Importing and exporting plans with Microsoft Project

To import a plan, save the Microsoft Project file as a XML file and import the XML file. When you export a plan, an XML file is generated that you can open in Microsoft Project. Only the functions and attributes of Microsoft Project that are supported by your plan are imported or exported.

Import and export mapping

Mapping replaces a task type or resource from Microsoft Project with a supported work item type or resource in your target project. When you import a project plan, you can map the task types from Microsoft Project to the work item types in your project.

When you map task types, the attributes of task types in Microsoft Project are replaced with the attributes of the supported work item types in your target project. For example, you might map a task of type Summary Task from Microsoft Project to a Task work item type in your project.

The following tables illustrate how the resources and attributes of Microsoft Project map to the resources and attributes of your application.

Constraints and dependencies

The import and export capabilities in your application support the Finish-to-Start dependency among tasks in Microsoft Project. The remaining dependencies in Microsoft Project are not imported. Similarly, the import and export capabilities support only the As soon as possible, Finish no later than, and Start no earlier than constraints. The remaining constraints in Microsoft Project are not imported.

Task with multiple assignments

A task that has multiple assignments in Microsoft Project is imported into your project as a parent Summary Task and child tasks. For example, a task in Microsoft Project is assigned to Resource1, Resource2, and Resource3. When the task is imported to the target project, a Summary Task named T1 is created with three child tasks: T1_Task1, T1_Task2, and T1_Task3. As a result, Resource1 is assigned to T1_Task1, Resource2 is assigned to T2_Task2, and Resource3 is assigned to T1_Task3.