[Planner Dev] Re: msp2planner.xsl

[Kurt Maute <kurt maute us>]

On Mon, 2004-11-22 at 05:30, Ulrich G� wrote:
> Hallo Kurt,

Hi Ulrich - I finally got around to having a look at this.  I'm copying
the Planner Development list as an FYI to the community...

> since a couple of weeks I am engaged with testing Planner 0.12. It is a 
> nice project planning tool for Linux.
> 
> Now I found your conversion utility msp2planner in the net. I tested it 
> with a small MSProject file (test.mpp), which I exported as MSProject xml 
> file (test.xml). Converting it to a Planner file (test.mrproject) leads to 
> errors:
>   Only the tasks 1-11 appear in the output file.
>   The file cannot be openend because task #2 references to a predecessor 
> task #12, which is missing in the file.
> 
> If I remove this reference in the file, Planner can open it and shows the 
> workpackages 1-11 correctly, but the length of the bars in the Gantt chart 
> is always zero (because of work="0" ??).

I corrected an omission here in the stylesheet and attached the diff
file.  I wasn't writing the duration to the result file... but also in
order to make this work, you need to set each task as 'fixed duration'
on the MSP side or it won't come across.

> If the workpackage numbers in the MSProject file are high numbers (I 
> recognized it with WP numbers "1000" and "11000") they are missinterpreted 
> and the work package is missing in the output file.

ok - it took me a moment to realize that your workpackage numbers were
the MSP WBS numbers.  Here's the scoop: 
Since WBS is a modifiable field in MSP, you can make it be whatever you
want, but due to differences in the way MSP and Planner represent the
task heirarchy in their xml files, I had to make an assumption when
creating my stylesheet in order for it to work at all.

I've got a recursive template that loops thru the outline levels using
the WBS code of the previous outline level as a prefix to the current
one - so in your numbering scheme you need to tack on digits to the end
of the WBS rather than increment one of the existing digits.  Sooooo...
100
 110
 120
 130
won't work, but:
100
 1001
 1002
 1003
would work, and also any delimiters you'd like to throw in should work
as well:
100
 100.1
 100.2
 100.3

and

100
 100-1
 100-2
 100-3

both worked for me when I tested it.

WBS is a calculated field in Planner.  Its not in the transformed xml
file, so no matter what you do, any custom WBS codes you define in MSP
won't show up in Planner as you defined them.

> But I think this is a very good way to close the gap between M$Windows 
> project management and Linux project management and so I hope you will be 
> successfull. Next tool would be something like "planner2msp" for the way 
> back.  

Yes, planner2msp is certainly on my 'to do' list.  Though I will have to
write up a list of caveats about the whole import/export thing and post
it on http://planetplanner.org.  The best use of this type of tool is
either for a one-time migration or for mixed platform team members to be
able to view the files.

What this solution will never be good for is passing plans back and
forth on a regular basis (like a MSP using PM having team members update
their activities in Planner and pass back an exported xml file).  That
would be messy.

Finally, thanks for spending the time to do some testing.  This was real
helpful!

-- 
Kurt Maute <kurt maute us>

128a129,133
>   <xsl:attribute name="duration">
>     <xsl:call-template name="ms2pduration">
>       <xsl:with-param name="dur" select="ms:Duration"/>
>     </xsl:call-template>
>   </xsl:attribute>