Using Microsoft Planner actions in action flows

Before you can include external actions in your action flows, you must connect the action builder to the external system.


What's my plan?






All Suites

Team, Growth, Professional, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus









Support

Team, Professional, or Enterprise






Summary: ◀▼
You can connect Microsoft Planner to action flows to automate task management within your support workflows. This integration lets you create, look up, search, and update Planner tasks and plans directly from action flows, improving collaboration and task tracking. Use a dedicated service account for secure connections and manage task details like due dates, assignees, priority, and status to keep your team organized.


By connecting the action builder to external systems, such as Microsoft
Planner, admins can integrate Zendesk with external systems in automated workflows,
improving collaboration and maintaining a seamless experience across multiple
platforms.
Note: The steps associated with external systems in
action flows are referred to collectively as external actions.

This article contains the following topics:
Connecting Microsoft Planner to action builder
Using Microsoft Planner actions in action flows




Connecting Microsoft Planner to action builder

Before you can include external actions in your action flows, you must connect the
action builder to the external system.
When connecting to external systems for use in action flows, the following best practices are recommended:
All external actions performed by an action flow are attributed to the user who connected the
external system. Therefore, it's a best practice to use a dedicated service
account rather than personal credentials when connecting to each external
system.
All integrations request access to necessary scopes. However, it's important that you review and validate the scopes before authorizing the connection to the external system.
When managing credentials for API key-based tools, such as OpenAI, it's best to store keys in a secure vault or credential manager.



To connect action builder to Microsoft Planner
In Admin Center, click
Apps and integrations in the sidebar, then select Actions > Action
flows.

Create or edit an action flow.
Open the step sidebar.
Under External actions, click Microsoft Planner.
Click Connect.
Follow Microsoft Planner's prompts to authenticate and complete the
connection. The authenticated user must have appropriate permissions
in Microsoft Planner to create, view, and modify tasks and plans. The
Microsoft Planner connection uses OAuth 2.0 authentication through
Microsoft Graph API to securely access your Microsoft 365 organization's
plans and tasks.

Note: All external actions
performed by an action flow are attributed to the user who connected the
external system. Therefore, it is a best practice to use a dedicated
service account rather than personal credentials when connecting to each
external system.



After you've connected to the system, you'll see an indicator that it's connected and
details about the instance you're connected to, as well as the actions available for
Microsoft Planner.



Using Microsoft Planner actions in action flows

The following Microsoft Planner actions are available:
Create task
Lookup plan
Lookup task
Search tasks
Update task




Creating a task

Use the Create task action to create a new task in a Microsoft Planner
plan.
This action has the following inputs and outputs:










Variables




Inputs
Required: Group, Plan,
Title Group and Plan are searchable
dropdowns that load your Microsoft 365 groups and
associated plans.
Optional:
Bucket, Start
date, Due date,
Assignees,
Priority,
Status
Start date and Due date
must be in YYYY-MM-DD format. Assignees is a multiselect
dropdown populated with plan members. Priority options
are Urgent, Important, Medium, and Low. Status options
are Not started, In progress, and Completed.



Output
Task details including ID, plan ID, bucket ID, title,
start date, due date, completion percentage, priority,
assignments, and categories.








Looking up a plan

Use the Lookup plan action to retrieve details about a specific Microsoft
Planner plan.
This action has the following inputs and outputs:










Variables




Inputs
Required: Group,
Plan Group is a searchable dropdown
that loads your Microsoft 365 groups. Plan is a
dependent dropdown that loads plans belonging to the
selected group.



Output
Plan details including ID and category
descriptions.








Looking up a task

Use the Lookup task action to retrieve details about a specific task in a
Microsoft Planner plan.
This action has the following inputs and outputs:










Variables




Inputs
Required: Group, Plan,
Task Group, Plan, and Task are
cascading dropdowns. First select a group, then a plan
within that group, then a task within that
plan.



Output
Task details including ID, plan ID, bucket ID, title,
start date time, due date time, completion percentage,
priority, assignments, and categories.








Searching for tasks

Use the Search tasks action to find tasks within a Microsoft Planner plan
using filters.
This action has the following inputs and outputs:










Variables




Inputs
Required: Group,
Plan Optional:
Query
Query performs a
case-insensitive partial match on task titles. If no
query is provided, all tasks in the plan are
returned.



Output
Array of tasks with ID, plan ID, bucket ID, title, start
date time, due date time, completion percentage, and
priority, plus total count.








Updating a task

Use the Update task action to modify an existing task in a Microsoft
Planner plan.
This action has the following inputs and outputs:










Variables




Inputs
Required: Group, Plan,
Task Optional:
Title, Bucket,
Start date, Due
date, Assignees,
Priority,
Status
Only the fields you
provide will be updated. Existing values for fields you
don't specify will remain unchanged. Dates must be in
YYYY-MM-DD format.



Output
Task details including ID, plan ID, bucket ID, title,
start date, due date, completion percentage, priority,
assignments, and categories.








{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "TechArticle",
"@id": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/10942722107034-Using-Microsoft-Planner-actions-in-action-flows",
"url": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/10942722107034-Using-Microsoft-Planner-actions-in-action-flows",
"headline": "Using Microsoft Planner actions in action flows",
"description": "You can connect Microsoft Planner to an action builder to automate task and plan management through external actions in action flows, including creating, looking up, searching, and updating tasks and plans.",
"articleSection": "Product help",
"datePublished": "2026-06-25T15:39:48.584971+00:00",
"dateModified": "2026-06-25T15:39:52.218096+00:00",
"inLanguage": "en-US",
"mainEntityOfPage": {
"@type": "WebPage",
"@id": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/10942722107034-Using-Microsoft-Planner-actions-in-action-flows"