Migrate from Nozbe to Microsoft Project

Nozbe Projects map to Microsoft Project plans. Each Nozbe Project becomes a standalone MPP file (if migrating to Project Desktop) or a Project Online project site (if migrating to Project Online or Project for the web). Project name, description, and completion status carry over directly. We use the Project Name as the dedupe key and create the project plan before any task import so that task-project relationships are satisfied at insert time.

Nozbe Tasks map to Microsoft Project Task rows. We infer hierarchy from any subtask relationship in Nozbe (if available via the Classic export) and create Summary Tasks in Microsoft Project for parent-level tasks. Task Name, Start Date (computed from Due Date offset), Due Date, Priority (High/Med/Low mapped to Microsoft Project Priority values 500/1000/1500), and Percent Complete (derived from Done status as 100% or 0%) migrate directly. Tasks without dates receive a default start date set during scoping.

Nozbe Task Comments map to Microsoft Project Task Notes field. We concatenate comments chronologically under each task, prefixing each with the author name and timestamp. The Notes field has a 32,000-character limit in Project Online; for tasks with very long comment threads, we truncate at 31,500 characters and attach a plain-text file with the full history to the project SharePoint site.

Nozbe Categories (@calls, @home, @office) are a GTD context feature. They do not appear in the Nozbe Classic JSON export and must be scraped from the Nozbe web interface during scoping (requiring temporary read access to the workspace). We recreate them as a Microsoft Project Task-level custom field with a lookup table. The customer selects a name for the custom field during scoping; we pre-create the lookup table entries in Project Online via the PWA settings or in the desktop MPP template before migration.

Nozbe Tags are flat cross-cutting labels with no hierarchy, similar to Microsoft Project's flag fields or multi-value text custom fields. We map Tags to a Microsoft Project custom field of type Flag or Text (the customer chooses during scoping). For tasks with multiple tags, we concatenate them into the custom field separated by semicolons. We document the tag-to-field mapping in the migration deliverable so the customer's admin can adjust to a multi-select lookup table if supported in their Project edition.

Nozbe stores recurrence as a pattern (daily, weekly, monthly, custom) on a single Task. Microsoft Project supports recurrence natively. We offer two approaches during scoping: (1) preserve the recurrence rule in Microsoft Project's native recurrence dialog, which maintains one task with a recurring pattern, or (2) expand the recurrence into a series of individual tasks with explicit Start and Finish dates for each instance. Option 2 inflates task counts and is only recommended when the destination admin needs to track per-instance completion; option 1 is recommended for schedule fidelity.

Nozbe task attachments are included in the Classic export as file blobs within the JSON archive. We extract these during the migration preparation phase and upload them to the Project Online SharePoint document site (created with the project plan). We then insert a hyperlink in the corresponding Microsoft Project Task Notes field pointing to the SharePoint document URL. If the destination is Project Desktop without SharePoint, we package attachments into a zip named alongside the MPP file.

Nozbe workspace Members map to Microsoft Project Resources. We extract member email addresses and names from the Classic export and either match them against the destination Project Online Enterprise Resource Pool (if available) or create local Resources in the MPP file. Resource type defaults to Work for named users. Any Member without a destination match is flagged in the reconciliation report for the customer admin to provision before task-assignment migration.

Nozbe assigns Members to Tasks as owners. We map these assignments to Microsoft Project Resource Assignments on the corresponding Task row. The assignment unit reflects the Nozbe assignment (typically 100% for a sole assignee). Assignments require a resolved Resource record, so this step runs after the Member-to-Resource reconciliation phase.

Nozbe Inbox items are GTD capture entries that do not have a persistent equivalent in Microsoft Project. We do not migrate them as a separate object type. Instead, during scoping we ask the customer whether they want inbox items imported as tasks in a designated 'Inbox Review' project in Microsoft Project (for later sorting and distributing) or discarded. The choice is documented in the migration scope before any extraction runs.