Migrate from Accolade to Microsoft Project

Accolade Portfolios are top-level organizational containers linking multiple Projects with budget allocations and strategic alignment tags. In Microsoft Project, there is no native Portfolio object at the Project Online level without the Project Web App (PWA) add-in. We map Portfolios to either a SharePoint hub site structure with multiple Project Sites, or to Project Online Enterprise Projects if the customer licenses PWA. Budget and strategic alignment tags migrate as custom fields on each Project.

Accolade Projects map directly to Microsoft Project plans. We extract all standard fields including Name, Description, Start Date, Finish Date, Status, Owner, and custom properties. In Microsoft Project, these map to Project Summary Task fields or to the Project Information dialog. Relationships to parent Portfolios are resolved through the SharePoint site hierarchy or PWA Enterprise Project Type.

Accolade Innovations represent early-stage ideas with submission date, originator, scoring attributes, and workflow state. Microsoft Project has no Innovation object. We transform Innovations into either Summary Tasks within an existing Project (if the Innovation has been promoted to a project-like state) or into Tasks within a designated Innovation Tracker project that we create as a placeholder. The original workflow state migrates as a custom field innovation_state__c. Innovations that were promoted to Projects in Accolade are mapped directly to their corresponding Project record with the promotion lineage preserved in a custom field.

Accolade Business Units are organizational entities used for segmentation and reporting, each capable of defining different custom property schemas on the same object. Microsoft Project has no native BU concept. We map BUs to a custom Text field business_unit__c on Project records, or to a SharePoint site hierarchy where each BU owns a site collection. Multi-level BU hierarchies are flattened to a single BU assignment per record. Custom property schemas that vary by BU are merged into a superset of custom fields, with fields that apply only to certain BUs left null on records from other BUs.

Accolade supports user-defined fields on Projects and Innovations with field types including Text, Number, Date, Picklist, and Boolean. We extract the full custom property schema including field type, required flag, and picklist options. At import time, we pre-create matching custom fields in Microsoft Project using the Project Online custom field API or via Project Desktop Enterprise Custom Fields dialog. Picklist values migrate as Text fields if the destination does not support lookup tables at the customer's licensing tier.

Documents and files attached to Accolade Projects and Innovations are exported with original filenames, MIME types, and content. We transfer binary blobs directly to the destination SharePoint document library linked to the corresponding Project Site. Files over 100MB are chunked during extraction and reassembled on the destination side with SHA-256 checksum verification to confirm integrity, logged in the transfer manifest.

Accolade uses configurable workflow stages with gate approvals and transition rules. Microsoft Project does not have a native approval workflow engine. We export the full stage definition including name, order, and optional approver assignment as a written document. In Microsoft Project, workflow stages map to either Summary Task milestones (for a visual phase representation) or to custom Text fields capturing the current gate status. Power Automate flows can be configured post-migration to replicate gate notifications if the customer licenses Power Automate.

Accolade User accounts include name, email, role, and BU assignment. We export the user roster and map Accolade roles to Microsoft Project Resources. For Project Online, Resources are provisioned in the Enterprise Resource Pool; for Project Desktop, Resources are entered in the Resource Sheet. Active project assignments map to Resource Assignments in Microsoft Project. Inactive Accolade users are mapped to Resources with the Inactive flag set.

Accolade audit comments and activity history are stored as timestamped entries linked to a project or innovation. We export these as a flattened activity feed. In Microsoft Project Online, comments can be stored in the Project Site's SharePoint list or as notes on the Project Summary Task. We append the activity feed as structured notes on each Project record with timestamp, actor, and action preserved in a readable format.

Accolade tracks quantitative metrics against projects such as budget consumed, schedule variance, and custom KPIs as numeric time-series values. We export these as structured key-value records. In Microsoft Project, numeric KPIs map to custom Number fields on the Project record. Time-series KPI values are stored as multiple rows with a date dimension if the customer requires historical tracking; otherwise the most recent KPI value is stored as a single field.

Accolade milestone dates stored against Projects migrate to Microsoft Project Milestone tasks (tasks with zero duration and a milestone diamond indicator). We preserve the milestone name, scheduled date, and any milestone owner. Milestone dependencies are modeled as predecessor links in Microsoft Project.

Accolade budget allocation values stored at the Portfolio or Project level migrate to Microsoft Project Cost fields. We map total budget, budget consumed, and budget variance to custom Cost fields. If the customer requires resource-based cost tracking, we configure the Resource Standard Rate and Per Use Cost on Resource records and enable cost rollup on assignments.