Faulty Microsoft Project import

All my projects start with with schedules developed in Microsoft Project, either internally or by contractors. One I have a draft or baseline in MS Project, I would like to import it and mange my changes and updates in Smartsheet.

Unfortunately, I am finding the import from MS Project into Smartsheet very unreliable. Even in the simplest of schedules, a lot of the task dates are off, tasks dependencies are ignored, etc.

Smartsheet support says "..this is not something that we are currently working on as we don’t have a direct integration with Microsoft Project. " :-( I find that puzzling, since project collaboration is one of the key uses cases for Smartsheet, and reliable import/export from/to MS Project is a pre-requisite in real life/corporate environment.

I cannot spend hours massaging each schedules after import. I may just as well stick to MS Project or Project Online/Server all the way. And that is without even mentioning the inability to import the non-working/calandar settings from Project.

Anyone out there with similar issues/needs? Any advice?

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Comments

Kennedy Stomps

Hi Kefir-- What you heard from the Support team is definitely correct. Project just has certain features that aren't available in Smartsheet (successors, for example) so it's not possible for our import engine to recreate the exact specifications of the Project file.

As a product, our focus has been on encouraging collaboration within Smartsheet, moreso that encouraging collaborations with different products, like Project. We've tried our best to make it easy to move work into Smartsheet from other products, and to get it out through exporting, if needed, but Smartsheet was designed as an alternative to other, more complex programs, and so our Development team has not focused on replicating Project functionality in Smartsheet exactly.

I hope this provides some clarity on why the import functionality works the way it does!

kefir

Hi Kennedy,

Thank you for your comments, I appreciate your perspective. Only pointing out that MS Project is a de-facto standard in enterprise project scheduling. In my environment, I cannot use Smartsheet exclusively end to end, with all participants, for all change requests, project phases, etc. Hence viable import/export functionality is cricial for me, and I would think others.

I hope you can incorporate such hybrid use cases in your development roadmap.

Bill Brandt

I came across this post looking for help with MS Project import problem. I take exception to the view presented by Kennedy in that Smartsheets seems to be focusing most of it's effort on integrating with other products and not circling back and fixing and improving on existing functions. Smartsheets does just enough to suck you in but when you really try to push it comes up short. The scheduling is a prime example.

Now on to fix my problem......