Project timelines almost always change throughout the life of an implementation. Deviations from the original timeline could be due to pauses, late tasks, or other unforeseen circumstances.

A project baseline is a snapshot of your project timeline that you can use as a reference point to measure performance and progress, as well as a project’s overall health. You're also able to visualize on the timeline which tasks had the most impact on timeline shifts.

Project baseline preferences are managed on the template level. Within each template, navigate to Settings > Baseline to configure your preferences for baseline capture. Baseline can be automatically captured upon the creation of a project from the template or when the project is officially started in Baton. You may also elect to not automatically capture the baseline.

A project baseline can always be configured at any point in time manually on the project itself by selecting Project Actions > Set Project Baseline. A drawer will appear allowing you to set or reset the project's baseline. Please note, a project can only have one baseline at a time.

Once your baseline is established, you'll notice a slight shadow for each task on the timeline view. This shadow indicates the snapshot of each task as part of the baseline.

As your project dates shift, you'll see the actual task icons move, but their baseline "shadows" remain to easily visualize the planned vs. actual project schedule.