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3 Replies Last post: Apr 23, 2008 2:45 PM by Stephano  
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dan
2 posts since
Apr 21, 2008

Apr 21, 2008 7:50 PM

Comparing baselines?


Please forgive the rookie question, but is there an easy way to compare baselines across an entire project? I see how to compare baslines for individual requirements, but I'm looking for a global way to determine the difference on a project between baselines.


thanks,
Dan

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Stephano
34 posts since
Jan 14, 2008
1. Apr 22, 2008 12:34 AM in response to: dan
Re: Comparing baselines?

If you want to compare all the items in a project, viewing different baselines, your best bet is to use a Custom Report. Here is a link to the guide we have on how to create those . Contour uses a tool called BIRT to do custom reporting. It's a way to customize a query for your database, and then display that in various formats (HTML, Word, PDF, Excel, etc.). I am guessing that you want to print this out. Let me know if am I on the right track here.

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dan
2 posts since
Apr 21, 2008
2. Apr 22, 2008 6:44 PM in response to: Stephano
Re: Comparing baselines?

Thanks for the response. I suppose that would work, but it's much clunkier than it should be. I was under the impression that managing and comparing baselines was a core feature for Contour. I might be mistaken here, but it seems that writing custom reports is a fairly static thing, that you wouldn't want to have to do for every baseline out there that you might want to compare to every other baseline. For us we'd be looking for a quick- "what changed on the project this week?" Or "what's changed since the end of our elaboration phase?". That also infers that comparing a baseline to 'current/latest' would be possible. Does that make sense?

thanks,
Dan

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Stephano
34 posts since
Jan 14, 2008
3. Apr 23, 2008 2:46 PM in response to: dan
Re: Comparing baselines?
Currently we do use custom reporting for all baseline comparison. They allow you to enter any two baselines and compare them, or compare any baseline to the current item. We are looking to get this feature into Contour without reporting at some point, but the custom reports are a solid solution for now. We can talk more about the custom reports and how to integrate them if you would like. They are a useful tool in showing what has changed throughout a project.

One question that has come up for me in writing these reports, what exactly are you trying to see when you look at what has changed? The idea of watching a project grow and change is a concept we are very interested in, so it would be interesting to see exactly which types of fields matter the most. For example, are you mostly interested in seeing status changes, or are any changes throughout the item of interest to you?

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