Microsoft Project Desktop Scheduler › Baselines

Baselines

You can create a baseline of the project from Microsoft Project, or from CA Clarity PPM. You can keep a copy of the schedule now, or at any point, by creating a baseline. The baseline is saved with the resources time-varying rate at the time you create a baseline revision.

Best Practice: You can encounter performance issues when opening up a CA Clarity PPM project in Microsoft Project that has many baselines. So, limit the transfer to only the current baseline information. Your CA Clarity PPM administrator can select the Only Export Current Baselines When Opening Investments in a Scheduler project management setting.

Microsoft Project 2000

Microsoft Project 2000 can support only a single baseline.

When you open a project from CA Clarity PPM in Microsoft Project:

• A maximum of 11 baseline revisions is sent. Only one baseline is the current baseline.
• Information about the current revision is saved to the MPP file and updated on the project plan in Microsoft Project.

  Note: If no baseline revisions are sent from CA Clarity PPM, Schedule Connect verifies that the baseline information in the MPP file and on the project plan are cleared in Microsoft Project.

When you save the project to CA Clarity PPM, Schedule Connect checks for baseline information. If the plan has:

• A baseline:
  • The baseline revision is sent and includes all information from the MPP file. If no information is available from the MPP file, the baseline revision is new, and the default ID, name, and description is used.
  • Baseline detail records are sent as needed.
• No baseline. If no baseline information is available from the MPP file, no baseline revision information is sent to CA Clarity PPM.

Microsoft Project 2002 and later

Microsoft Project 2002 and later can support up to 11 baselines. Multiple baselines are managed by saving each revision to baseline slots in the MPP file. For example, the information for the current revision is saved to the baseline slot. A previous baseline revision is saved to the baseline1 slot, and so on, up to baseline10.

When you open a project from CA Clarity PPM in Microsoft Project:

• A maximum of 11 baseline revisions is sent in descending order by the last date modified. Only one baseline is the current baseline.
• Information about each revision is saved to the MPP file.
• The current revision is used to update the project plan baseline information. Any remaining baseline revisions are used to update other baseline slots for the project plan (baseline1 through baseline10) in the order they are received.
• If the project in Microsoft Project has baseline information for which no matching revision information is received, that baseline is cleared.
• If no baseline revisions are sent, all baseline information in the MPP file is cleared in Microsoft Project.

When you save the project to CA Clarity PPM, Schedule Connect checks each possible baseline slot in the project. The check begins with the baseline slot and ends with the baseline10 slot:

• If a baseline slot has information, the revision information from the MPP file is sent to CA Clarity PPM.
• If no information is available from a baseline slot, the revision is new and the default ID, name, and description is used for the revision. For example, if the information is from the baseline3 slot, the number 3 is appended to the default ID, name, and description.

  Note: If the MPP file contains information for a revision whose matching baseline slot is empty, Schedule Connect sends the revision information to CA Clarity PPM. A Delete flag is used to tell CA Clarity PPM to delete the baseline revision.

More information:

Create Baselines

Defines the Default Project Management Settings