This blog idea came straight out of a session I did with Ben Lee at Commsverse earlier this year. We were talking about choosing the right tools for the job, and I used a weekly podcast production process as the example. It’s a rinse-and-repeat process with clear stages, and it’s where Microsoft Planner still wins for me—hands down.

Loop is brilliant for collaboration, ideation, and in-context conversations. But when it comes to structured, repeatable workflows, I think Planner is just more fit for purpose. There’s a joke somewhere here about ‘younger models’ but I won’t go there…

Planner Is Built for Process

Podcast production follows a predictable flow: planning, recording, editing, publishing, promoting. In Planner, I can set up buckets that mirror each of those stages, like a Kanban board. It’s visual, it’s logical, and it gives me a clear overview of where each episode is in the pipeline.

Loop’s Kanban board view does look similar, and it’s just as easy to drag and drop tasks from one column to another.

Granularity That Makes a Difference

Planner lets you add tags like “blocked”, “urgent”, or “waiting on feedback”. These little labels make a big difference when you’re scanning a board and trying to spot what needs attention. You can also filter by these tags, which is super handy when you’re managing multiple episodes or projects at once.

Yep, Loop’s got those too (but a little bit trickier to set up in my opinion). They are much less visible in the Kanban view though, so you wouldn’t be able to see ‘blockers’ at a glance for example. A workaround would be filtering by the new label type you have created, but that’s a lot of clicks for ‘at a glance’.

Metrics That Matter

Planner gives you stats. You can see how many tasks are in progress, completed, or overdue. You get pie charts and progress bars. It’s not fancy, but it’s functional—and it helps you spot trends and bottlenecks.

Loop doesn’t offer the same kind of visibility. If you’re trying to improve your workflow or report on progress, metrics matter. I want to know if we’re consistently getting stuck in the editing phase, or if tasks are piling up in “planning”. Planner shows me that.

You can change your Kanban view to a table view to get some teeny tiny column summaries at the bottom, but that looks to be it right now.

If you do happen to spot the teeny tiny summaries, you can click on them for more detail:

If you were still desperate to use Loop for this sort of thing, and you have a Copilot licence, a workaround would be to ask Copilot to summarise the stats on the Kanban view.

Templates (Sort Of)

Planner doesn’t have a true “template” feature, but you can create a task with a checklist and copy it each time.

I’ve got a master task for podcast production with subtasks like “Book guest”, “Write intro”, “Edit audio”, “Schedule post”. I copy it for each new episode.

Loop doesn’t let you copy a task with a checklist of subtasks. For repeatable work, that’s such a pain. Here’s an image of a Loop card, and what it looks like after I duplicated it:

No checklist. It also hasn’t copied across the Owner.

Calendar View? Yes, Both Have It

One thing worth noting—both Planner and Loop do offer a calendar view. This is great for visualising deadlines and planning your week. In Planner, it’s built into the board and integrates nicely with Outlook. In Loop, the calendar view is newer and still evolving, but it’s a welcome addition for those who like to see their work laid out over time.

Still, the calendar alone isn’t enough to sway me. It’s the combination of structure, tagging, metrics, and (semi-)templates that makes Planner the better fit for process-based work.

Loop Is Great—Just Not for This

Don’t get me wrong: I love Loop. It’s brilliant for retrospectives, brainstorming, and handovers. I even wrote about using it for holiday handovers after that same Commsverse session: https://lyndsay.blog/2025/06/20/using-microsoft-loop-for-holiday-handovers/.

But for rinse-and-repeat workflows—especially ones with multiple stages and recurring steps—Planner is still the better tool.

Loop is evolving fast, and I’m excited to see where it goes. But until it catches up on templates, tagging, and metrics, I’ll keep using Planner for my process-based tasks.

TL;DR

• Use Planner when your work follows a repeatable process and you need structure, tags, and metrics.
• Use Loop when you’re collaborating in real time, brainstorming, or capturing ideas.

If you’re producing a podcast, running a regular event, or managing a content calendar—Planner is still the better tool.