Boost your project’s success with the Baseline feature in the new Microsoft Planner

In Project for the web, the baseline functionality is relatively simple compared to MS Project Desktop. It only allows for a comparison between the actual project finish date and the baseline finish date. It does not support comparing the baseline start and finish dates of individual tasks with their actual start and finish dates. This comparison is crucial as it helps project managers identify delays in individual tasks and understand their impact on the overall project timeline. By recognizing these delays, project managers can allocate resources more effectively to prevent further delays and keep the project on track.

Therefore, in future updates to Planner, could the inclusion of "Actual Finish" and "Actual Start" fields in the task details be considered? This enhancement would allow project managers to directly compare planned and actual dates for each task. By setting "Actual Finish" and "Actual Start" as inherent fields in the task details, the auto-rescheduling for tasks with dependencies would be more accurate and reflective of real project progress. This means that if a task finishes later than planned, the dependent tasks would automatically adjust their start dates based on the actual finish date, ensuring that the project schedule remains realistic and up-to-date.