Baselines

Introduction

To assess the performance of your project over time, you can set Baselines and track deviations from your initial schedule. 

The Baselines can be synchronized with Jira (baseline fields require Jira Admin permissions) and the synced fields can be added to Column views or as fields to the Task / Risk Cards.

You can create and delete Baselines for all the tasks in the scope of the Box or for selected tasks only. They are displayed as bold lines, showing the position of the task at the moment of creating the Baseline.

Viewing Baselines

To display Baselines on the timeline go to View > Show > Baselines.

Baseline permissions

A box admin can determine who can create, edit and delete baselines. Other users are still able to view baselines.

The permission to manage baselines can be granted to:

• Box Admin and Box Editors (default)

• Box Admins

Baseline permissions are edited in Box Configuration > Tasks > Baselines.

Baseline versioning

There can only be one current baseline for a specific task, but you can create up to 20 baseline history records per box to compare them with the current one or to restore them. A baseline history record is a snapshot of all the baselines set in a box: the start and end date of each baseline and the lack of a baseline for specific tasks. Keeping multiple baseline versions can be useful for comparing planning objectives that may have changed during a project: the first scheduled plan can be compared with the next accepted changes and the current plan.

You can create and delete Baselines for all the tasks in the scope of the Box or for selected tasks only.

Save to version history - saves the current set of baselines for all the tasks (each start and end date). A version also holds information on whether a task has a baseline or not. Upon saving a version, you can choose its name and color.

Delete - removes the current set of baselines, leaving all the tasks without a baseline.

Version history - here, you can check the list of saved versions and choose one of them to be displayed in the Gantt chart, along with the current baseline, for comparison. In the screenshot above, the “Baseline created 05/Mar/24-2” marked with red color is chosen. In the Gantt chart, you can see two versions of baselines: current and red. By choosing the “None” version, only the current baseline is displayed in the chart.

New baseline - creates a baseline for each task. Note that this option overwrites the current baselines:

Version history - here, you can check the saved baseline versions. The list is sorted by the add date, descending. By using one of the three icons in a version line, you can respectively:

• Restore saved baseline - restoring means that this version will be the current one. Restoring overwrites the current version - if you want to keep the current baseline, save it before restoring. Note that the restore process updates the baseline start and end dates for each task. This means that if a baseline is set to a task in the current version and not in the restore version, then the baseline for this task will be erased upon the restore.

• Edit saved baseline - you can change the baseline name and color.

• Delete saved baseline - removes a version from the list.

Baseline fields in Column Views and Task/Risk Cards

You can store tasks' Baselines as a Date Picker or Date Time Picker field type. As you can connect with different tools, we recommend using the 'Baseline Start date' and 'Baseline End date' built-in fields to show the baselines form all connected platforms in a single column.

Creating and Deleting Task Baselines

Baselines work for tasks that have start and end dates. Baselines CANNOT be created for a task with only one date.

Permissions

In the Box settings, Tasks, Baselines, you can set the Baseline permissions:

A user with a Box Admin or higher permissions can set the permissions to create and delete baselines. The permission scope can be set to either “Box Admin and Box Editors” (the default option) or “Box Admin”.

Task Baseline Creation

Once your schedule is ready, you can create a Baseline schedule or, in other words, Baselines for all tasks shown in the issue list (WBS). Alternatively, you can create a Baseline by editing the synchronized fields directly.

To create Baselines, go to Data > Baselines > Create or Delete.

All items

Single item

To create or delete a Baseline for selected tasks only, right-click on the task or use the vertical menu that appears when you select the task. Remember to enable Baselines afterward.