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Baselines, working days, levelling and export

Set a baseline to track how a plan moves, choose its working days and holidays, level each person's work, reschedule after late finishes and export the plan.

All plansUpdated

Along the top of every plan sit five tools that act on the whole schedule: Set baseline, the Working calendar, Level, Export and Reschedule. Use them once the plan has taken shape: to keep a record of the original schedule, to plan around your real working week, to stop anyone being double-booked, to catch the plan up after work finishes late, and to take the plan into another planning app.

Before you start

  • You need a plan with tasks. See Plans: timelines for your rooms.
  • These tools are available on every plan.
  • Open the plan from the Plans page. The tools are at the top right, after Add task, whichever view you are in.

Set a baseline

A baseline is a snapshot of the schedule as it stands. Once you have one, you can see how far each task has moved since.

  1. Get the plan into the shape you have agreed.
  2. Click Set baseline.

The button now reads Baseline set. From then on:

  • On the timeline, a dashed line under each task's bar shows where it was when you set the baseline. Rest the pointer on it to see those dates.
  • In each task's details, the summary says On baseline, or how many days behind baseline (in red) or ahead of baseline (in green) its finish now is.

To take a new snapshot, for example after agreeing a change of scope, click Baseline set. The new baseline replaces the old one in the timeline and the task details. Tasks added after the last baseline have no dashed line until you set it again.

Choose working days and holidays

Each plan has its own working calendar. The schedule counts only working days when it works out lengths, lags and dates.

  1. Click the calendar icon beside Baseline set or Set baseline (its tooltip says Working calendar).
  2. Under Working days, click a day's letter to turn it on or off. Days that are on are highlighted. A new plan works Monday to Friday. Rest the pointer on a letter to see the day's name.
  3. Under Holidays, pick a date and click Add. Repeat for each day off. Click the × beside a holiday to remove it.
  4. Click anywhere outside the box to close it.

Each change saves straight away, and the schedule is worked out again around it, so tasks skip the days that are now off.

Level each person's work

When one person has two tasks scheduled at the same time, Level moves the later one so that it starts after the earlier one ends.

  1. Make sure tasks are assigned. See Edit a plan task and its dependencies.
  2. Click Level (its tooltip says Level resources: push each person's overlapping tasks so they never run at once).

For each person, PlexiDesk takes their tasks in the order they start and pushes back any that overlap the one before. A task that moves gets a new Planned start and Planned finish, and keeps its length.

Level leaves these tasks where they are:

  • unassigned tasks
  • finished tasks
  • milestones
  • tasks with a Must start on date

Levelling can push the plan's finish date later. It works through each person's tasks in date order rather than by importance, so check the result on the timeline.

To see who has too much, use the Workload view. See Plan views: Overview, Board, Grid, Calendar, Workload and Files.

Reschedule after a late finish

When a task finishes later than planned, the plan shows a warning under its name: "… task(s) slipped past plan and push later work. Reschedule to shift the timeline." The plan's card on the Plans page shows Drift.

  1. Click Reschedule at the top right. It reads Rescheduling… while it works.
  2. PlexiDesk works the schedule out again from the dates tasks actually finished, and moves later work to match.

Reschedule saves the new dates as each task's Planned start and Planned finish. Milestones keep a single date.

Export the plan

  1. Click Export.
  2. A save window opens with the plan's name as the file name, ending in .xml.
  3. Choose where to save it and click Save.

The file is an XML project file that other project-planning apps can open. It includes each task's name, scheduled start and finish, length, percentage complete, milestones, deadlines and costs, the links between tasks with their types and lags, and the people tasks are assigned to.

If you close the save window without saving, nothing happens.

Common questions

Can I keep more than one baseline?

The timeline and task details always compare against the most recent baseline. Click Baseline set to replace it with the current schedule.

Level did not move anything

Nobody has overlapping tasks, or the overlapping tasks are ones Level leaves alone: unassigned, finished, milestones or tasks with a Must start on date.

Can I undo Level or Reschedule?

Both save new planned dates on the tasks they move. To put a task back, open it and change its dates. Setting a baseline first makes it easy to see where everything was.

Does the working calendar change my other plans?

No. Each plan has its own working days and holidays.

The plan's name in the file looks different

The suggested file name keeps only the plain letters, numbers, spaces, hyphens and underscores from the plan's name. You can type any name you like in the save window.

Still need help? Contact support at [email protected].