I’ve downloaded your software and I am pretty impressed. I’ve looked around, and while I believe it’s possible from screenshots, how does one go about setting the baseline for a project?
Does this sound familiar to you? You know what a baseline theoretically is, but do not have a clue how to set it in Merlin?
That’s simple.
Do you know how to insert activities into your projects?
Do you know how to link them or set a specific starting point?
Do you know how to enter rates in resources or budgets?
Do you know how to call the ‘plan’ tab of the inspector to enter or see planned values there?
If you can answer all these questions by a ‘yes’, you know how to enter  a baseline to your project and probably set up the baseline already innumerable times in the past.
The planned values are the baseline in a Merlin project.
Their display in Gantt is per default enabled in the ‘activities view options’:
As soon as you start updating your project, because the works in your activities are progressing, you enter the actuals in the ‘actuals’ inspector:
Now you see the planned values appear in the Gantt chart in gray, and you can distinguish them from the colored bars of the actuals.
Hi, I am looking at buying a Mac. I have borrowed one from a friend and I am using your Trial version of Merlin (I am experienced with MS Project). Regarding the query re:”baseline”.
Your answer works well in the example you give. But if (for example) the plan has been agreed, signed-off and is considered “baselined” and the project has started, but a task in the future (i.e. which does not need to be started yet) needs to have its time extended, I want the slip in the plan to show. Right now when I try that it shifts the dates without showing me any grey.
How can I be sure any change to an agreed plan is reflected on the chart whether the task has changed or not.
Thank you for your help.
Hi Fabienne,
you cannot keep various sets of baselines in Merlin. So when you edit the planned work for a task, Merlin will adjust its planned work accordingly. It won’t remember that it had another planned work up until that point and color somehow the old information. This is not how Merlin is implemented, sorry.
Also.. you get grey elements if there is a difference between planned and actual values:
If your task is planned for tomorrow to last 2 days, and you change its planned work to 3 days starting yesterday, its gantt bar will remain colored but change from blue to red (because it is now being late).
The tasks won’t show any grey elements, as you hadn’t yet entered any actuals.
So there is only one baseline in Merlin and you cannot see changes on the agreed plan.
Note:
In Merlin you can enter in the actuals (when reporting in absolute mode) another work amount than the planned work. So a task with planned work of 2 days, could have an actual work of 3 days and 1.5 days remaining. Merlin would show then a grey bar for the 2 days, and a partially filled colored bar of 4.5 days.
I am aware of the fact that this is not answering your question, as you wanted to edit the planned work of a not yet started task, but I thought it might help to know.
Best regards, Vicky
Hi Vicky
I’m in the execution phase of a project, I’ve loaded the financials of the project. I need to understand the working of the actual claimed values from various portions of the contract, this is work done by the contractor, engineering inspection, project management fees etc. The problem I have is that I want to add the actual amount claimed and approved which may differ from adding % completed in the program. Is there a way to adjust this?
Hello Marius,
and thanks for your comment. However I have to admit that I don’t yet understand what exactly you want to do.
What do you mean by ‘actual amount claimed and approved’?
Do you want to compair the completed % of a task to another percentage? Which one?
Do you want to compair the actual costs of a task to another amount? Which one?
If you want to know the actual costs and work by resource, just switch to the ‘Resources’ view and enable the columns ‘Actual Work’ and ‘Actual Work Costs’.
If you want to know the actual costs and work by assignment, please use the enable the ‘Activities’ view and enable the columns “Actual Work” and “Actual Work Costs” to check the values in the assignment rows.
Best regards, Vicky
How to create report to compare between actual and plan completion percentage ?
Warm regards,
Toey
Hello,
Is there a way to have the columns % planned completion in addition to % completion and, therefore compare the variance?
Cheers
Yves
Hello Yves, there is no column ‘% planned completion’, so you cannot enable it in the view.
Best regards, Vicky
PS. There is a custom report though, provided by a Merlin 2 users which calculates it. You may give it a try
http://macpm.net/en/merlin/merlin-do-a-bit-of-magic-in-reports-part-xxii
Hi Vicky,
I wonder how showing the baseline works in Merlin 4. I’ve not found any option for displaying it.
It works similar to Merlin 2. For a visible feedback in the Gantt, you enable the secondary bars (the planned values) in the View options.
Best regards, Vicky