How do I import tasks from Excel
Answered
I can see how to import app content but I can't find a similar approach to importing tasks. There must be one!
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@Andy_Carpenter, I use Mindview 5 (Mindmapping/Timeline/Gantt/Outline views) to outline projects. I found a multi-step process to get from Mindview to Podio. It was a hassle to set up and its a one way process since you can't sync back out with Podio. But, it allows me to go from MindMap/Gantt Charts - Podio. It's off topic for this thread, but I'll be happy to send it over to you.
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Would it be possible to use modified versions of the Projects App for Deliverables and Tasks? This would solve the issue not being able to Import or Email tasks directly to Deliverables. I may be make the Task list irrelevant but it would also save me hours of work that is required in modifying information within Podio every time I need add a project or create a status report.
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Interestingly, we had a Ruby developer (my wife) write an app to broadcast email reports that summarize Podio data.
So, I had the option to have her investigate writing a script to import the tasks. But, when it came down to it, I chose not to. I realized that the ideal approach to project management (IMHO) is to capture work-packages of various sizes in apps (Initiatives and Deliverables) and then use tasks only for the transient, day-to-day traffic.
This approach works well -- and I think it's what Gustav was getting at.
@Alex, From a technical (project management) perspective, it is not generally a good thing to try and manage project execution at the most granular level. This is because uncertainty, at this level of granularity, is so great that the PM's management efforts actually do more harm than good (the 'optimizing within the noise' problem).
The biggest challenge teaching people to use formal PM tools (say, MS Project) is to prevent them from planning at an unrealistic level of granularity (just because they can). Some problems are better solved in execution than planning!
I've had similar thoughts about integrating Podio and Jira. Our tech team uses Jira.
An integration would require some sort of synchronization of Deliverables, tasks and comments. For the moment, I've resolved that forcing our technical PM to manually synchronize the two environments is actually beneficial.
The thing is that the people in each department speak totally different languages -- and have different world-views -- so manual synchronization is probably the superior approach.
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wow... still no import after all this time?
We can import into and out of all apps, but still not tasks. Really not impressed with the main answer which seems to be "your doing it wrong". Don't us task for to do items.... make yourself an app.
Just a note to the Podio folks... we are consultants and have several clients excited about Podio and work flows and the entire concept. Sadly however, when they found they had no way to import a very large set of existing tasks, they simply said "no dice" and moved on to another solution.
Hope someone takes to heart that import of task is very important to new users. We also have a client who would like to be able to export task to excel for historical archival purposes as well.
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I'll throw my organization in the ring here to confirm that this is still very much a feature request that's being ignored. In fact, the issues with the entire functioning of tasks is being ignored. They're forced to exist within each app, yet we can't import into them in any way. So, 1) They're not functional as-is and we're told to use an app instead, and 2) They're still imbedded in every app and make a user think they're the best way to go because of the ease of entry and their existence everywhere. I'd like to import to them, and I'd like to have control over where they appear. This is really a make or break for our organization at this point, as I've been asked to research alternative project management systems. Such a basic thing to ignore that has a big impact. And no, our organization isn't interested in upgrading just to create a work-around for something that's built in to the system.
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Has there been any progress or update on this request by chance? I'm doing the same thing as Justin has just said, and it would be very very useful to be able to import the multiple tasks in.
Also, I am pleased that Tasks themselves have a handful of options to expand the information per task. It would be nice, however, to be able to have an unassigned task option so that I could choose which tasks need to be assigned and which ones are assumed. I understand the use and the structure you have designed for it, but it would just be nice to have this option.
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After 4 years of this being requested and discussions with a Podio rep, I think it's safe to say we're never going to get this feature. And, unfortunately, there's no way their suggestions for a work-around actually work for our organization. I will never really understand why you'd build something like tasks into Podio without any way to manage them. Even a simple thing like having the ability to delete completed tasks in bulk would make it more functional, but they have no intention of improving any aspect of it.
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