If your organization is running on Microsoft Project Online, you already know the date: September 30, 2026. That is when Microsoft officially retires Project Online as a standalone service.
What you may not know is how much time the decision-making process actually takes and how many organizations are going to feel that crunch in August when they realize they needed to start in April.
We have been having this conversation with a lot of organizations lately. And the one thing that consistently surprises people is how many options there are — and how different those options actually are from each other. The right path for your organization depends entirely on how you are using Project Online today and what you actually need going forward. The default recommendation from Microsoft is to move to Planner. For some organizations, that is exactly right. For others, it will leave significant gaps. And for some, there is a better fit entirely.
This article is not a product comparison. It is a guide to asking the right questions before you make a decision you will live with for the next several years.
Why the Timeline Is Tighter Than It Looks
Four months sounds like a long time until you factor in what actually has to happen before you can go live on a new platform.
Evaluation and selection
Before you can implement anything, you need to understand your options, see demos, ask the hard questions, and get internal alignment on a direction. That alone takes four to six weeks for most organizations or longer if you have multiple stakeholders or departments with different needs.
Configuration and setup
Even the most out-of-the-box solutions require configuration: user setup, project templates, permission structures, integrations with your existing systems. Expect three to four weeks minimum, more if you have complex requirements.
Data migration
Your existing project schedules, resource data, and historical records do not move themselves. Depending on how much data you have and how clean it is, migration can take anywhere from a few days to several weeks.
Training and adoption
A new platform that nobody uses is not a solution. Training your team and getting them comfortable with a new way of working takes time; and if you skip this step, you will end up right back where you started with workarounds and shadow systems.
Add all of that up and you are looking at a minimum of two to three months from decision to go-live. Which means if you have not started the conversation yet, now is the time.
Understanding Your Options
When Microsoft announced the Project Online retirement, they pointed organizations toward Planner as the natural successor. That recommendation makes sense in context. Planner is a Microsoft product, it is included in many existing Microsoft 365 licenses, and it is genuinely good at what it does.
But “good at what it does” is the important qualifier. And what it does depends heavily on what you need.
Microsoft Planner
Planner has evolved significantly and continues to be invested in heavily by Microsoft. For teams that are primarily focused on task and work management, keeping projects on track, assigning and tracking work, collaborating within a team, Planner is a strong and cost-effective option, especially if you are already deep in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.
Where Planner is thinner today: portfolio-level visibility across multiple projects, resource management and workload tracking, and complex reporting rollups. If you are managing a handful of projects with a small team, those gaps may not matter. If you are managing forty projects across multiple departments and need to see resource allocation at an organizational level, they matter a great deal.
It is worth noting that many of those gaps can be addressed. There are third-party add-ons available for Planner that extend its capability, and the Microsoft Power Platform (Power Apps, Power Automate) gives organizations the ability to build custom functionality on top of it. So the question is not simply “can Planner do this?” Often the honest answer is yes, with the right additions and development work. The real question is whether that is the path you want. Building and maintaining custom solutions takes time, budget, and ongoing technical resources. For some organizations that is exactly the right trade-off – you get precisely what you want, fully within the Microsoft ecosystem. For others, the appeal of an out-of-the-box solution that handles those requirements without custom development is worth evaluating.
One thing worth noting: Microsoft is actively investing in Planner, including AI-powered features through Copilot integration. The gap between where Planner is today and where it will be in two years is real, but you need a solution for now, not two years from now.
Add Your Heading Text Here
Third-Party PPM Platforms
There are a number of purpose-built PPM platforms that offer more comprehensive project and portfolio management capabilities than Planner, at varying levels of complexity and cost. These are worth evaluating if your requirements include:
- Portfolio-level visibility across all active projects
- Resource management – tracking allocation, availability, and workload
- Complex reporting and executive dashboards
- Stage gate workflows with formal approvals
- Financial tracking at the project level
- Integration with Power BI or other reporting tools
The range within this category is wide. Some platforms are built for enterprise-scale organizations with dedicated PMO teams and complex governance requirements. Others are designed for mid-market firms that need more than a task manager but do not need the overhead of an enterprise implementation. Matching the right platform to your organization size and maturity level is as important as matching the features.
Custom Build on Microsoft 365
Some organizations choose to build what they need directly in the Microsoft 365 environment; using SharePoint, Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI to create a tailored project management solution. This approach gives you exactly what you want and keeps everything within your existing Microsoft ecosystem.
The trade-off is time and cost. A custom build requires a clear picture of your requirements upfront, a development resource who knows the platform, and ongoing maintenance as your needs evolve. It is the right answer for some organizations, particularly those with very specific workflows that off-the-shelf tools do not accommodate, but it is not the fastest path to a go-live before September 30.
The Questions That Actually Determine the Right Answer
Every conversation we have with an organization on this topic starts the same way – not with a demo, but with a diagnostic. The answers to these questions tell us more about the right solution than any feature comparison ever could.
How are you using Project Online today?
Are you primarily using it for scheduling and Gantt chart management? Or are you also using it for resource management, financial tracking, portfolio reporting, or workflow approvals? The more of those things you are doing today, the more you need from whatever comes next.
How many projects are you managing at one time, and across how many teams?
A team managing ten to fifteen projects of similar type has very different needs than an organization managing forty or fifty projects across multiple departments with shared resources. Scale changes the requirements significantly.
Do you need portfolio-level visibility, or project-level management?
This is one of the most important distinctions. If you need to see everything (all projects, all resources, all statuses) in a single consolidated view that leadership can trust, you need a platform with genuine portfolio capability. If you primarily need individual project teams to manage their own work, you have more options.
What does your resource management look like?
Are you tracking who is working on what across projects? Do you need to see over-allocation? Do you have shared resources across departments that need to be managed at an organizational level? Resource management capability varies widely across platforms and is one of the most common gaps organizations discover after they have already committed to a solution.
What reporting do you actually need?
There is a difference between “it would be nice to have better reporting” and “leadership requires specific reports by Monday morning and we spend half a day manually assembling them right now.” The specificity of your reporting requirements will tell you whether Power BI on top of a simpler tool is sufficient, or whether you need a platform with more native reporting capability.
Do you have workflow or approval requirements?
Stage gates, formal approvals, intake processes – if these are part of how your organization operates today, you need to make sure your new platform can support them. Some can, some require custom build, and some simply cannot.
What integrations do you need?
Does your project management solution need to talk to your financial system, your CRM, your timesheet tool, or your ERP? Integration requirements can significantly change which platform is the right fit and what the implementation will cost.
None of these questions have universal right answers. But the combination of your answers will point clearly toward a solution or eliminate options quickly.
The Most Common Mistakes We See
After seventeen years of helping organizations implement and migrate project management solutions, a few patterns come up consistently when things go wrong.
Defaulting to the recommendation without evaluating the fit
Microsoft recommending Planner makes sense from their perspective; it is their product and it works for many of their customers. But the recommendation is not a prescription. It is a starting point for evaluation, not the end of it. We have seen organizations go deep into a Planner implementation only to discover mid-project that they need portfolio management capability that Planner cannot provide today.
Evaluating features without evaluating needs first
Watching demos before you have clearly defined your requirements is how organizations end up impressed by features they will never use while missing the gaps that matter. Define what you actually need first. Then evaluate whether each option delivers it.
Underestimating change management
Whatever platform you choose, your team has to use it. The implementation is not the finish line — adoption is. The organizations that get the most out of their new platform are the ones that invest in training, communicate the why behind the change, and have leadership that visibly reinforces the new way of working.
Waiting too long to start
This one is simply practical. The organizations moving now are getting better implementation timelines, more flexibility in their configuration approach, and more time to train their teams. The ones moving in August are going to feel every day of that delay.
Where to Start
The right first step is not to schedule a demo. It is to get clear on what you actually need – how you are working today, where the gaps are, and what you want to be able to do that you cannot do right now.
EPMA has been helping organizations navigate exactly this kind of decision for seventeen years. We partner with multiple PPM platforms, including our own, PPMX, specifically because we know there is no single right answer for every organization. Our job is to understand your situation and recommend the path that actually fits, not the one that is easiest to sell.
If you are on Project Online and have not started this conversation yet, reach out. We will ask you the right questions, help you understand your options, and make sure you are not making this decision in a hurry in August.
Learn more at ppmx.ai or reach out directly to start the conversation.