In the last few months, I’ve received quite a bit of feedback and tips on the Microsoft Project Importer. One of the first and biggest had nothing to do with functionality and everything to do with impropriety. As of this release (v1.4), the Microsoft Project Importer will now be known as simply the “Project Importer” and “Microsoft Project” will only be used to describe its capabilities. This name change is for two reasons. First, to preemptively head off any potential legal problems and second, it more closely describes the planned future of the tool. Stay tuned for that one. Now, on with the show…
This is a major update to the Project Importer in terms of functionality, usability, and code quality which is why I chose to skip the public v1.3 release. It is still not perfect, but I think you’ll be happy with the results.
To get your very own copy of the module, simply download it here: Project Importer v1.4.
A full feature/fix list is included in the package, but here are the highlights:
- Most importantly, the security sentinal from core dotProject was added to prevent unauthorized access via the filesystem. This breaks compatibility with all dotProject releases prior to 2.1-rc1. If you are using any of the 2.0.x versions, you cannot use this version of this module and should instead use v1.2.
- Now, changing a user’s assignment to zero removes them from the task completely. Previously, you’d have to go back and remove them from each task.
- Previously, if a task had no assignees the import process would generate an error. It now checks the array size before attempting to iterate over it.
- Now you can select a Project Status and Project Owner prior to import. This will help get your information organized that much faster.
- Modified the preview screen to warn the user if a username is below the minimum length set in their dotProject configuration. If the username is smaller than the minimum length, the newly created user will not be able to log in.
- Modified the preview screen to warn the user about permissions if the module is about to create a new Company.
Michael Ford of Proteus, Dennis Connolly of IEE, and Ben Sutherland of Protoscape each contributed feedback and suggestions to features and fixes in this release. As always, if you have any feedback, comments, suggestions, or large sums of money, feel free to share: keith@caseysoftware.com
The previous release is still available and fully compatible with the dotProject v2.0.x series: MS Project Importer v1.2