If a quarter’s goals already live in a spreadsheet, you can bring them into Clarion in one go — milestones and their subtasks — rather than typing them in.
Import a file
- Open the Milestones page of the team the milestones belong to.
- Click Import.
- Choose your Excel file (.xlsx or .xls). CSV files aren’t accepted; save a CSV as .xlsx first.
- Wait for Importing… to finish. A green banner confirms what came in, e.g. “Imported 6 milestones and 18 subtasks.”
Everything is added to the team whose page you’re on. Anyone who can open that team’s Milestones page can import.
How to lay out the file
Clarion reads the first two sheets of the workbook by position — their names don’t matter. Row 1 of each sheet must be the column headers, spelled exactly as below, including capital letters. Columns in any other order are fine, and extra columns are ignored.
Sheet 1: milestones (required)
| Column | Required | What goes in it |
|---|---|---|
Title | Yes | The milestone. Rows without a title are skipped. |
Owner | No | The owner’s full name, e.g. “Dana Ruiz”. |
Status | No | on-track, off-track, at-risk, or complete / completed / done. Anything else, or blank, imports as On Track. |
Due Date | No | An Excel date, or a date written as text. |
Description | No | Free text. |
A milestone imported as complete starts at 100% progress. Clarion also works out the quarter (Q1–Q4) from the due date.
Sheet 2: subtasks (optional)
| Column | Required | What goes in it |
|---|---|---|
Title | Yes | The subtask. |
Rocks Name | Yes | The title of the milestone it belongs to, matching sheet 1 (capitals don’t matter). |
Due Date | No | An Excel date, or a date written as text. |
Completed On | No | The date it was finished. Any date here imports the subtask as done. |
Description | No | Free text. |
The Rocks Name header matches the layout of spreadsheet exports from some other planning tools, so files exported from them often import without changes. A subtask can also point at a milestone that’s already on this team’s page.
Subtasks without a title or a matching milestone are skipped.
How owners are matched
For each name in the Owner column, Clarion looks for:
- A member of this company with that first and last name (capitals don’t matter).
- Otherwise, someone with that name elsewhere in your Clarion account, who is added to this company with the Full Access role.
- Otherwise, it creates a placeholder person so the milestone keeps its owner.
Placeholders appear in Company Settings → Team & Permissions under Inactive Members. An admin can click Activate and enter the person’s email to invite them or merge the placeholder into an existing account. See Invite your team.
To avoid placeholders, invite people before you import and spell names the way they appear in Clarion.
Things to know
- Duplicates are skipped. A milestone whose title matches one already on the team (ignoring capitals) isn’t imported again, so re-running a file is safe.
- Skipped rows aren’t listed. The banner only counts what was imported. If the numbers look low, check for missing titles, duplicate titles or subtasks whose
Rocks Namedoesn’t match. - Imported subtasks don’t create action items. Subtasks you add by hand do. See Add milestone subtasks.
- Status options after import. At Risk can come in through an import, but the status menu on the page offers On Track, Off Track and Completed. See Update milestone status.
Consultants bringing a new client into Clarion can use the same file for each client — see the guide to onboarding a client company.