Microsoft expands Office 365 Planner preview to include Education and Nonprofit plans

As Office 365 continues to gain adoption, Microsoft has found itself pouring more resources into evolving the customer experience both from a user perspective and in regards to how IT can manage the service. Recently, Microsoft announced a new experience for Office 365 users that presents a visual way for customers to organize their teamwork. The new experience is called Office 365 Planner and was initially introduced as a sort of Insider program for Office 365 users called Office 365 First Release.

Now it looks like Microsoft has gotten enough feedback to open up access to Office 365 Planner to more customer segments. In a new announcement, Microsoft has outlined its plan to provide the Planner preview to Office 365 customers with “Education and Nonprofit plans, as well as to Government tenants in the multi-tenant environment.”

Not only that, but Microsoft is also expanding the preview to Office 365 configurations that include ‘Select people’ options for the Office 365 First Release program. Apparently, Office 365 Planner preview was only available to a sub-section of First Release users that had ‘Entire organization’ configurations set.

To add Office 365 Planner preview, Microsoft encourages customers to visit their Message Center within Office 365. The Message Center should include steps that walk through the setup process as well as a Planner preview promo code needed to add Planner to accounts.

Promo codes for eligible Enterprise SKU’s can be found here. Promo codes for eligible Education tenants can be found here.

Microsoft is also looking for feedback regarding its new Yammer integration into Office 365 as it begins to roll out to new and existing Office 365 customers.