assess the resource leveling and its impact to the critical path In Figure below, the original project schedule is display with properly leveled resources and the critical path identified Figure – The Original Schedule After inactivating tasks, the project schedule has over allocated resources that need to be rescheduled (Figure 4) Reallocating the resources manually or automatically will change the start and finish dates Figure – Tasks are inactivated Figure depicts the revised schedule with inactive tasks, a new critical path and adjusted resource allocations Project managers can also hide the inactive tasks by changing the filter to Active tasks in the View ribbon bar Figure – Resource leveled project schedule with inactive tasks Part 3: Import Excel Into Microsoft Project Build the Excel to Project import map My solution was to develop an import map that includes the key fields in the table below Field Name ID Outline Level Name Start Finish % Complete Baseline Start Description The Task ID for the Microsoft Project task Determines the Outline Level in a project’s hierarchy An Outline Level of is at the highest level in the hierarchy, and an Outline Level of has four summary level tasks above it Task Name Forecasted Start date Forecasted Finish date Task completion percentage Original Baseline Start date Baseline Finish Actual Start Actual Finish Predecessors Resource Name Original Baseline Finish date Actual task Start date Actual task Finish date Identifies the Task ID of a predecessor task Assigned Resource To build this map in Microsoft Project: Open a sample Microsoft Project schedule (It helps if you have a completed project schedule so the final export will have meaningful data.) Go to File | Save As Select the Microsoft Excel Workbook (*.xls) as the Save as Type and click Save Click Next and leave Selected Data as the option Click New Map Select the Tasks checkbox (Figure 2) Figure – Task Mapping Click the Microsoft Office Project field and select the fields in table above Click the Next button Click Save Map and Save It as Excel MPP Map 10 Click the Finish button The Excel extract will now contain the key fields needed to build the project hierarchy In this case, I had to build the export map for the vendor so they could simply export their Microsoft Project data into a format that I could use to import the file Once the vendor had this map in their Microsoft Project file, the vendor could easily save an Excel file using this extract It ensured the vendor’s confidential data was kept confidential, while the critical data that I needed to understand milestones and start and finish dates for key tasks could be imported into my Microsoft Project schedule Import Excel Into Microsoft Project Wizard Once the vendor provided a file using this format, their schedule could easily be imported into Microsoft Project by following these steps: Start Microsoft Project with a blank project schedule In Microsoft Project, go to File | Open Change the Files of Type combo box to Microsoft Excel (*.xls) Select the extract file and click Open Click the Next button Select Use Existing Map Select the Excel MPP map Select Append the Data to the Active Project (Figure 3) Figure – Import Wizard Click the Next button 10 Click the Next button 11 Click the Finish button The end result is a properly formatted Microsoft Project file that contains the vendor’s project schedule Once the schedules are converted, I insert them as subprojects in the master project schedule Before I came up with this solution, I would import the schedule as a new project; I ran into calculation issues because the % Complete field is a calculated field and didn’t consistently convert ... to the Active Project (Figure 3) Figure – Import Wizard Click the Next button 10 Click the Next button 11 Click the Finish button The end result is a properly formatted Microsoft Project... the fields in table above Click the Next button Click Save Map and Save It as Excel MPP Map 10 Click the Finish button The Excel extract will now contain the key fields needed to build the