Is multiple baselines supported in SmartSheet?

Hi,

I would like to know whether SmartSheet supports multiple baselines. Generally, I use MPP for project planning, wherein i have "Baseline1 Start", "Baseline1 Fisnish", "Baseline Start", "Baseline Fisnish", "Actual Start", "Actual Finish" in my Tracking Gantt.

When i prepare a project plan and have the same reviewed and approved by the stakeholders, i baseline the plan and this becomes the "Baseline Start" and "Baseline Finish". During the project execution, any change in plans (due to delays, additional tasks needs to be done, which wasn't earlier planned) are saved as "Baseline1 Start" and "Baseline1 Fisnish". At any time in the project, i can see how far we are deviating from the original plan (Baseline).

In Smartsheet, i have tried out the same i.e i have the same columns as i used to have in my MPP; but the issue, i face is that whenever i set the predeccessor, the "Baseline" dates changes and not the "Baseline1" dates, so at any time, i am not able to see what was earlier plan v/s what is the current trend of the task.

This is becoming tedious in working with multiple baselines.

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Comments

Travis

Though we don’t have any programmed functionality for this, an approach many customers take within Smartsheet is at the beginning of the project, create 3 new columns ‘Baseline (or Original) Start Date’, ‘Baseline End Date’, and ‘Date Difference’ which is a text/number column. These new columns won’t be used in the Gantt Dependencies so they won’t change as the timeline changes.

Highlight all of the dates in the Start and End Date columns then copy them to the Baseline columns. Create a formula in the Date Difference that subtracts the Baseline Start Date from the Start Date to give you how far off you are from the Baseline.

Check out the template called ‘Smartsheet Formula Examples’ in the Template Gallery for formula syntax and samples.

Robert Poddar

Hi Travis,

Thanks for the inputs. I found another way to using multiple baseline. I have "Baselin1 Start", "Baseline1 Finish", "Baseline Start", "Baseline Finish", "Actual Start" and "Actual Finish" columns in SmartSheet. Now i go to the Edit project settings and change the "Date Range Display" to "Baselin1 Start" and "Baseline1 Finish". Now if i update the predecessor column, then the dates in the "Baseline1 Start" and "Baseline1 Finish" columns automatically changes; so "Baseline Start" and "Baseline Finish" dates stay unchanged and one can now see the drift of the project.

thanks

Robert.

J. Craig Williams

Robert,

One of the things you may run into using your method (which I really like, btw), is that when Date columns are tied to the project schedule via Dependencies, they become Date/Time column types. That is, they have a time portion that is not displayed.

This allows two 4 hour tasks to be completed sequentially on the same day, for example.

When you change the links, the two new columns become Date/Time and the two old ones become Date columns.

Now, I THINK the time stamp is remembered, just not easily accessible, based on limited recent testing. But I'm not sure and I've seen unexplained behavior when shifting column types (unexplained by me).

I'm also testing a chart system for both more than one Gantt, but am not quite there yet. The system features keep blocking me but will share that if/when it gets ironed out.

Craig