Planner categorization and automations

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Posted on by Ibakordor Kharmih

I have a set of task under a category called Snake and Ladder. There are 25 tasks altogether that is expected for every trainee who joins the company to execute it and complete it within 30 days. We usually have a new batch of trainees joining almost every week.
In planner, I want to categorize all the 25 tasks under the Snake and Ladder so I can assign it to individuals everytime when a new batch comes. How or what approach do I take for that? What would be the easiest way without double work.

I'm expecting the following:

Assign the snake and ladder to all trainees, and all tasks will automatically be assigned to them.
Have the overall progress report or charts displayed in a linked SharePoint site, so I can easily view the overall progress of trainees from SharePoint itself instead of going to Planner.
Every month, it will automatically generate a report, share as Newsletter and send to a certain alias and be added to a News section under the same SharePoint site.

I also want to understand how will the SharePoint storage look like.

Categories:

Using flows

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Valantis 6,526 on at

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Hi @Ibakordor Kharmih,

this is all doable with Planner + Power Automate + SharePoint. Here's the cleanest architecture.

Task template approach: Create one Planner plan called "Snake and Ladder Template" with your 25 tasks already set up with descriptions, checklists, and due date offsets. Every time a new batch joins, a Power Automate flow copies all 25 tasks from the template plan into a new plan (or the same plan with a new bucket per batch), and assigns each task to the relevant trainee. Trigger this flow manually or from a SharePoint list where you add new trainees.

For the SharePoint progress view: connect Planner to Power BI using the Planner connector, create a report showing task completion by trainee and batch, then embed that Power BI report on a SharePoint page using the Power BI web part. That gives you the live progress dashboard on SharePoint without going to Planner directly.

For the monthly newsletter and news item: a scheduled Power Automate flow runs on the 1st of each month, calls Power BI's export API or queries Planner directly via Graph API for completion stats, formats the content, creates a SharePoint News post automatically using the SharePoint connector's "Create page" action, and sends it as an email to your alias using Send email action.

SharePoint site structure would look like: a Training hub site with a Trainees list (one row per trainee with batch date, Planner plan link, status), a Pages library where monthly news posts land automatically, and an embedded Power BI report page for the dashboard.

Start with the template plan and the flow to copy tasks on batch creation, that's the highest value piece and everything else builds on it.

Best regards,

Valantis

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11manish 3,038 on at

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Use Planner as the task execution engine, SharePoint as the trainee and reporting repository, and Power Automate to automatically create the 25 Snake and Ladder tasks for each new trainee, track completion, generate monthly reports, and publish newsletters to SharePoint. This approach avoids duplicate work, provides visibility through SharePoint dashboards, and scales much better as new trainee batches continue to join every week.

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Ibakordor Kharmih 11 on at

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Do you have a certain guideline or resources that I can follow for that? @11manish

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Valantis 6,526 on at

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Hi @Ibakordor Kharmih,

Here are the specific resources for each piece.

Copying Planner tasks with Power Automate:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/planner/ - covers Create a task and List tasks, which you use to read from the template plan and create in the new plan.

Embedding Power BI in SharePoint:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/collaborate-share/service-embed-report-spo

Scheduled monthly flow:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/run-scheduled-tasks

For the SharePoint News post: the SharePoint connector in Power Automate has a Send an HTTP request to SharePoint action.

To create a proper News post (not just a regular page), you need to call the SharePoint REST API and set the PromotedState to 2 on the page after creation. A regular "Create page" action creates a standard page, not a News post.

Use the HTTP action to POST to /_api/sitepages/pages with the correct content type and then PATCH to set PromotedState. This is the confirmed way to publish News posts programmatically.

Build order: (1) template Planner plan with 25 tasks, (2) flow to copy tasks for one trainee, (3) add SharePoint Trainees list as trigger, (4) Power BI dashboard, (5) monthly newsletter flow last.

Best regards,

Valantis

✅ If this helped solve your issue, please Accept as Solution so others can find it quickly.

❤️ If it didn’t fully solve it but was still useful, please click “Yes” on “Was this reply helpful?” or leave a Like :).

🏷️ For follow-ups @Valantis.

📝 https://valantisond365.com/

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