Using Data Shuttle to Load Start Date and End Date for Legacy Resource Management

Stefan Heline

Good day, I am trying to load a high-level milestone plan from an external data source that has the start date and end date already established using Data Shuttle. I have enable Legacy Resource Management on the target sheet and get an error that the End Date and/or Duration can not be updated. Is there a workaround to populate end date?

The goal is to allow a detailed workplan with tasks and sub-milestones that can be added nd resourced, but track against the imported milestones (and lock, if possible).

Thanks in advance, Stefan

Julio S.

Hi @Stefan Heline,

Due to the nature of dependencies, you won't be able to update "End Date" values in a Project while these are activated. If you do not wish to deactivate dependencies to overcome this error, you can alternatively create a "Duration" column in your Excel file that calculates the difference between the End and Start dates (as in the example below). Make sure to then copy and paste special the results as values so that the formula isn't preserved.

You can then only map the "Start Date" and "duration" columns through DataShuttle. This should recognize the values in the "duration" column as days and calculate the end Date automatically based on this:

If the ultimate target of your project is to compare task completion from what was originally intended, you may find the use of Baselines quite helpful. But please bear in mind that all tasks will need to have a Start and End date defined from the beginning so that Baselines can perform these calculations. Any new inserted row/task won't be tracked on the Baseline Columns.

I hope that these can offer some ideas to keep your project sheet updated as intended. 

Cheers!

Julio