neighbour's mom was outside and told us "I retired today!". She'd worked at the same company for 25 years 😮. The company told her on the day of her retirement that they're sending her to a tradeshow in Chicago, a show that she'd never been to. She'll be able to say goodbye to all of the suppliers that she's worked with during her time there.

OK, enough pre-ramble, let's talk about a different retirement. Not hers or yours, but rather P4W's.

I'm retiring

P4W has only been around for 6 years and Microsoft officially announced that, starting August 2025, it as well as the Project and Roadmap apps in Teams will be retired.

At a high-level, a large part of this change is simply a rebranding from the Project's green coloured theme to a blue and purple coloured "Planner" theme.

Microsoft has been working on this rebranding for a while. The refresh also includes changes to the user experience.

If you want to read ahead about that functionality, see "Unleashing the power of agents in Microsoft Planner" by Microsoft's Principal Product Manager Anav Silverman.

Just like when we retire, people need to go somewhere else.

What is changing in Aug 2025?

Microsoft has been doing a good job of providing early warnings about the change and encouraging P4W users to move over to the new user interface of Planner.

What changes during the month of August 2025 is that anyone who tries to access P4W is automatically redirected to the new Planner Web site. My little visualization of that:

I created that drawing using one of my favorite tools, Excalidraw inside Obsidian. If you want to play with Excalidraw on it's own, go to https://excalidraw.com as it's free to try out and you can save the files to your laptop. Sorry if I created a new addiction for you.

Planner basic has a friend

This part might be confusing, I know I was and sometimes still do get confused.

There already was a Planner tool created back in 2016 by Microsoft and included in their 365 (MS365) service. That tool is still called Planner but when you use it you're creating "Planner basic plans".

"Planner premium plans" are what "replaces" the P4W functionality. I put quotes around the word replaces because not much changed, mostly branding.

I started using Planner (basic) in Dec 2022 as part of my new job and quite enjoyed it. The beauty is that it is super simple as compared to something like Jira or other tools supporting Kanban. It's fast and great for collaborating in small projects or initiatives and I find it works well and it's easy for anyone to pick up quickly. Is it perfect? Of course not. Is it good enough? yes.

The Planner basic plans have a grid (table) view and a bucket (board) view and there is no additional license required above your MS365 license. The Planner premium plans add functionality like goals, dependencies, assignments, portfolios, and require a special license:

1. Planner Plan 1
2. Planner and Project Plan 3
3. Planner and Project Plan 5

That was so confusing for me, i.e. using the word "Plan" and "Planner" at the same time: if I create a plan using a "Planner Plan 1" license is it called a "Planner Plan 1 Plan?!" 🤦‍♂️ Turns out it's not that bad but still not great: it would be referred to as a "Planner premium plan" 🤔.

Your existing P4W licenses will convert and existing projects and any data in Dataverse preserved if you're using extensions like Project Accelerator.

What's the impact?

From a functionality perspective, the migration from P4W to Planner premium plans will be fairly easy for most users. There are a couple of gotchas that I will cover here.

1. Roadmaps created in P4W or the Roadmap app can’t be opened in Planner; instead, users must rebuild them as Portfolios in Planner.
2. .mpp file import from Project desktop is not directly supported in Planner. From my reading you can do that using Planner Power App as a workaround.
3. Bookmarks to hyperlinks (URLs) for existing P4W plans or tasks within a schedule will be broken.
4. Power Platform flows could be impacted so make sure to test and update those if you have any

In Summary

Project for the web is officially retired by Microsoft as of August 1st 2025 and is now part of Planner family, specifically the premium plans.

You will have seamless access to your plans with no license transition, but you might need to adapt to some new features and limitations such as roadmap / portfolio gaps, and you may have some automations break.

That's it for this week. If you're retiring, congrats and if not, have a great week ahead using Planner premium plans, not Project for the web 🤗

Otto.

p.s. please forward to someone or "like" my posts on BlueSky or Reddit