How Do I Integrate ACT Contact Management Software with Microsoft Project 2013? 'How do you export a Gantt Chart from ACT!' ? [ Edited ]

[lionschasing]

Regarding using ACT’S API to export to .MPP Microsoft Project template….

1. Is it possible to integrate ACT’s outlook extension library to export to .MPP from .XLS/.CSV formats so as to track the timeline and Milestones of a process?

1. How would it be possible to integrate this process when a user uploads a Microsoft project file to export to from ACT’s supported formats?

1. Could we manipulate an XML output into a Microsoft project oriented format?

1. Would ACT be able to automate this to instantly see Live reported results as user commissioning of jobs change?

1. From what I have researched it may be possible to use Microsoft.Office.Interop.MSProject Class Library in Visual studio to automate this, there is some ongoing work on stackoverflow indicating a close match for our requirements http://stackoverflow.com/questions/33612538/how-do-i-integrate-act-contact-management-software-with-...  could we use this functionality further in Act to Outlook Calendar?

1. I have attached a coded script that can export from Calendar output (in Microsoft Outlook) to Microsoft Project.

Using Microsoft.Office.Interop.MSProject

Sub AddCalendar()

    Application.BaseCalendarCreate "holiday", "Standard"

    Dim cal As Calendar

    Set cal = ThisProject.BaseCalendars("holiday")

    With cal

        .Period(#8/1/2015#, #9/1/2015#).Working = False

    End With

End Sub

The added benefits of this functionality would be the ability to monitor and track jobs on-the-go as they materialize following Prince2 methodologies and would help the company integrate it’s requirements more closely, the only question I have is if it’s possible to build a quick extension to convert to .mpp format directly.

Kindest Regards

Lionschasing

[lionschasing]

Bump. Just a thought? This requirement is for a Gantt Chart, so my question should really be 'How do you export a Gantt Chart from ACT!' ?

Could we use an Import Map?

When I export data from Microsoft Project into Excel, the data file doesn’t maintain the hierarchy. Creating the hierarchy in Excel usually involves grouping and indenting in Excel or using a custom macro to build the hierarchy. When I import an Excel file into Microsoft Project, it also lacks any of the indenting (Figure 1) and summary tasks that make Microsoft Project a valuable roll-up tool.....

So the problem really is that Excel is missing the following ID's, so I would look for a simple C# or VB Script that could convert from XLS to .MPP so as to avoid the problem of importing 'raw' excel data into MPP as importing normally would not answer the question.

Field Name	Description
ID	The Task ID for the Microsoft Project task
Outline Level	Determines the Outline Level in a project’s hierarchy. An Outline Level of 1 is at the highest level in the hierarchy, and an Outline Level of 5 has four summary level tasks above it.
Name	Task Name
Start	Forecasted Start date
Finish	Forecasted Finish date
% Complete	Task completion percentage
Baseline Start	Original Baseline Start date
Baseline Finish	Original Baseline Finish date
Actual Start	Actual task Start date
Actual Finish	Actual task Finish date
Predecessors	Identifies the Task ID of a predecessor task
Resource Name	Assigned Resource

[wellmet]

The short answer to your questions is yes to all of them.  My concern is that I don't know how many Act! users are using Microsoft Project.  Unfortunately that usually means that the first person ends up footing the bill for the development of the project.  I would be happy to discuss it with you further if you like.  Should you choose to do it yourself there is an SDK available for Act! that would provide you with the information that you need to get a project like this done.  Through the SDK you can get access to pretty much everything that is in the Act! database.

Stan

[lionschasing]

So far the only options that I have found revolve around integrating calendar tasks from outlook using project server 2010.