Microsoft recently improved Planner by adding new features to the baseline! You can read the official documentation here, but hey, why not stick around and read my opinion on the topic first? I’ll add the link again down below so you won’t even have to scroll back 😉.
Sidetracked a bit, but does Dall-E know what a Gantt chart is? Let’s see: “Create an image of a gantt chart, include baseline and milestones as well as a critical path”
I asked it to improve, and the result is at the end of this post. Let’s get back to the topic at hand.
The baseline in Planner improved!
I’m very happy about this, and you might already be aware of the baseline articles on the blog. I’m a bit of a Baseline fan boy.
So, I was delighted when the topic came up while I was testing out a new GPT prompt. The prompt was tasked to help me draft new YouTube videos. I copied the URL of the last Planner blog article without looking and the result was a script about baselines!
Oh and… drum roll please… this is also available on named orgs! So your project accelerator (or Power PPM) is also updated.
What happened?
Planner with premium features (available for users with a Planner Plan 1, 3 or 5 license) will now have 3 2 additional features added to the schedule baseline:
- Additional variance fields in the project comparison side pane. Apart from the end date variance, we now also have start date, finish date, duration, and effort variances available.
- A slight improvement on task level visibility. Granted, it isn’t a tracking Gantt, but on the grid view, we get the option to “compare” to a baseline. Which presents us with a couple of baseline columns only available through the baseline side pane compare button.
Added reporting capability. As I’ve shared in the previous baseline article, there was no visibility on Dataverse Baseline tables or columns. This has changed!
Closer inspection of my reporting quest turned out that there wasn’t an improvement on reporting.
Additional variance fields
The baseline comparison side pane is in a much better shape than we used to have. Now we get a full list of variances that we can use to analyse the status of our project:
The best thing about this side pane is the clear distinction between things that are on track or behind. In the case where I’m doing better than the baseline I will also get a green indicator telling me the variance in a positive way.
I’m a bit surprised that none of these fields got a spot on the project information page. To me, it would make sense if we added at least the effort and finish date variances to the main project information pane.
Task level visibility
On the Baseline side pane there’s a new tab called the Spotlight. It contains 3 useful new values to use in your baseline vs current schedule comparison: Critical path variance, upcoming tasks, Overdue tasks. And there is a button available to compare all tasks.
The compare all tasks feature is the closest thing to a Tracking Gantt we currently have. Clicking on the button will add 3 new columns to your grid that are NOT available using the + Add column option.
The visualisation on Finish variance is great. I’d hope they will also provide the other variances from the baseline details on the task level soon.
There’s a hide baseline button that let’s you remove the 3 columns again. But there is no show baseline button if you’ve clicked on it (meaning that you will first have to click on baseline and then on compare all tasks again).
Reporting capability
Last time we looked at the baseline for Planner premium (or Planner, with premium features or Project for the web) we didn’t have Power BI access to the baseline tables.
We still don’t:
What didn’t change?
Are we done? Do we have parity with MS Project or Project Online? No, there are still items on my wish list when it comes to good support for the Project Managers and the PMO.
The 3 biggest things on that list are:
- A tracking Gantt. Because everyone loves a good visual.
- Multiple baselines. Because you need to be able to track the delta between scope changes as well.
- Baseline information on the task details page. Why don’t we have baseline start and finish on this side pane? Or on the main Project information tab?
Final notes
Here’s that link again to the official documentation. Thank you for sticking around. I’m happy with the improvements from Microsoft, it’s definitely a step in the right direction. It’s still not “there” yet though.
And I hope Microsoft keeps improving the solution until we have something closer to MS Project (and better) to show.
If you like my article, you might also like the feature release video’s I do on my YouTube channel. And my bi-monthly newsletter is coming up again soon.
This was my last attempt to get a decent Gantt chart out of ChatGPT btw:
Well well ChatGPT, I think I’m not out of a job just yet…
