Master Project Tracking with Baselines, Snapshots, and Automated Reports

In this step, you will learn how to unlock the power of historical visibility in Workfront. While Workfront excels at showing real‑time project updates, understanding how your tasks looked at different points in the past requires a deeper dive. In this video, you'll learn three methods for tracking historical task data: using baselines, capturing snapshots, and setting up automated task‑report emails.

Track historical task data:

• using baselines

• capturing snapshots

• setting up automated task‑report emails

Key takeaways

• Baselines Provide Historical Reference Points: Baselines capture the project’s state at key milestones (e.g., kickoff, major replanning) and are used to measure progress against the original plan.

• Automatic and Manual Baseline Creation: Baselines are created automatically when project status changes to ‘Current’ and can also be created manually. Not all project fields are captured in baselines.

• Snapshots Capture All Project Data: Unlike baselines, snapshots are created manually and capture all project, task, issue, and custom fields, offering a comprehensive record at any point in time.

• Flexible Comparison and Reporting: Users can compare current project data to baselines or across snapshots using custom reports and views, enabling detailed analysis of changes and progress.

• Automated Periodic Reporting with Sent Reports: The ‘Send Report’ feature allows users to schedule and receive regular email reports, providing an automated way to track and archive project data over time.

Next, you will learn how to effectively manage the hours logged to a project in Workfront.