Setting up recurring tasks with excel import

[Pete Hay]

I am trying to set up a building maintenance management system using Excel to
define all of the tasks, then drop them into Project for scheduling and use
PWA for end-user task communication.
I posted this on the MPP group yesterday and there is a thread there:
"Subject: Excel (Recurring) Task Import" with some good responses.
It was suggested that I post the same question to the MOPS group in hopes of
getting more feedback on my approach to my company's task scheduling needs.
Thanks in advance,
Pete

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Peter --

I ran a little experiment this afternoon, and I am sad to report that there
is really no easy way to create a Recurring Task in Excel and then import it
into a Microsoft Project file. Probably the best you can do is to create an
Excel workbook that contains the following columns:

Outline_Level
Name
Duration
Start_Date

In the workbook, a user will need to specify a 1 value in the Outline Level
column for a task that represents the Recurring Task itself. For each
subtask of the Recurring Task, the user specify a 2 value in the Outline
Level column and a Name, along with its Duration (such as 1h), plus its
Start Date. The user must also include the time of day as part of the Start
Date, which means the user would need to enter information as 1/21/10 8:00
AM. Again, let me emphasize that the user must enter each subtask of the
Recurring Task individually.

If you then import this information into a project and append it at the end
of the project, the system will create a Summary Task and a series of
subtasks with Constraints. This vaguely approximates a Recurring Task, but
does not create an actual Recurring Task. Given the amount of work the user
must do, I think you will agree it would be much simpler to manually create
a Recurring Task in your Microsoft Project file.

Hope this helps.