Importing a Plan - How to Upload Your Plan

Who has access: System Admins or Plan Owner

Instead of manually adding plan elements when creating a new plan, you can upload an Excel file and get to plan execution quicker! In this article, we will review how to use the Plan Import feature. 

Configure Your Plan

To use the Plan Import feature, you must first create a new plan and configure your plan settings. Your settings should mirror your plan structure; in other words, if you are setting up a four-level plan, ensure you have created a plan with four levels and labelled each level using your terminology. Please review the following articles for a refresher on plan creation and set-up:

• Manage Plans
• Administering Plan Settings

When configuring your plan settings, there are a couple of important things to remember to ensure the process goes smoothly:

• We recommend setting up any Tags you want to use for your plan in plan settings, as well as configuring Tag colours. 
• If you plan on using Custom Fields ensure you create them in plan settings first, for the relevant levels of your plan. 

Fill Out the Plan Upload Template

Once you have set up your plan, you need to download and complete the plan upload template. To do so, navigate to the ‘View/Edit Plan’ page in Envisio. On this page, you will see the option to start building your plan, or you can use the file upload option. You will see an option to ‘Download Template’ on this page, which will download the excel file you need to fill in. Alternatively, you can download the template at the end of this article.

The template contains four sheets, each of which will be covered in depth:

• plan_elements: Build out your plan elements, including the description and owner, and any supplementary information such as tags, work plan, start and end date, and whether the plan element has a checklist.
• plan_element_assignments: Assign owners and contributors to your plan elements.
• checklist_items: Configure checklists for your lowest level plan elements.
• custom_field_records: Input custom field content. 

Plan Elements

The plan_elements sheet is required to upload your plan, as it is where you will build out your plan cascade. The columns marked with an asterisk - Number, Description, and Owner Email - are required to be filled in. 

• The Number column defines the cascades and levels of your plan. This column can only contain numbers (i.e. 1, 1.1, 1.1.1) - it cannot contain letters or any other symbols. It is important that you do not skip numbers in a sequence when building out your plan. For example, if you input 2.1.2 followed by 2.1.4, the upload will result in an error due to a missed number. 
• In the Description column, write or copy in your Plan Element title/ description (i.e. Goal name, Action description, etc.). 
• Copy in the Email of the owner of the plan element in the next column. Ensure that the owner has already been set-up as a user in Envisio, prior to using the plan upload. If the user is not yet a member of the plan, they will be automatically added to the plan when the upload is complete. 

*Number	*Description	*Owner Email
1	Economic Vitality: Expand the local economy by supporting local businesses, providing opportunities for new businesses, and ensuring there are ample opportunities for job seekers.	[e-mail]
1.1	Support existing businesses, attract needed talent and work to attract new investment into the community	[e-mail]
1.1.1	Develop an Economic Development Plan Economic Development Plan will support existing businesses, attract needed talent and work to attract new investment into the community	[e-mail]
1.1.2	Actively Support the Evolution of the Downtown Post Secondary Campus A downtown post secondary campus will enhance the development and vitality of Envisio’s downtown core, remove barriers to post-secondary and ongoing education for residents, provide an innovation studio for entrepreneurs, and inspire West Shore youth to plan for their future education for	[e-mail]
1.1.3	Explore Ways to Incentivize and Attract Technology Companies The technology sector will provide well-paying jobs and will further diversify Envisio’s economy	[e-mail]
1.1.4	Implement a Five-Year Tourism Strategy The Five-Year Tourism Strategy will expand Envisio's visitor economy, support destination development and add revenue to Envisio businesses	[e-mail]

The remaining columns on this page are optional, however we recommend inputting as much information as you can now, so you don’t have to add it later. 

Add any Tags you would like to assign to Plan Elements. If you have already built Tags in the plan settings, ensure that you use the exact same wording. If you’d like to add more than one Tag to a plan element, add a new line to the cell (Option+Return on Mac, ALT+Enter on Windows) and input your second tag, repeating for each additional tag you would like to add. 

Add any background notes or details you would link included for lowest level elements in the Work Plan. 

Input the Start and End date, using a Month-Day-Year format for lowest level planning elements only. 

For your lowest level plan elements that have checklist items, configure the Checklist Weight Type. You can choose from:

• • equalWeighting: All checklist items carry equal weight. 
  • manualWeighting: User defines the weight for each checklist item and all items need to add up to 100%
  • noWeighting: Checklist does not affect the plan's progress

View the example below for a reference of what your spreadsheet should look like. You can see that for plan elements 1.1 and 1.1.1, we’ve input multiple tags by adding new lines in the same cell. 

*Number	Tags	Work Plan	Start Date	End Date	Checklist Weighting Type
1
1.1	COVID Recovery High Priority
1.1.1	Council Priority COVID Recovery Multi Department Initiatives	The businesses to include will be determined based on a growth threshold developed by the Downtown Business Association. Eligible businesses will be invited to participate.	Oct 01, 2021	Dec 31, 2023	equalWeighting
1.1.2	Low Priority	This is additional information for this objective	Jan 01, 2023	Dec 31, 2024	noWeighting
1.1.3	Low Priority	Supported by the BRE manager, the board meets once a month.	Jan 01, 2024	Dec 31, 2024
1.1.4	Low Priority		Jan 01, 2024	Dec 31, 2024	manualWeighting

Plan Element Assignments

The next sheet is the plan_element_assignments sheet, where you can optionally add Contributors and Observers to your plan elements. Input the Number of the plan element you would like to add a user to, then choose from the ‘contributor’ or ‘observer’ Role and lastly, input their Email Address. As with the owner email on the previous page, ensure the individual has already been created as a user in Envisio. 

If you would like to assign multiple contributors or observers to a plan element, input a new row for each unique contributor and/or observer. You can add contributors and observers to any level of the plan. 

*Number	*Role	*Email
1.1	Contributor	[e-mail]
1.1.1	Contributor	[e-mail]
1.1.1	Contributor	[e-mail]
1.1.1	Observer	[e-mail]
1.1.3	Contributor	[e-mail]
1.1.3	Observer	[e-mail]
1.1.4	Contributor	[e-mail]
1.2.1	Contributor	[e-mail]
1.2.2	Contributor	[e-mail]

 

Checklist Items

Use the checklist_items sheet to optionally define checklist items for your lowest level plan elements. Before adding items here, ensure the checklist type has been configured for each relevant lowest level plan element on the plan_elements page. For each checklist item you will need to input the plan element Number and the Content you would like be displayed for the checklist item. 

If you selected ‘manualWeighting’ on the plan_elements page, use the Weight column to assign a weight from 1 to 100 to the checklist item. Ensure that the total weighting for all checklist items assigned to one plan element equals 100. 

Lastly, you can choose if you would like the checklist item to be marked as complete by inputting ‘Y’ in the Checked column. If you do not want to check off the item, leave this cell blank. 

On this sheet, each row is a new checklist item. For example, if you had a plan element with four checklist items, you would need to input four rows, one for each item. 

In the example below, 1.1.1 is an example of an equal weight checklist, 1.1.2 is a checklist with no weighting, and 1.1.3 is a checklist with manual weighting. 

*Number	*Content	Weight	Checked
1.1.1	Construct Residential Development Project -Phase 1		Y
1.1.1	Construct Main Street Plaza		Y
1.1.1	Construct New Downtown Public Parking Lot		Y
1.1.1	Construct New Commercial Development
1.1.1	Construct New Mixed-Use Development
1.1.2	Plan & Review Q1 Seminar		Y
1.1.2	Plan & Review Q2 Seminar		Y
1.1.2	Plan & Review Q3 Seminar
1.1.2	Plan & Review Q4 Seminar
1.1.4	Organize an outbound trade mission to China	30	Y
1.1.4	Meet our representatives there to establish key contacts	20
1.1.4	Invite 3 parties (min target) to visit Bayview	50

 

Custom Field Records

The last sheet in the plan upload template, custom_field_records, is where you can optionally define custom field content. Prior to uploading your plan ensure that all Custom Fields have been set up in Plan Elements, otherwise the plan upload will result in an error. As with the other sheets, start by inputting the Number of the plan element you would like to configure the custom field content for. Next input the Field Name, ensuring it matches the Field Name you input in Plan Settings. 

Based on the Custom Field type, you will then need to fill out the Content OR Picklist Items OR Check Box Checked column. Only fill out the column that applies to your custom field and leave the other fields blank.

• Content: Used for Text, Rich Text, and Number custom field types. Use the content field to type in the text or number you would like to input for the given plan element. 
• Picklist Items: Used for Single Select Picklist and Multi-Select Picklist custom field types. For a single select picklist, input the Picklist Option you would like to select for the plan element, ensuring that you copy the exact same text as was used when configuring the options in plan settings. For a multi-select picklist, you can select multiple options by entering a new line in the same cell for each additional picklist item you would like selected. 
• Checkbox Checked: Used for Check Box custom field type. If you would like to check the box for this custom field, input Y in the checkbox checked column. 

You can add multiple custom fields to one plan element. For each custom field you would like to add, create a new row and input the corresponding details. 

When configuring custom fields in plan settings, you can optionally make the custom field “required in view/edit plan’. If you have toggled this option on, ensure that you configure the custom field for every plan element in the corresponding level of the plan where the custom field has been set up, otherwise the plan upload will result in an error. 

*Number	*Field Name	Content	Picklist Items	Check Box Checked
1.1.1	Text or Rich Text (for example, 'Other support required')	External facilitator
1.1.1	Number (for example, 'Budget')	25000
1.1.2	Single Select Picklist (for example, 'Budget Category')		Operating Fund
1.1.3	Multi-Select Picklist (for example, 'SDG Alignment'		SDG 1 No Poverty SDG 3 Good Health and Well-being SDG 8 - Decent Work and Economic Growth
1.1.4	Check Box (for example, 'Additional funding required')			Y
1.2.1	Check Box (for example, 'Additional funding required')

Once you have input all your plan details in the upload template, you are ready to upload your plan!

Import Your Plan

Open Envisio and navigate to the View/Edit Plan page, ensuring that you have selected the correct plan from the plan selector dropdown. If you have previously built any plan elements first delete them, as the feature will only work for a plan that doesn’t have anything built.

Click ‘Upload Plan File’ and select your filled in template. If there are no errors, the system may take a couple of minutes to process the data and then prompt you to view the plan. If any errors have been made in the upload file, you will see a File Error pop-up, prompting you to download the error log file. Click ‘error.csv’ to download the CSV file to your computer. 

Once you open the error file, you will see a list of any issues that have prevented the file upload from working. This includes the Type of error, on which sheet the error occurred, a Message which specifies what the error is, and the Row for the specific element where there was an issue. Some common errors that we see are:

• Incorrect numbering: You cannot use letters or roman numerals for the numbering system. You also cannot skip a number in a sequence, for example going from 1.1.2 to 1.1.4. For a three level plan, Envisio uses the following numbering format:
  • Level 1 = 1
  • Level 2 = 1.1
  • Level 3 = 1.1.1
• Custom Field Content: When adding custom fields, ensure your field names and picklist options match exactly what was configured in plan settings. We recommend using the copy paste function to ensure that the two fields match. 
• Custom Fields Required: If you have set custom fields as required for a plan level in Envisio, the upload will only work if you have configured the custom field for each of the plan elements on that level of the plan. If you see this error, either add custom field information for the missing plan elements or toggle off the option to make custom fields required. 
• Required Content: At a minimum, each plan element for upload must have a Number, Description and Owner Email. If any of these values are missing, the plan upload will result in an error. 

If you run into error messages while importing your plan, check out Understanding Plan Upload Error Messages for details on how to resolve any issues.

Once you have resolved all the errors listed in the CSV, go back to Envisio and upload your revised plan file. If you continue to have issues, please reach out to [e-mail] for further assistance.