My imports from MS Project remove Milestones (Beginner question)

The concept of milestones in Clarizen is slightly different than in MSP, which is why they usually do not carry over (Milestones in Clarizen contain the tasks required to achieve them).  After importing the project, you can change tasks to milestones by selecting one or more items, then going to Misc >> Change Type in the Menu.  Also if you need to create new objects into your plan, if you use Insert (as opposed to Add) it will create the new item above what you have selected.  As for critical status, is this a custom field?  The MSP priority field does get pushed into Clarizen.  Thanks!

Thanks, Josh.  Can you tell me where to find Misc once I have selected the tasks I want to change to Milestones?  I can't see it.

For critical status, it is not a custom field - I am changing the Importance column from normal to critical - do I not need to do that? In MSP critical paths are red in the Gantt chart and there are no red paths in the Clarizen Gantt chart view.

It should be the last tab in the toolbar ribbon (Common, Add Related, etc.).  Ah, the importance is not related to the critical path.  The Critical Path is calculated automatically by the system.  If you go to the Scheduling View (you can change views in the upper left) then you can see a column that looks like a red arrow that indicates what is on the critical path.

I cannot change the task to a milestone I receive one of the two following messages

 - The task must be direct descendent of project to successfully execute change of type.

 - To perform change type operation task must be of draft or active life cycle state. (Note: this is an active project)

Milestones do indeed need to be a direct sub-item of the project, I believe that is likely the cause of the error message.  Again, milestones in Clarizen are used a bit differently than MSP.  They are structured to that the tasks required to achieve that milestone are contained inside of the milestone, that way you get a nice rollup of progress and can see how task completion directly effects the status of the milestone.

Right - so thus the import from MS Project actually creates as much work as creating a brand new project in Clarizen altogether (because it isn't creating milestones where MS P has them), it seems, or am I doing something wrong?  Thanks, Josh!

If you have milestones underneath tasks in MSP, there will be no way to reproduce that exact scenario in Clarizen.  Either you can restructure the MSP projects before importing or make the summary tasks your milestones after importing to Clarizen (takes 10 seconds to do).  To see this in action, just hop on one of our Q&A forums (http://webinars.clarizen.com)  

Hi Josh - this is what I'm saying - I don't see a way to make the summary tasks milestones after import.  I've read the entire user manual and looked at almost all of your tutorials.  Your link above just goes to the main Q & A forum, so if you could help direct me to the 10 second solution that would be great.  OR if you have a customer support line it could be solved immediately.

Select the summary tasks (checkbox column all the way on the left), then on the Ribbon go to Misc >> Change Type >> Milestones.