Guidelines for Exporting to Microsoft Project

Review export guidelines before you export data from Vision Planning to Microsoft Project.

Resources

Vision can export both named resources and generic resources.

The relationships between resources and tasks are as follows:

  • Vision allows the same resource to be assigned to a task multiple times, each with a different rate. Microsoft Project only allows a resource (employee or unit) to be assigned to a task once.
  • Vision supports an unlimited number of rates and allows the same resource to be assigned to different tasks with different rates. Microsoft Project only allows a maximum of five cost rate tables for each resource.

.mpp Files

Microsoft Project saves exported data to .mpp files. The default directory for saving these files is "My Documents" in the "Documents and Settings" directory. You must copy an .mpp file into Microsoft Project Enterprise Server to access the data.

The resource pool exported to Microsoft Project is local to the one .mpp file. If Vision is in disconnected mode, you cannot reconcile the resource pool between Vision and Microsoft Project.

Tasks

  • When tasks with dependency relationships are exported to Microsoft Project, the assigned relationship type, any lag or lead time, the number of days, and the direction of the dependency are maintained. However, for predecessor relationships, they are automatically set to the Must Start On constraint in Microsoft Project.
  • Because Vision only supports Lag/Lead time in days, but Microsoft Project supports it in minutes, Vision automatically converts the number of days to minutes when exporting.

Time Phased Data

In Microsoft Project, if a task has both sub-tasks and assigned resources, then the sub-tasks dictate the Start Date and End Date for the Summary Task. The Summary Task is marked as Fixed Duration, thus, none of the resources can have time phased data beyond the date range of the Summary Task.

When a time phased "Actual Work" value is entered, Microsoft Project readjusts "Work" to make the total hours for the given Task or Assignment match. For example, In Microsoft Project, if a Task has 40 hours planned for weeks 1, 2, and 3, and the Actual Work for week 1 is 20 hours, then Microsoft Project moves 20 hours to week 4. Or, if the Actual Work for week 1 is 50 hours, then Microsoft Project changes Work in week 1 to 50 hours.

Parent Topic: Guidelines for Importing and Exporting Data