Importing permanent resources from your Microsoft Outlook address book

You can import entries from your Microsoft Outlook® address book into Asta Powerproject as permanent resources. This is a quick and easy way of creating permanent resources in a project that match the resources that are available in your organisation. Once you have set up the permanent resources in a project, you can import new permanent resources from your Outlook address book as new entries are added to the address book and when existing entries are edited.

Note that each Outlook address book entry corresponds to an Active Directory® user. Your Active Directory users may be organised into user groups - for example, each user may be a member of a group that relates to the user's department. When you import entries from your Outlook address book, they are imported as a flat list of permanent resources: the user group structure is not maintained, and the user groups themselves are not imported into the project.

To use Asta Powerproject's Outlook integration features, you must use a 64 bit version of Outlook.

You cannot import resources from your Outlook address book if you are using Asta Powerproject SaaS.

Importing entries from your Outlook address book into Asta Powerproject

To import entries from your Outlook address book into Asta Powerproject:

On the Allocation tab, in the Tools group, click Import Resources. The Import Resources dialog appears. It lists all of the entries in your Outlook address book.
Select the check box to the left of the address book entries that you want to import into Asta Powerproject as permanent resources. Alternatively, select the Import all check box to import all of the entries in your address book.
Click Import. The selected address book entries are imported into Asta Powerproject and a permanent resource record is created for each one.

Note that if you choose to import all of the entries in the address book, this will include any inactive entries - which may relate to people who have left the company, for example. If you choose to import all entries, you should check the resulting permanent resource records carefully and delete any permanent resources that have been imported that do not represent resources that will be available to work on the project. Do not delete any resources that have already been assigned to tasks, as doing this would remove the resource and its allocations from the project.

Once you have imported entries from your Outlook address book into Asta Powerproject as permanent resources, you can organise them into a structured resource hierarchy within Library Explorer.

Importing new and changed permanent resources from your Outlook address book

To import any new or changed entries from your Outlook address book into Asta Powerproject as permanent resources:

On the Allocation tab, in the Tools group, click Import Resources. The Import Resources dialog appears.
Select the check box to the left of any new address book entries and any existing address book entries that have been edited since they were last imported into Asta Powerproject. Alternatively, select the Import all check box to import all of the entries in your address book.
Select the Include existing check box to specify that you want to reimport any entries that you have imported previously. These would otherwise be ignored from the import process.
Click Import. The selected address book entries are imported into Asta Powerproject. A permanent resource record is created for each new address book entry and the existing permanent resource records are updated.

Once again, remember to check the resulting permanent resource records carefully after you have imported entries from your Outlook address book and delete any permanent resources that have been imported that do not represent resources that will be available to work on the project. Do not delete any resources that have already been assigned to tasks.