Importing data into the Workplan

The Workplan is a project planning, monitoring, and implementation tool with which you can create multiple project time plans, manage and carry out scheduled activities and events (e.g. deliverables, milestones). By customising ID settings of activities and events, it's possible to build any desired work breakdown structure, e.g. "Work packages > Tasks > Sub-Tasks".

If you have already developed a project schedule outside the EMDESK app, you can import your project data into the Workplan. 

The import function allows importing activities and events under specific "parent" activities, for that those "parent" activities must be already in your workspace. To build the work breakdown structure, we recommend therefore importing activities and events level by level according to their hierarchical structure starting with the highest level. 

After importing, you still have the option to reorganise activities and events by moving them to new positions (read here how to move activities and events). 

Follow the instructions below on how to import activities and events into an EMDESK workspace.

1

To import activities, deliverables, and milestones, prepare your data file for importing:

• The file must be in the XLSX format, max 2MB, and have only 1 sheet (find more technical file requirements here)
• The file must contain required columns with the following headers:

Type	Specify the type of the workplan item – it must be either Activity, Deliverable, or Milestone
Name	Provide the name of the workplan item, e.g. Market Research or Technical Report
Activity Type	For activities: provide the type of the activity – enter the exact short name of the activity type as defined in your workspace*, e.g. RIA or IA (read here what is an activity type and where to find it) For events: leave empty
Plan Date	For activities: enter the start date in the following format: YYYY-MM-DD For events: enter the due date in the following format: YYYY-MM-DD
Duration (in months)	For activities: enter the duration in months using numeric characters, e.g 24 For events: leave empty * value must exist in your workspace, imported record is assigned to the first found item with this value

• The file can also contain additional information in the following optional columns:

Description	Description for the workplan item
Objectives	Objectives of the workplan item
Participant	Lead participant of the workplan item – enter the exact ID, short name, or name of the participant as defined in the "Participant" section of your workspace*, e.g. P1, BWE, or Wayne Enterprises
Further Participants	Additional participants involved in the workplan item – enter exact IDs, short names, or names of the participants as defined in the "Participant" section of your workspace*, separating the entries with comma without space, e.g. P2,P3 or FGE,SIZ
Tags	Add tags for the workplan item, separating them with comma without space, e.g. tag1,tag2,tag3
Custom Identifier	If needed, you have the possibility to set a custom ID for the workplan item (if not set, the system will define IDs according to your workspace ID settings)
Parent Activity	Parent activity of the workplan item – enter the exact name or ID of the activity as defined in the "Workplan" section of your workspace*, e.g. WP1 or Evaluation of Relevant Markets * value must exist in your workspace, imported record is assigned to the first found item with this value

This is an example of how your data file may look like:

Note: Any  hidden rows in the excel file will be recognised for the import and if those rows are not supposed to be imported they must be taken out.

Tip: To download a sample excel file, go to the "Workplan" section, click the "+ Import" button at the bottom of the section, choose a project, and then click the "Sample spreadsheet" button: 

2

When the file is ready to be imported, click Workplan in Home menu to open the "Workplan" section.

3

Click + Import at the bottom, this will open the "Choose the project" dialogue box.

4

Click the dropdown menu, choose the project under which you would like to import activities and events and click Next.

5

A new dialogue box will appear, click on the "Select or drop file" area to upload the file from your computer or simply drag and drop the file into this area.   

Note: The import only supports XLSX files.

6

Map column headers from your file to the workplan item properties in the appeared window.

• Some of the columns may be already mapped based on their names, these are marked as green:

• To map the other columns, click the dropdown menu on the right and choose the respective property:

Note: Columns that are not mapped will not be imported into the workspace.

Tip: For the required properties, you can also enter default values that will be set during the import for each work plan item imported from the file. For that, do not map these properties with any of the columns – instead, click  Next and enter the default value next to the relevant property or choose the option from the dropdown list:

7

Click Import now at the bottom of the window.

• If import is completed without any problems, a green message will appear meaning that all records in your file were successfully recognised:
  
  

  

  The imported workplan items are added into the "Workplan" section into the end of the "parent's" list of the activities and events that already exist (if such exist).

  Tip: All activities and events from the import have a tag "import_[Date]_[Time]", e.g. "import_2022-10-20_12-10-13". To quickly find and update/delete records from the import, use the tag for filtering the data.
• If import is completed with some problems, an orange message will appear meaning that not all records in your file were recognised (values for properties were not in the correct format or were not able to be matched with existing records) and stating that an error file was downloaded:



The error file contains only those workplan items that were not imported and indicates with a red colour the error values. Edit the incorrect data and repeat the importing process for this new data file until all records are accepted.