Cross-project dependency governance CrossLink watches the dependencies that cross your plans in Microsoft Planner Premium or your sheets in Smartsheet, and turns every upstream slip into a small, reviewable decision — never a surprise cascade.
An upstream slip is news, not an order.
Your clinical operations schedule depends on a date in manufacturing; regulatory depends on a date in yours. When one team moves, everyone downstream needs to decide whether to move with it.
The wrong fix: links that cascade automatically. One team's slip silently rewrites your schedule — so managers stop linking across projects altogether, and lose the visibility they needed most.
Connect a giver (provides the date) in one project to a getter (depends on it) in another. Starts in step — no noise at creation.
Each time you open CrossLink, it checks every link against your live data. If a giver has moved, its getter is flagged — nothing to refresh by hand.
Each slip surfaces as a proposal. Your date changes only when you accept — the change becomes a conversation between teams, not a cascade.
A giver slips, the proposal appears, one click accepts it. Shown in CrossLink for Planner. Click to enlarge.
Upstream changes never auto-update your schedule. Every slip is a reviewable decision.
One screen shows every link you're monitoring. Your morning check-in is a single glance.
Plain program-management terms: this item gives a date, that one gets it.
Pick the plans or sheets you care about and see their work and cross-links together.
Each link remembers how its dates moved, so you see the drift, not just the current state.
CrossLink reads the plans and sheets your teams already keep. No migration, no duplicate schedule to maintain.
Accept-don't-cascade, the give/get language, the "show me everything I'm monitoring" view — ideas refined over years of managing cross-project dependencies in regulated, milestone-driven programs, now built for Microsoft Planner Premium and Smartsheet.
The program manager who lives across projects — monitoring dozens of cross-project dependencies from the program view, not any single plan or sheet. Built for multi-team programs in regulated, milestone-driven industries: pharma, biotech, hardware, infrastructure.
An upstream slip is news, not an order. Program managers need to see it, understand its impact, and decide — not have their schedule quietly rewritten for them. From the plain giver/getter language to the single cross-project view to the accept-don't-cascade model, every part of CrossLink keeps the program manager in control of their own schedule.
Both editions share the propose-and-accept model, the giver/getter language and the cross-project view. Pick the one that matches the tool your teams already use.
For teams that plan in Microsoft Planner Premium
For teams that plan in Smartsheet
No. That's the whole point. Planner and Smartsheet can reschedule work inside a single plan or sheet. CrossLink never moves a date across a project boundary without your explicit acceptance.
The one that matches where your teams plan: CrossLink for Planner if they use Microsoft Planner Premium, CrossLink for Smartsheet if they use Smartsheet. Both work the same way.
Each time you open CrossLink, it checks every link against your live data and flags anything that has moved. There's nothing to refresh by hand, and nobody needs the plans or sheets open. CrossLink doesn't run checks on a schedule, so a slip shows up the next time you open it.
You can, but Planner's and Smartsheet's own dependencies usually serve you better inside a single plan or sheet. CrossLink is built for the links that cross them.
Planner Premium and Smartsheet both handle dependencies well inside a single plan or sheet, and reschedule automatically as they should. CrossLink handles the links that cross that boundary — where automatic rescheduling is the wrong behavior — by turning each upstream change into a decision you approve, not a cascade you never saw.
If CrossLink for Planner shows an "Invalid License" message, your organization has CrossLink but no license is assigned to you yet.
Each person who uses CrossLink for Planner needs their own license. Ask your Microsoft 365 admin to assign you one — sending them this page is enough.
CrossLink licenses bought on Microsoft Marketplace appear in the Microsoft 365 admin center under Billing > Licenses. Open CrossLink, assign a license to each person who needs it, and allow a few minutes for access to start working.