A Professional and Enterprise Plan Feature

Jibility supports the ability to import actions and assign these to existing initiatives from Excel. You can create the required initiatives before importing actions using the Import Initiative function. Please refer to the Import Initiative article for more information.

Note; the import action feature currently does not support updating existing actions. It is primarily for importing new actions.

The use cases for this feature are

1) You have an existing list of actions that you want to export from another tool and import into Jibility;

2) You wish to make bulk changes to your list of actions and it is easier to export them to Excel, delete all actions, apply changes to your list in Excel and re-import.

How to import actions from Excel?

To import actions from Excel, select the Initiative step and click on the import button illustrated below. You are prompted to select from "Import new initiatives from file" or "Import new actions from file".

TIPS: You can export the Initiative & Actions published document to Excel as a guide for the import file format. The Action import feature uses the same import file format, so you can also use this export to transfer initiatives and actions from one roadmap document to another.

If an error occurs during import, a pop-up window (as illustrated below) will display the error messages. You can retain a copy of all the error messages by manually selecting the messages in the text box and enter CTRL-C or click the "Copy & Close" button to automatically copy the messages to the clipboard. You can then paste the messages in a notepad or spreadsheet to analyze and address each error.

Import File Format

The Import Action feature is designed to import from an Excel spreadsheet similar to the Excel file created by the export function in the Initiative & Actions published document feature.

Here is an example of the Excel file format for the RedYabber sample roadmap.

The following is a description of the expected Excel file format:

1) The import Excel file must have a header on line six.

2) The import Excel file must have at least two header columns: Initiative and Action.

3) The import Excel file may have a similar structure to the Jibility Initiative & Actions t export file. Here is how the import action feature will treat each column from the Initiative & Action export document.

Header Column Name	Required?	Imported	Description
Initiative	No	Yes	The name of the initiative this action is assigned to. Maximum 80 characters. If the action should be imported but is not assigned to an initiative, then make the initiative value "/Unassigned/"
Action	Yes	Yes	The name of the action. 1 to 150 Characters. If importing into a 4-step roadmap, each action name must be unique.
Capability	No	No	Not imported
Action Description	No	Yes	Maximum 1000 characters
Action Owner Name	No		Maximum 50 characters.
Action Category	No	No	Not imported. To be implemented.
Action Estimated Cost Range	No	Yes	The default is "Custom". Valid values are "Custom", "Very Low", "Low", "Medium", "High" and "Very High".
Action Estimated Cost Value	No	Yes	Imported only when the Action Estimated Cost Range is "Custom"
Action Comments	No	Yes	Maximum 5000 characters.

Import Action Error Messages

When importing initiatives, you may encounter error messages. Error messages may appear in the a popup window or as a snack bar.

Popup Window Error Messages

The following is a description of each message.

Error Message	Cause
The name must be at most 150 characters long.	Action name is too long
The name must be at least 1 character long.	Action name was not given
The owner name must be at most 50 characters long.	Action owner name too long.
The description must be at most 1000 characters long.	Description is too long
The comments must be at most 5000 characters long.	The comment is too long
The name is already used by an existing action assigned to the initiative.	Duplicate action name is not allowed for the same initiative when it is a 4-Step roadmap.
The name exists more than once in the imported actions assigned to the initiative	Duplicate action names are not allowed for the same initiative when it is a 4-Step roadmap.
This assigned initiative does not exist	The initiative name was not provided, set to "/Unassigned/" or the named initiative does not exist.
The action must be assigned to an initiative	For a 4-step roadmap, an action must have an assigned initiative or the initiative name is set to "/Unassigned/".

Snack Bar Error Messages

Snack Bar Error messages appear as a line at the bottom of the page as illustrated below.

The following is a description of the error messages

Error Message	Cause
Could not import your actions. Ensure your Excel document is valid and try again.	The file cannot be read, for example it may be corrupted or permission issues.
The document did not contain any action. Please add some and try again.	A header row exists, but the subsequent rows are empty.
Could not import your actions. No entries found in the header row (6)	Row number 6 is empty where there should be action headings (Initiative, Action)
Could not import your actions. The required header "Action" was not found in the header row (6).	Header row is not empty but is missing 'Action' heading