Syncing M365 Message Center to Microsoft Planner

If you want to stay up to date with what Microsoft is developing and implementing with Microsoft 365, then you should be paying attention to information from the Microsoft 365 Message Center. You’ll find this in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center as shown above.

One of the options with this information is to have it delivered via email. To do this, select the Preferences cog as shown above.

Doing so will then display a number of configuration options on the right. Select the Email option from the menu at the top as shown.

You can now select whether to deliver these messages to the original tenant admin account, which is selected by default, but also up to two email addresses, which need to be separated by a semicolon. You can then select what emails you wish to received. Be warned, there are options for all Microsoft 365 services (like Exchange, SharePoint, Teams, etc) as well as major updates and privacy. Be careful of information overload here!

Select the Save button at the bottom of this dialog to update your preferences.

Another very handy option is to sync these messages with Microsoft Planner. To enable this option, select the Planner syncing menu item as shown above.

A dialog will now appear on the right, as shown above, that allows you to set up this process using a wizard. Simply select the Set up syncing button at the bottom of the page to commence this process off.

You’ll need to have a Microsoft Plan into which the Message Center will sync. If you don’t already have one, you can select the link on the page as shown to create one.

Your destination Microsoft Plan doesn’t need to be anything special. You need at least one bucket into which all the Message Center items will end up. In this case, that bucket will be the standard ‘To-do’ bucket.

Select the appropriate Microsoft Plan and the destination plan bucket, or select to create a new one.

Select the Next button at the bottom of the page to continue.

Like the email option, you now need to select which messages you wish to receive.

Select the Next button at the bottom of the page to continue.

You can now elect to import messages from a previous period i.e. messages already in the Message Center from the last X days.

Select the Next button at the bottom of the page to continue.

Review the settings.

Select the Next button at the bottom of the page to continue.

If you wish to set up an automatic process to sync the Message Center messages on a recurring basis, set the desired update time options and select the Create Flow with Power Automate button as shown.

Select the Continue button.

You’ll also need to sign in to allow access to the Message Center connector. Simply select the ‘+’ icon and the current account you are logged in with will be used. Ensure that a green check appears to the right of the Microsoft 365 message center as shown above.

Review the configuration and automatic syncing if enabled, and select the Done button to complete the process.

If you now visit the Power Automate service and look My Flows and Shared with me, you should see a Sync Microsoft 365 message center to Planner flow as shown above.

If you edit that Flow, you should see it simply has a recurrence trigger and a Sync messages to planner (preview) action, as shown above. The owners of this Flow will be the group associated with the Microsoft Plan you selected as your destination as well as the user who configured this process. You can always add more owners if you wish to this Flow. The Microsoft 365 message center connection will be authorised by the account you used to set up this process. This can also be altered if needed.

When Message Center data is synced to Planner it will look like the above, with all messages being delivered to the bucket that you nominated in the setup as individual tasks.

If you select any of these new Message Center tasks in Planner, they will appear as shown above, with details about the notification in the Notes of the task. These can now be used as any task would be inside Microsoft Planner.

As good as delivering Message Center information to Planner is, I feel that a better destination or this is actually Microsoft Teams. I’ll be covering off how to deliver it to a Microsoft Teams channel in an upcoming post, so stay tuned for that.