Microsoft Project Import

Hi All,

I use smartsheets mostly as a project management system for my clientbase. Most of my clients reuiqre porject schedules to be in Microsoft porject and I prefer doing my plans in MSP as it has much more funcatonality in terms of cost tracking, rsource planning etc. I import project plans from MSP into smartsheet and then run reports against the schedules to indicate milestones, tasks status etc.

The porblem I have is that when you import a plan from MSP it is imported as a new sheet in smartsheet which forces me to then copy all the rows to an existing sheet once imported to ensure sharing and reports remain intact. This has its own challanges as some fields don't copy etc etc.

I have two questions :

1. Is there another way of importing MSP files into an existing SS as oppsed to the cumbersome way I descirbed above

2. Is ther any functionality to import MSP and map MSP fields to fileds in SS , or could this be looked into as a future enhancement?

Your input and views will be much appreciated

Hector Cloete

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Comments

Richard Rymill SBP

Hector, I think you are making work for yourself by trying to update two systems at the same time and while you can upload MSP to Smartsheet and back to MSP at will, which will resolve part of your question, surely you would be better using each system for what it is good at?

If you need to plan in MSP do so, then when it comes to collaboration and just getting the work done with your team, move to Smartsheet which is far better than MSP at that collaboration. Once the data is gathered, the project progressed or delivered then you can move the data back to MSP for the Stats and lessons learned etc. Thats what we do and recommed to others and it works well.

We could look at more complex solutions like APIs etc but why?

Regards RichardR

PPS Solutions

Hi Hector, the answer to both your questions is No. You cannot "merge" existing data from MS Project into an existing Smartsheet and therefore there is no mapping feature. Be careful too as very complex MS Project plans DO NOT fully import into Smartsheet eg with task types such as As Late As Possible and shedulling from the Finish date. I suggest you always double-check key totals like Total duration and Start and Finish dates to ensure what you import is what you get imported! You can also have issues getting custom fields imported especially if your plans are over 10MB filesize in which case you have to use the XML format.

My advice is, by all means plan initially uisng MS Project and then import. Once imported, if data like baseline's have been imported, you can measure the variances without exporting back out to MS Project. To continually reimport after changes in MSP is a real pain and should be avoided unless you simply must colloborate using Smartsheet.

Jeremy Michels

Have you tried linking your data with a google spreadsheet or using the merge feature. There are ways to do a functional merge that updates smartsheet as you change the information. There is a video on youtube from Smartsheet on this. As you update the document you can see the changes take place in smartsheet.

Hector Cloete

Thanks all, I think i am going to go with a first baseline in MSP , one import to SS and then manage in SS from there onwards.

Richard Rymill SBP

Makes a lot of sense Hector.

Regards RichardR