Plan file format

The Sauriq plan file is a flat table with one row per plan item. The plan Table exports it, the import dialog’s Download template writes an empty copy with two example rows, and plan import reads it back. This page describes version 1 of the format.

Columns

The first row holds the headers. They’re always in English, whatever your language, and export writes them in this order:

Header	Required	What it holds
ID	no	The item’s ID. On import, it’s only used to match Depends on references in the same file
Name	yes	The item’s name, up to 200 characters
Group	no	The item’s group, up to 200 characters
Type	no	task or milestone. Empty means task
Status	no	Planned, In progress, Blocked or Done
Priority	no	P1 (highest) to P5, or empty for no priority
Assignee	no	The member’s email address
Additional people	no	Members’ email addresses, separated by ,
Start	no	YYYY-MM-DD. A milestone’s date goes here
End	no	YYYY-MM-DD. Empty for milestones
Planned hours	no	A number of hours, with . for decimals
Progress	no	A whole number from 0 to 100
Labels	no	Labels separated by , , each up to 64 characters, at most 20 per item
Description	no	The item’s description, up to 5,000 characters
Depends on	no	The item’s upstream items, separated by ; (see below)

The file holds plan items only. Work packages, files, comments, activity and canvas links aren’t part of it: imported items always take the work package of the plan they go into.

How import reads each column

• Headers match whatever their case and surrounding spaces, and so do the alternative column names listed under Alternative column names. Their order doesn’t matter, and every column except Name can be missing.

• Text longer than the column’s limit is cut to fit, and the preview lists each cut.

• Name: a row with an empty name is skipped and listed.

• Type: a value other than task or milestone comes in as a task and is listed.

• Status: the four values above are read directly, and so are the same labels in German and Italian. These are recognised too:

  Becomes	Values
  Planned	To do, Not started, Open
  In progress	Doing, Started, Working on it
  Blocked	Stuck, On hold, Waiting
  Done	Complete, Completed, Finished, Closed

  An empty status is Planned. Any other value is shown in the import dialog with the number of rows that use it, proposed as Planned, so you can choose what it becomes.

• Priority: P1 to P5 are read directly. Critical, Urgent and Highest become P1, High becomes P2, Medium and Normal become P3, Low becomes P4 and Lowest becomes P5. Other values are proposed as no priority, and you can change them in the dialog. Emoji and other symbols are ignored when status and priority values are matched.

• Dates: YYYY-MM-DD and Excel date cells are always read as they are, without the time of day. Dates written with /, . or - between day, month and year, such as 03/04/2026, are read in the Date order you choose in the dialog: day first or month first. The dialog proposes day first when every such date in Start or End starts with a number over 12, otherwise your date format setting. A two-digit year means 20xx. A date that can’t be read is left empty and listed.

• Task dates: a task with only a start or only an end is a one-day task on that date. A task whose start is after its end comes in without dates, and the preview says so. A task without dates goes to the Gantt’s Scheduling inbox.

• Milestones: the date is Start, or End when Start is empty. Milestones ignore End, Planned hours and Progress, and the preview lists the values it ignored.

• People: Assignee and Additional people are matched to the workspace’s members by email address, or by display name when only one member has that name. When Assignee names several people, the first is the assignee and the others become additional people. Someone who isn’t a member, a name several members share, or a deactivated member is listed once in the preview with the number of rows, and those rows come in without them. Import never invites anyone.

• Planned hours: a , decimal separator and an h suffix, as in 2,5h, are accepted. Negative or unreadable hours are left out and listed.

• Progress: a % sign is accepted. Values below 0 or above 100 are set to 0 or 100 and listed. Progress that isn’t a number is left out and listed.

• Labels: a label that appears twice in a cell is kept once, and only the first 20 are kept.

Alternative column names

The import dialog proposes these columns for other common column names. You can change each one, or skip a column, before you import.

Column	Also proposed for
Name	Item, Task, Title
Assignee	Person, Owner, Assigned to
Start	Start date
End	End date, Due, Due date, Deadline, Date
Planned hours	Hours, Estimate
Progress	% complete
Labels	Tags
Description	Notes
Depends on	Dependencies, Predecessors

Depends on

Each entry in Depends on names one upstream item, optionally followed by the dependency type and a lag in whole days:

Entry	Meaning
1042	Finish to start, no lag
1042 FS	The same, written out
1043 SS+2	Start to start, 2 days after
Order reagents FF-1	Finish to finish, 1 day before, with the upstream item named

The types are FS, SS, FF and SF, as in the Gantt. Entries are separated by ;, or by , when the cell has no ;. Export writes only the type and lag when they aren’t FS with no lag, and lists only upstream items that are in the same file.

Import finds the upstream item by the file’s ID column first, then by item name in the same file, ignoring case. When you add rows to an existing plan, the names of that plan’s items are matched too. A dependency is skipped, and listed in the preview, when:

• its reference matches no item, or a name matches several items;
• an item depends on itself, or the type or lag can’t be read;
• the same two items are linked twice (the first entry is kept);
• it would close a loop of dependencies (the entry that closes it, in file order, is skipped).

Imported dates aren’t rescheduled. If a dependency is broken by the dates in the file, the Gantt counts it as violated in Manual scheduling.

File details

• CSV: UTF-8, with or without a byte order mark; other files are read as Windows-1252. Fields can be separated by ,, ; or a tab. Export writes UTF-8 with a byte order mark and ,.
• Excel: .xlsx only. Only the first sheet is read, and formulas are read as the values Excel last calculated. .xls, .xlsm and .ods files, and links to online spreadsheets, aren’t accepted.
• Layout: the first non-empty row is the header and every following non-empty row is an item. Title rows above the header, or group-name rows between items, aren’t recognised.
• Formulas: export puts a ' before any cell that starts with =, +, -, @, a tab or a carriage return, so spreadsheet apps don’t run it as a formula. Import removes that '.

Limits

• A file of up to 5 MB, and for .xlsx up to 50 MB once unpacked, 10,000 rows and 100 columns.
• Up to 2,000 items and 5,000 dependencies per import.