Project Planning can open projects created with MS Project and saved in mpp (for Project 2010 and later) or xml files.
These files can be opened by the import function, or transmitted to Project planning by another mobile application. They can also be opened when they have been placed in the specific directories of the program and the version of Android allows to access to them.
The project is transformed into a Project Planning project and can be modified and saved as a Project Planning project.
Considering the differences between these software, the transformation will respect the following rules.
Planning project only does as soon as possible planning. MS Project scheduling options (eg effort driven, resource constrained scheduling...) are not taken into account.
Project planning plans with whole numbers of days. Durations are rounded up to the next day. Start and end dates are rounded to the day if the time is before 8 p.m., and to the next day otherwise.
In Project planning, there is only one calendar, the project calendar. Only the calendar defined in MS Project as the project calendar is taken into account, merging it with its base calendar if there is one. Any specific task or resource calendars are ignored.
Weekdays where there is a work slot that begins before 8 p.m. are declared worked, and otherwise not worked.
Non-recurring exceptions are transformed, as the case may be, into periods not worked, or days not worked or exceptionally worked.
Exceptions with daily recurrence are transformed into non-worked or exceptionally worked dates, or into non-worked periods.
Exceptions with annual recurrence are transformed into annual days, with a fixed date or with a rank in the month, if they are days not worked, the frequency and the start and end dates are ignored.
Other recurring exceptions are ignored.
Elementary tasks give Planning Project "Item", Task if the duration is non-zero, and Event if the duration is zero. However if the task is declared as "milestone" and its duration is less than 1 day, it will give an Event.
In the case of a recurring task, the recurrence will be ignored; and instances of the task created by MS Project will each result in an Item as shown above.
Summary tasks give Project Planning Group. However, a Project Planning Group cannot contain a Group. If the summary task only grouped elementary tasks, they will be transformed into members of the group. On the other hand, if there were one or more summary tasks in the grouping, the corresponding Group will be empty and its start and end will be defined by links or constraints.
If there are sub-projects, their content is not taken into account, they may appear as Tasks but this can lead to problems and should therefore be avoided.
Only two types of constraint are taken into account, "must start on" and "start at the earliest".
The "must start on" constraint gives a fixed start date for the corresponding Item. In addition, if the elementary task was included in summary tasks, the constraint can be transferred to the corresponding Group so that the Group also starts on the right date.
The "start at the earliest" constraint causes an Event to be created on the earliest date and a link from start to date between the Item created and this last Event. If the Item created is part of a Group, the Event at the earliest date and sometimes the link will be reported at the Group level.
Ms Project also allows manual planning. This will be taken as the "must start on" constraint, but it can lead to erroneous data and should be avoided.
The relations between elementary tasks will give links of the same nature between the Items resulting from the transformation. However, if the elementary tasks were part of groupings, certain links will be promoted to the corresponding Groups.
Project Planning does not manage resources. However, some information will be looked for in resources, resource names and types, and workloads.
If a task has only one work type resource assigned and the "Contact" is not filled, the resource name will be taken as "Contact".
The sum of the workloads coming from the resources assigned to a task may be taken as the workload of the task.