"How does My Tasks board ordering work when grouped by Progress? Which field does Planner use ?

Hi Gjorgi Argirovski,

Thank you for posting your question in the Microsoft Q&A forum.

After reviewing the available Microsoft documentation, I could not find any official source that specifies the exact ordering algorithm used by the Planner “My Tasks” board when grouped by Progress (i.e., which field(s) determine the card order in that aggregated board).

What the docs do state is:

• plannerProgressTaskBoardTaskFormat.orderHint is a hint used to order a task in the Progress view of a task board, and it is retrieved via GET /planner/tasks/{id}/progressTaskBoardFormat.
• plannerTask.assigneePriority exists and is described as a hint used to order items in a list view (but the docs do not say it is the rule for My Tasks board ordering).

Why you may see a mismatch vs. the My Tasks UI
Even if you correctly apply GET /planner/tasks/{id}/progressTaskBoardFormat and sort by orderHint, the “My Tasks” experience can still diverge because My Tasks (All) is an aggregation across multiple sources (including Flagged emails, and tasks from basic plans and premium plans, plus other task sources listed under “Assigned to me”).
At the same time, Microsoft Graph’s Planner API only supports basic plans, so the data you can retrieve and order via Planner endpoints may be only a subset of what the My Tasks UI is showing.

Practical workarounds

1. For Planner basic tasks only (closest to documented behavior):
   • Group tasks into Progress columns using the task’s percentComplete state (Progress view is organized by this field) and then sort within each column using progressTaskBoardFormat.orderHint from GET /planner/tasks/{id}/progressTaskBoardFormat.
2. If you must produce a stable order even when hints are missing or UI differs:
   • Use a deterministic fallback sort (e.g., progressTaskBoardFormat.orderHint when present, then assigneePriority when present, then dueDateTime, then createdDateTime/id). Note: only the existence/meaning of these hint fields is documented; the fallback logic is an implementation choice to keep results stable.

I hope the information above helpful.

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