I am writing a feature to import tasks from an online bug tracking / project management tool into Microsoft Project, primarily for resource leveling. Currently I am importing all tasks in as Fixed work, and giving them an assignment to a single resource for 100% of the work. The duration is then dynamically calculated, which at import time is equal to the amount of work.

However, I am not a project manager by any means, and am having difficulty on how to get the start dates to calculate correctly. I've never used Project either. I am using Schedule From Start and setting the Project Start Date to the date the contract was signed / work was approved. However, this can be in the past, and I do not want current tasks scheduled from that date. Should it be today then? Another problem I have is with tasks that were already started. I have remaining work set, and I was placing a constraint on them to be started on the day the work was first applied. However, the remaining work for the task would be scheduled from that date, which was sometimes in the past.

Using task constraints, a project start date, and whatever other settings available to me that I don't know about, what is the correct way to have the tasks scheduled?