Project Baseline Functionality

I need a baseline view in Gannt, I am trying to show that some tasks take longer than estimated and what our accuracy is for the baseline, however I cannot split a task with a no productive time in the middle.

Hey guys, thanks for bringing that up here 🙂 I'm happy to let you know that Baselines are now available in the Gantt Chart! Please find more details on our Help Center. 

Lisa Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Lisa Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

@Lisa Where is it ? I can't find any baseline functionnality

Hi Simon Charbonneau Campeau! They are now called Gantt Chart snapshots, they allow you to create a static record of what the Gantt chart looks like at that moment for a folder, project, or space. You can find more info about it in this Help Center article.  

And here's where you can find the snapshots:

I hope it's helpful 🙂

Lisa Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Lisa Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Is there a way to compare the current schedule to a previous snapshot? Highlight the deltas?

Hi Brennan P Thierry, welcome to the Community. May I kindly ask you to elaborate a bit on your case so that we can provide you with an accurate reply?

Thank you!

@..., certainly! The use case would be to allow for snapshots to act similar to a baseline, meaning that snapshots can be established that would save all elements of a given schedule and allow for the comparison of 2 snapshots (baselines) or from a current schedule to a baseline. 

This would be used to show the changes from a baseline, "the end date of task X changed from, to...". 

Hi Brennan P Thierry, thank you for your reply, I've opened a ticket with our Support Team on your behalf and one of our experts will reach out to you shortly to assist you with your case 👍

@... Why can't we add baseline finish for the tasks and sub-tasks? Why is it only limited to project type?

I had a situation in which the department head asked me to baseline the whole project (including tasks and sub-tasks) by adding baseline finish date and we couldn't add baseline finish for sub tasks as it is not allowed in Wrike.

Can you propose a solution (other than public snapshot)?

@... - Were they able to provide a good solution for this? I agree that being able to see the deltas would be very helpful.

Hi folks! The solution we recommend at the moment is the following:
You can compare previous snapshots and use them as a baseline to compare them to the current status of your project. You have the option to see the changes on both ends of the view (Table and Chart), in the Table section you need to add the baseline fields in the gear icon. Here is an article from our Help Center with more information on this option: Viewing Gantt Chart Snapshots.

We understand that some of the things you mention are not currently possible, so we passed your feedback here to the responsible team at Wrike. Thanks a lot for sharing! 

Lisa Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Lisa Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Hi Lisa, 

I have seen you posted snapshots as a solution to similar request a few times. I don't think you have understood well on this specific user feedback. Most project managers were look for a gantt chart view which could compare the actual project timeline to the original timeline and highlights the deviations. A static snapshot doesn't do that, and it is impossible to put two snapshots of a project with 800 lines tasks in front of me and identify the differences.

This is such basic project management tool functionality and it is quite disappointing to see Wrike team are not able to develop it in the past 6 years.

I do hope we could see this new feature live in Wrike in the nearly future. 

Yang

Hi Yang Fang, welcome to the forums and thank you for reaching out 👋

I understand that snapshots won't work for every use case and recommend it in case this feature may be helpful to some users. 

We appreciate your feedback. Please rest assured I'll pass it on to the relevant team. And let me know if you need help with anything 🙂

Lisa Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Lisa Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Hi there - 

Was this resolved? I agree with Yang that this is no pun intended baseline functionality for PM software. 

For further context: When a PM is looking to see how a project is trending, it is often helpful to compare original dates to projected/actual dates. We need to be able to quickly find and articulate why tasks are shifting (especially critical path items). In addition, if Project Managers or Program Managers are using Wrike to look at multiple projects/workstreams this functionality becomes critical. Note, a project/portfolio/workstream/etc may require multiple baselines if the project has been rebaselined multiple times (e.g. delayed significantly multiple times, new scope requires adjustment to timelines, etc.)

Possible workaround, is there a way to say create fields named: Baseline Start 1 and Baseline End 1 then dump current Start and Due Date values into those fields? 

-Chris

Chris Dumas - Agreed, this is totally baseline functionality for PM software and needs to be addressed by Wrike.

I needed to find a workaround as we could no longer function without a solution for this.

Here's what I did:

Created a custom field for Baseline Start and copied all start dates from my project plan over to this field (You can select and do mass copies using the gantt chart view).

Then did the same thing for Baseline Due.

Now I can compare the baselines and actual dates.

I also created some calculated fields to easily highlight the slippage for the baseline. Here's what it looks like:

Hopefully this helps? :) 

Rohan V Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Rohan V Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Deanne MacRae

Can you tell me how I can copy and pate the timeline of the project plan? I have over 3,500 work lines. 

(QUOTE) Here's what I did:Created a custom field for Baseline Start and copied all start dates from my project plan over to this field (You can select and do mass copies using the gantt chart view).Then did the same thing for Baseline Due.Now I can compare the baselines and actual dates.