Some of our customers have asked how our Bamboo MS Project Add-in, which is included in SharePoint Project Management Central™, compares with the syncing capabilities between Microsoft Project Professional 2010 and SharePoint 2010. It's a good question, so the PM Central team came up with a table outlining the features of both the Bamboo MS Project Add-in and Microsoft Project's syncing capabilities with SharePoint 2010. More information follows the table.

Feature	Bamboo MS Project Add-in 2010	Microsoft Project 2010's Sync
Compatible With SharePoint 2007 (WSS 3.0/MOSS 2007)	Yes	No
Compatible With SharePoint 2010 (Foundation and Server)	Yes	Yes
Field Mapping	Yes, with limitations	Yes, with limitations
Dependency Impact	Yes	No
Two-Way Sync	No	Yes
Easy to Use	Yes	Yes
Map Fields With Any SharePoint List	Yes*	No**

                * Bamboo MS Project Add-in 2010 – Can map fields to any SharePoint List. However, WBS and PredecessorTasks and OutlineTask in MS Project are required to work with our custom WBS, Predecessor Task and Parent Task in order for the dependencies and outline order to show up correctly.

                ** MS Project 2010's Sync – Can map most fields to Project Task and Task List. Cannot sync data such as predecessor or outline task.

SharePoint 2007 and 2010 Compatibility: Microsoft Project 2010's sync function only integrates with SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010. The Bamboo MS Project Add-in for Microsoft Project 2010, part of PM Central for SharePoint 2010, works with SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 as well as Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. So if you have multiple server farms that have both SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010 installed, you can import and export with the Bamboo MS Project Add-in for Microsoft Project 2010, regardless of the SharePoint version.

Microsoft Project Professional 2007 Compatibility: The Bamboo MS Project Add-in has two versions to work with both Microsoft Project 2010 and 2007, which means that if you have PM Central for 2007 and SharePoint 2007 you can still install our add-in for Microsoft Project 2007 and SharePoint 2007 to import tasks into your SharePoint 2007 environment.

Field Mapping: Microsoft Project 2010 defaults to syncing the following fields:

• Name
• Start
• Finish
• % Complete
• Resource Names
• Predecessor

You can sync additional fields, but you have to add them manually using the Backstage view. You can only sync in Microsoft Project's Manually Scheduled task mode.

Bamboo's MS Project Add-in allows you to map as many as 20 fields. Just map your fields using the table below.

SharePoint Field	MS Project Source Field
Title	Name
Priority	Priority
Status	Status
% Complete	PercentComplete
Assigned To	ResourceName
Start Date	Start
Due Date	Finish
Constraint Type	ConstraintType
Constraint Date	ConstraintDate
Work	Work
Actual Work	ActualWork
Remaining Work	RemainingWork
Parent Task	OutlineParent
Predecessor Task	PredecessorTasks
Milestone	Milestone
Cost (Enter)	Cost
Actual Cost (Enter)	ActualCost
Remaining Cost (Enter)	RemainingCost
Duration	Duration
Project Name	Project

For the Parent Task and Predecessor Task fields, map to OutlineParent and PredecessorTask as shown in the table. Due to the limitation of the Task Master Web Part, only one predecessor can be selected per task item. Constraints with lag time such as +3days are not supported in this version. Since Bamboo's Task List uses Custom Column for Cost, Actual Cost and Remaining Cost, you can only map Cost (Enter), Actual Cost (Enter) and Remaining Cost (Enter) to Microsoft Project's Cost, Actual Cost and Remaining Cost. The values that you import in will overwrite the values in the custom columns.

Dependency Impact: When you sync a task list between Microsoft Project 2010 and SharePoint 2010, you can modify the names and dates of the tasks; however, any dependencies that belong to that task will not be impacted. So for example, say you have a task, Task 1, that begins on September 1. That task has a dependency, T1, that begins on September 3. If you change Task 1's start date to September 4, T1's start date remains September 3. The Bamboo MS Project Add-in allows task dependencies to be impacted when you modify the predecessors or the "child" tasks.

Two-Way Sync: Microsoft Project 2010's sync integration with SharePoint 2010 works two ways, meaning that you can make changes in your list in Microsoft Project, and the changes will be reflected in the SharePoint task list, and vice versa. Currently, the Bamboo MS Project Add-in does not support two-way syncing. Bamboo MS Project Add-in allows importing from Microsoft Project and exporting from SharePoint lists.

Easy to Use: Syncing a task list between Microsoft Project and SharePoint 2010 is simple, thanks to the Backstage view. Read this Microsoft Project 2010 Tips and Tricks article to learn how to sync Microsoft Project with SharePoint 2010.

Installing and using the Bamboo MS Project Add-in is easy. After you install the add-in, you can import and export to and from Project in just a few steps. For information on installing the Bamboo MS Project Add-in and importing and exporting tasks between Microsoft Project and SharePoint 2010, read the following KBs:

• KB.12485: Installing the Bamboo MS Project Add-in and Importing Tasks into SharePoint Tasks Lists From Microsoft Project 2010
• KB.12506: Exporting Tasks From SharePoint Tasks Lists to Microsoft Project 2010

Sync With Any SharePoint List: You can sync Project Task Lists and Task Lists between Microsoft Project and SharePoint 2010. The Bamboo MS Project Add-in can import data to any SharePoint list or export data from any SharePoint list to Microsoft Project with the limitations listed above.

The Bamboo Microsoft Project Add-in is available with both the 2007- and the 2010-compatible release version 1.8 of PM Central™, which is available for a free trial download as well as for purchase. We're eager to hear your feedback!