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Sub-Swimlanes from Microsoft Planner

If you use Microsoft Planner and need to create a project timeline or Gantt chart that has parent swimlanes and child swimlanes, OnePager can help.

Microsoft Planner Gantt chart with swimlanes and sub-swimlanes, also known as parent swimlanes and child swimlanes, which are based on the subtasks in Microsoft Planner.

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OnePager can create up to three levels of parent and child swimlanes based on the hierarchy of your plan in Microsoft Planner. Here's how it works:

  1. Let's start in Microsoft Planner, where we have a plan with three levels of tasks and subtasks. We want to create swimlanes for all of the Planner subtasks that share the same parent and grandparent tasks:

    Three levels of tasks and subtasks in Microsoft Planner.

  2. Launch OnePager from your desktop:

    Launch OnePager from your desktop.

  3. When the OnePager start screen appears, click on New to start building a new swimlane chart from Microsoft Planner:

    OnePager start screen.

  4. On the import wizard, choose Select > BROWSE Planner:

    Browse Planner projects from OnePager.

    If you are using OnePager Bundle v7.2 or earlier, you'll have the option to BROWSE Project for the web instead of Planner. These are the same; Microsoft renamed them in 2025.

  5. Once you are connected to Planner, select the Planner plan from the first step, and click OK:

    Import from Microsoft Planner into a OnePager swimlane chart.

  6. Give your swimlane chart a name, and then click on the option to Select individual tasks to import:

    Select tasks individually from Microsoft Planner.

  7. In the window that appears, select all of the subtasks that you want to display in your timeline. For every subtask that you import, OnePager will automatically know that its parent and grandparent tasks are, so you do not need to import these summary tasks themselves:

    Select subtasks from Microsoft Planner before building a swimlane chart.

  8. Click OK, followed by Create new chart. OnePager will import your selected subtasks from Microsoft Planner and initially group them into a swimlane chart that looks like this:

    Microsoft Planner Gantt chart built in OnePager with a single set of swimlanes.

In the next section, we'll walk through how to add a second set of sub-swimlanes, and make other adjustments to formatting.

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Customizing Swimlanes and Formatting

  1. To add a second level of swimlanes, known as sub-swimlanes or child swimlanes, go to Home > Chart Properties > Rows/Swimlanes. Here, we can click on the Left #2 swimlane tab and set the sub-swimlanes to look at the Level 2 Summary Name, which is the secondary set of parent tasks back in Microsoft Planner:

    Add secondary swimlanes to the timeline based on the parent tasks in Microsoft Planner.

  2. Click OK, and OnePager will add the second swimlane grouping to the chart, like this:

    Microsoft Planner Gantt chart with parent and child swimlanes (sub-swimlanes).

  3. We can also adjust the colors of the tasks so that they match the hierarchy of the parent and subtasks in Planner. To do this, go to Home > Chart Properties > Task Bars and color-code based on the same Level 2 Summary Name field that you used to set up the sub-swimlanes:

    Assign colors to a OnePager timeline built from Planner.

  4. Click OK, and OnePager will color-code the Planner subtasks based on their parents:

    Microsoft Planner Gantt chart with subtasks color-coded based on their parents.

From here, you can also change the colors of the swimlanes themselves or adjust other properties until your timeline chart is exactly the way that you want it.

Try OnePager swimlane software today by downloading a free trial.

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