Project Online Estate Assessment: Measure Before You Move

Every Project Online migration starts with the same question: what is actually in the estate? Until September 30, 2026, Onplana answered it with an estate assessment, a read-only scan of the live Project Web App tenant. Project Online retired on that date, and the assessment went with it, because it read the service's live reporting feed. Anything that read it live stopped with it; anything already exported or imported did not.

The question has not gone away. What changed is where the answer comes from: the files you exported, not the tenant.

The direct answer: You can no longer run an estate assessment against Project Online. Size the estate from what you exported instead. Run each exported .mpp or Project XML file through the free Migration Preview or Schedule Health Check, and use the Project Online Inventory Checklist for the parts of the estate that never lived in a schedule file. None of them needs an account.

What the Assessment Did

It connected to the tenant's OData reporting feed with read-only credentials. That feed had no write path, so the scan could not change anything in Project Online. It returned task and milestone counts, dependency shape, custom fields in use, cost coverage and resource email coverage for every project, ranked worst-first.

That reporting feed was part of the service. When Project Online retired, there was nothing left to connect to, and the import screen stopped offering the connection.

Sizing the Estate From Your Exports

Project Online Data: Import What You Exported covers the whole route. In short:

List what you hold. One file per project, with its last-modified date, task count and whether it carries baselines. The export set is now the estate, and anything not in it is a rebuild.
Check a sample of schedules. Migration Preview reads one exported .mpp or Project XML file and reports which tasks transfer cleanly and which need review. Schedule Health Check runs a structural pass on the same file. Start with your largest and most complex projects.
Size what is not in a schedule file. Resource pool, custom field definitions, workflows and reports. The Project Online Inventory Checklist walks through those in about 10 minutes.
Open a file when you need to look closer. Onplana Schedule, a free desktop app for Windows and Mac, opens an exported .mpp without a Project licence.

Four Things to Check in What You Exported

The assessment called out four findings that were easy to misread. They still matter, and you can check each one from the files.

Check	What it means	Why it gets misread
Dependencies	Count the links in each file before you import	A schedule with no links looks clean but may never have been sequenced
Resource-scoped custom fields	The field is defined against a resource, not a project, so it needs its own mapping	Assumed to migrate the same way project-level custom fields do
Resources without an email address	Onplana matches resources to people by email, so these will not reconnect on their own	Treated as a minor detail rather than import-day rework
Currency	Cost figures may carry no currency code	Totals get compared across projects as if they were in the same currency

What an Import Carries

When you import an exported file into Onplana, tasks, the hierarchy and milestones come across, with durations and work, percent complete, all four dependency types with lag, constraints and deadlines, custom fields, and resources matched to people by email. Costs come across, and a .mpp or Project XML file imported into a new project brings its baseline as a baseline in Onplana. Working and resource calendars do not come across: the project uses your organization's working calendar.

Pair this with the full migration checklist once you have a scope, and the retirement timeline for the exact dates.

Check one exported file now Upload an exported .mpp or Project XML file and see what transfers cleanly. Free, no account. → Open Migration Preview

Microsoft Project Online™ is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. Onplana is not affiliated with Microsoft.

Frequently asked questions

What was the Project Online estate assessment?

A read-only scan of every project in a Project Web App tenant. It read the Project Online reporting feed and returned a per-project compatibility score, a custom field inventory, and gaps such as resources with no email address.

Can I still run an estate assessment?

Not against the live tenant. The assessment read the Project Online reporting feed, so it retired with the service on September 30, 2026. Assess from what you exported instead: the free Migration Preview and Schedule Health Check each read one exported .mpp or Project XML file, and the Project Online Inventory Checklist sizes the rest of the estate.

Do the file-based tools need an account or a paid plan?

No. Migration Preview, Schedule Health Check and the Project Online Inventory Checklist are free and need no account.

What comes across when I import an exported file into Onplana?

Tasks, the hierarchy and milestones, durations and work, all four dependency types with lag, constraints, custom fields, resources matched to people by email, and costs; a .mpp or Project XML file imported into a new project brings its baseline as a baseline in Onplana. Working calendars do not: the project uses your organization's working calendar.