Top 10 MS Office-based Project Management Platforms

2024. Microsoft Project to merge into Microsoft Planner



Microsoft has announced that on October 14, 2025 Project 2016 and Project 2019 will reach end of support. The only recommendation to customers - is to upgrade to cloud-based Microsoft Planner. Recently Planner became the primary Microsoft's project management solution and Project for the web now does not accept new registrations in favor of Planner. Launched as simple collaboration tool for Office in 2015, Planner absorbed the functions of Project and To-Do app in Microsoft Teams and now can scale easily from collaborative task management to robust project management, empowering everyone, from information workers to frontline workers to project managers. It also includes AI Copilot that helps to create buckets and tasks based on your planning goals, keep up to date on high-priority tasks, potential risks and team availability.


2022. The new Outlook becomes a hub for collaboration



Microsoft has unveiled an updated Outlook for Windows, which the company had been working on for over two years. The main goal of the update was to unify the program's interface with the online service Outlook.com, and this has been achieved. The Mac version, which will be released soon, will have the same interface. The new interface allows you to see a list of emails, tasks, and a calendar on a single screen. And thanks to integration with the new Loop service, you can, for example, send messages to Teams, open files from SharePoint, or work with projects (from Loop itself) directly in the body of the message. Furthermore, the new version allows you to quickly convert emails to tasks or calendar events, attach files using @mentions, pin emails to the top of the list, connect a Gmail account, and manage its emails.


2017. Wrike integrates with Microsoft Outlook actionable messages



Project management system Wrike has expanded its integration with Microsoft Office 365. It now includes support for actionable messages in Outlook. This integration allows users to update task content (including due dates, statuses, and comments) directly from the email client interface. Wrike also launched the Office 365 Connector, which automatically notifies all participants in Outlook and MS Teams group chats of any work updates. By the end of the quarter, the company plans to release an updated version of the Outlook plugin, which will make creating new tasks from emails even easier. Wrike previously introduced integration with MS Teams Messenger, as well as an add-in for Word and PowerPoint, allowing users to create and edit tasks from these applications.