Baselines for New Tasks

Ian Ix

I use the baseline feature with the GUI extensively in my projects. During project execution, I frequently am adding/removing tasks to reflect the maturing scope of work. This means that unless I rebaseline the entire project (and lose historical projections in the process), these newly added rows go without baseline data. This is impacting a lot of my task health reporting. Is there a best practice that can be used to baseline only newly-added tasks, without rebaselining an entire timeline?

The only thing which comes to mind would be to copy-paste newly added start/finish dates into a static column, and use formulas which determine task health from the static column if the real baseline columns are blank for that row. However this becomes a very manual step, and I don't think my organization will have good compliance with this every time they add a task.

Thanks,

Ian

Genevieve P.

Hi @Ian Ix

You can re-set a Baseline but all the previous dates will update to anything you have moved the Actual Dates to as your project has progressed.

What I would do in this instance is use 3 helper columns: 2 Date columns and 1 Predecessor as you make the update:

• Copy/Paste your Actual Dates in their current state to two helper Date columns
• Copy/Paste your Predecessors into the helper Predecessor column
• Copy/Paste the Baseline Dates into your Actual Dates column (to revert them to the original state). This will remove your Predecessors which is why we had to copy them as well.
• Add in your extra rows/dates.
• Reset the Baseline so your Baseline now includes the new data
• Copy back the dates in the Helper Columns back to the Actual Dates so the Baseline updates to show the Variance so far.
• Copy back the Predecessors
• Delete the Helper Columns

I would suggest testing this out on a Copy of your sheet or a dummy sheet, first, to make sure this will work for your purposes. You can also let the Product team know of your feature request by filling in this form.

Cheers,

Genevieve

Ian Ix

Thanks Genevieve. Unfortunately I think this solution is much too cumbersome for us to be able to use. We add rows almost every week and this would disrupt our workflow pretty heavily. I appreciate your input but I've submitted a feature enhancement request.

TannerS

@Ian Ix Did you find a solution to your problem? I have the same issue as well!

Ian Ix

Nope, nothing new. I have a helper column which lets me manually enter a baseline when a new task is added, and all my baseline reporting looks at both the manual and GUI-based baselines, with priority given to any GUI-based dates present. Still an inelegant solution, but it's the best I've got.

V Parraga

I am having this same experience. Would love an option to baseline any tasks with a blank baseline