Exporting Data to CSV

Terms to Know

• Item - The initiatives, projects, tasks, releases, and general "things" that make up your roadmap.

• Milestone - One-time important single-day events that occur, like a release, launch, board meeting, or trade show (these will only appear on the Timeline visualization).

• Item Table - A tabular view of a roadmap's Item data specific to every view on the roadmap.

• Milestone Table - A tabular view of a roadmap's Milestone data specific to every view on the roadmap

• All Data Table - Encompasses all the information used in one roadmap, the ultimate source of truth that cannot be sorted or filtered. Please note this is different than the Items or Milestones table which is on a view-by-view basis.

Exporting both Items and Milestones in a roadmap to a CSV file is a great way to edit and manipulate your data in an external application. Please note that Items and Milestones are exported separately, and that formatting, views, headers, etc. will need to be re-created upon import. This format of export is intended to simply maintain the raw data.

Exporting Items

When exporting Items, you can choose to export the subset of Items in the selected View resulting from the View's filter set OR all the Items in the roadmap.

Export Items in a View

1. In the View dropdown on your roadmap, select the View you want to export.

2. On the roadmap toolbar, click the Export icon.

3. In the Export dropdown, select Export Items to CSV.

This can also be done from the Items table by clicking Export to CSV. When working in Timeline Views, make sure you're not in the Milestones table, or you'll import the View's Milestones by mistake.

Export all roadmap Items

1. In the View dropdown on your roadmap, select All Data.

2. Navigate to the Items tab on your All Data View.
   IMPORTANT: You must be in the Items table to export all Items. If you're in the Milestones table, you'll export Milestones instead.

3. On the roadmap toolbar, click the Export icon.

4. In the Export dropdown, select Export to CSV.

The Field order in your export is based on the order in which they were added to the roadmap. Field order will not reflect the Item card order, or Items table order, but rather the chronological order of when the Field was added to the roadmap.

Linked Items, Key dates, linked Ideas, and anything else added to the Item card will not be carried over in an export and re-import of roadmap CSV into a brand new roadmap. These will need to be re-added to the new roadmap upon import. However, if the export and import is for updating purposes and the data will be imported back into the same roadmap, this information will remain.

Exporting Milestones

Like Items, you can choose to export the subset of Milestones within a specific View by following the steps listed above from the Milestones tab in your Timeline roadmap or choose to export all the Milestones in the roadmap through the All Data View.

Format of the exported data

All Item and Milestone Fields are exported as columns in the CSV using Field names for the column Headers. Items and Milestones are exported as rows, one row per Item or Milestone. 

When you open an Item or Milestone CSV, you'll see some Fields that are added during the export:

Internal ID - This ID is used to match the Items or Milestones in Roadmunk in case you want to import the exported Items back into Roadmunk after editing them in an external application.

External ID - Items or Milestones in the CSV will have an External ID if they were originally imported to Roadmunk from an external application such as JIRA. The ID is used to match the Items or Milestones in the source application in case you want to re-import the exported Items or Milestones back into the source application after editing them in Roadmunk.

Source - The Source Field contains the name of the roadmap from which you exported the Items or Milestones. This Field allows you to merge and work with Items or Milestones from different roadmaps while still being able to separate them.

Bucket - If an Item has the Date field set to a Bucket (e.g., Soon, Future) instead of an actual date or date range, the Bucket will be exported in this Field and the Item's Start Date and End Date Fields will be empty.

CSV Separator Defaults in Roadmunk

Any CSV file exported from Roadmunk will default to the North American standard settings for separators; however, many of our users are set up on systems that don’t support this standard and may face issues when opening their CSV files in Excel, Numbers, or other spreadsheet software. The guides below will walk you through the process of setting up your system so that you can successfully import Roadmunk’s CSV files in both Windows and Mac OS.

Changing CSV Defaults on Windows

In order to change the CSV separator defaults in your system for Windows:

1. Click the Start button or press the windows key, and then click/type Control Panel.

2. Open the dialogue box for changing Regional and Language Settings.

3. In the List Separator box, type or select a standard comma (, ).

4. Click Ok twice.

Changing CSV Defaults on Mac (Mojave & newer)

In order to change the CSV separator defaults in your system for Mac:

1. Navigate to your System Preferences and select the language & Region option. Alternatively, press Command + Space and type in “Language”.

2. Click the Advanced button in the bottom-right corner.

3. In the number separators options, change the decimal setting from a comma(, ) to a period( . )

4. Click OK in the bottom right corner

After you change the list separator character for your Mac or PC, all programs will use the new character as a list separator. You can change the character back to the default character by following the same procedures listed above.

Who can export Items and Milestones?

You can export a roadmap's Items or Milestones to a CSV file if you are the roadmap Owner or the roadmap has been shared with you as an Editor. If you share the roadmap as a Viewer, you can't export any of its Items or Milestones.

When exporting a Portfolio roadmap, only Account Admins may export to a CSV regardless if they have explicit permission on the Portfolio roadmap.

Exporting to CSV with Special Characters

Due to the default settings for CSV files on most systems, these types of characters may display incorrectly from time to time. In order to fix this, we would recommend following these steps:

1. Export a new copy of the CSV from the Export menu in Roadmunk.

2. In Excel, select the From Text option in the Get External Data section under the Data tab.

3. From the explorer/finder menu, select your recently exported CSV file.

4. In the Text Import Wizard menu that appears, set File Origin to “Unicode (UTF-8)“.

5. After clicking next, make sure Tab and Comma are selected as the delimiter options.

6. From here, you can select Finish and your CSV should load all characters correctly.

This may become a default setting, and you may need to change it back to its original setting.