Sending a Microsoft Project Work Plan to Project Management

Sending a Microsoft Project work plan to Project Management (using the PPM > Send Work Plan to PPM menu selection) creates an association between the Microsoft Project work plan and a Project Management project. A Microsoft Project work plan can be associated to only one Project Management project.

The Plug-in for PPM sends both planned information and actuals from the Microsoft Project work plan to a blank Project Management work plan. This menu selection cannot be used to update planned information and actuals in an existing Project Management work plan.

Note: You may need to create a project without a work plan in Project Management before sending the file from Microsoft Project.

You can send a Microsoft Project work plan to a Project Management project that is configured with any of the three synchronization modes. Your project management strategy helps to determine when and why you would send a Microsoft Project work plan to a blank Project Management work plan.

For example, in Project Management-controlled mode, you might send a Microsoft Project work plan to Project Management in order to create a new Project Management project based on an existing Microsoft Project work plan or to convert an existing Microsoft Project work plan to a Project Management project.

In shared control mode, you might send a Microsoft Project work plan to Project Management because you are collecting actuals in Project Management but are using an existing Microsoft Project work plan or want to use Microsoft Project planning tools.

In Microsoft Project-controlled mode, you might send a Microsoft Project work plan to Project Management in order to publish a project using Project Management and present the project in the PPM Dashboard.

When you send a Microsoft Project work plan to a Project Management project, a new work plan is created in Project Management based on the current .mpp file in Microsoft Project. Projects using Microsoft Project Server behave somewhat differently; see Working with Projects Using a Microsoft Project Server.

To send a Microsoft Project work plan to Project Management:

  1. From the Microsoft Project Add-Ins tabbed area, select PPM > Send Work Plan to PPM.

  2. If prompted, type your Project Management username and password and click OK.

  3. From the Select a Project dialog, click Search.

  4. Select a project to which to send the Microsoft Project work plan.

    You can only select from projects that do not have work plans, and only for projects for which you are the project manager. If no such project exists, you must create one in Project Management.

  5. Click Select or double-click the selected item.

  6. The integration automatically performs resource mapping between applications for a Project Management project that is Microsoft Project-controlled or has shared control. If resources in Microsoft Project cannot be automatically mapped to resources in Project Management, the Mapping Resources dialog displays.

    Note: Automatic resource mapping occurs upon the first synchronization or when a new resource is added to Microsoft Project. See Planned Information.

    Specify mapping for unmapped resources and click Finish.

    You can verify the automatic mappings, modify any of the automatic mappings, and specify any mappings for unmapped resources at a later time. See Manually Mapping Resources Between Applications (Shared Control Mode and Microsoft Project-Controlled Mode) for more information about the Mapping Resources dialog.

  7. If the Project Management project is Project Management-controlled or has shared control, the Send Actuals dialog displays. You must choose to either Include Actuals (send actuals to Project Management) or Ignore Actuals (do not send the actuals to Project Management). Click OK after you have made your selection.

  8. The integration is completed when the Integration Complete dialog displays.

    From the Integration Complete dialog, you may choose to remove the association between the Microsoft Project work plan and the Project Management project.

    You can also click Show Info to view any informational messages, errors, or warnings that occurred while sending the work plan to Project Management. See Enable synchronization logs for information on how to enable full information tracing.

    Click Done to close the dialog.

By default, whenever you send a Microsoft Project file to Project Management, a backup copy of the .mpp file is automatically saved to the same directory in which the original file is stored, with the extension .bak. See Back up Microsoft Project files.

During integration, Project Management recalculates the duration of each task based on the Project Management base and resource calendars, but keeping the start and finish dates the same.

The Project Management project is initially assigned the In Planning status. After the project manager verifies that the dates are correct, the project should be moved to the Active status.

Note: If the Project Management work plan is integrated with Time Management and the synchronization mode is either Project Management-controlled or shared control, when the actual effort is rolled up to the work plan from Time Management, if the actual effort has not been modified (no new time has been logged using a time sheet), the corresponding actual effort in the work plan is not updated. If the actual effort has been modified (new time has been logged using a time sheet), the corresponding actual effort in the work plan is updated. Therefore, when the actual effort is rolled up to the work plan from Time Management, if the actual effort in  Time Management has been updated, the actuals that originated from the Microsoft Project work plan are overwritten. If the actual effort in Time Management has not been updated, the actuals that originated from the Microsoft Project work plan are retained.