Planner Orchestration

Planner Orchestration

MCP Servers

Eight Microsoft MCP servers are configured in .mcp.json and available to all agents:

Full tool catalog: references/mcp-tools.md

Auth: All Azure/M365 servers use DefaultAzureCredential — az login is sufficient for local use. markitdown and playwright require no auth. microsoft-learn is public.

Architecture

The planner-orchestrator sits above the planner-todo plugin as an intelligent layer. It uses native MCP tools for Azure DevOps, Power BI, browser testing, and documentation, and composes planner-todo commands and other installed plugins for the remaining M365 operations.

Dependency chain:

planner-orchestrator (intelligence layer)
    └── planner-todo (Graph API CRUD layer)
            └── Microsoft Graph API

Optional integrations — check for installed plugins before delegating:

• microsoft-teams-mcp → post adaptive card summaries, @mention assignees
• microsoft-outlook-mcp → email digests to plan owners
• powerbi-fabric → DAX report generation from task data
• azure-devops → work item sync for hybrid teams

Plugin Detection Pattern

Before calling another plugin, verify it is installed:

Check if microsoft-teams-mcp is available by attempting to list its tools.
If available, use it to post the summary card.
If not available, output the summary as plain text and note that installing
microsoft-teams-mcp would enable automatic Teams posting.

Never fail silently — always tell the user when a cross-plugin action was skipped and why.

Core Workflows

1. Ship Workflow (ship-orchestrator agent)

The /planner-orchestrator:ship command transforms a Planner task into shipped code:

FETCH → BRANCH → EXPLORE → PLAN → CODE → TEST → DOCUMENT → COMMIT → PR → UPDATE PLANNER

State tracking — save progress to sessions/ship/{taskId}/state.json so the workflow is resumable.

Detailed protocol in references/ship-workflow.md.

2. Triage Workflow (task-triage agent)

Inspect all unassigned / unprioritized tasks in a plan and apply:

• Priority scoring (urgency + business value + effort estimate)
• Label assignment (Bug, Feature, Tech Debt, Blocked)
• Assignee suggestion based on existing assignment patterns
• Bucket routing (which bucket the task belongs in)

Output a triage report, then execute the changes after user confirmation.

3. Sprint/Bucket Planning (bucket-planner agent)

Given a plan and a target bucket:

1. List all tasks in the backlog bucket
2. Estimate team capacity (members × available days × hours/day)
3. Score each task by WSJF: (Business Value + Time Criticality + Risk Reduction) / Effort
4. Recommend tasks to pull in, respecting capacity ceiling
5. Detect overloaded assignees and suggest redistribution
6. Output a sprint plan table, then execute moves after user confirmation

4. Deadline Monitor (deadline-monitor agent)

Scan all accessible plans for:

• Overdue: dueDateTime < today, not 100% complete
• Due this week: dueDateTime <= today + 7 days
• No due date: assigned tasks with no deadline
• Stalled: percentComplete == 50 but not updated in 5+ days

Group by plan → assignee → priority. Output a digest. Optionally email via Outlook or post to Teams.

5. Portfolio Overview (portfolio-manager agent)

Fetch all plans the user can access and produce:

• Per-plan: total tasks, completion %, overdue count, top blockers
• Team-level: tasks per assignee, average completion rate
• Cross-plan: tasks with same assignee competing for attention

6. Workload Balancer (workload-balancer agent)

Identify imbalances across assignees in a plan:

• Flag assignees with > 5 open tasks or > 2 urgent tasks
• Suggest reassignments to under-loaded members
• Respect skill labels when suggesting reassignments

ETag Concurrency

All Planner PATCH and DELETE operations require the If-Match header. The orchestrator must:

1. Always GET the resource immediately before updating
2. Extract @odata.etag from the response
3. Include If-Match: {etag} in the PATCH/DELETE request
4. On 409/412: re-GET and retry once

See references/etag-patterns.md for patterns.

Cross-Plugin Delegation Recipes

See references/cross-plugin-patterns.md for:

• Teams adaptive card templates for task summaries
• Outlook digest email format
• Power BI export schema
• Azure DevOps work item sync mapping

Output Standards

All agents produce structured output:

## [Workflow Name] — [Plan Title]

**Summary**: 3 tasks overdue, 5 due this week, 2 unassigned

### Overdue Tasks
| Task | Assignee | Due | Priority |
|------|----------|-----|----------|
| ...  |          |     |          |

### Recommended Actions
1. Reassign "X" to @alice — she has capacity
2. Escalate "Y" — blocked for 3+ days

### Cross-Plugin Actions
- [ ] Teams: Posted summary to #dev channel
- [ ] Outlook: Digest sent to plan owners

Always show what cross-plugin actions were taken or skipped (with reason).