Data Management Capabilities > Managing Projects > Projects and Programs > Plan Baselines
  
Plan Baselines
Plan baselines create a snapshot of a plan at a moment in time.
The following objects are captured in a plan baseline:
Plan
Subplan
Activities, summary activities, and milestones
Deliverables
Resources
Resource assignment tasks
These baselines are unique objects that function differently from managed baselines:
Managed Baselines
Plan Baselines
Baselines contain typical Windchill business objects, such as parts, documents, and CAD documents. They cannot capture plan objects.
Plan baselines only include the plan and plan-related objects.
The information a baseline captures is linked to a specific version of the object.
Plan objects are not under version control. The plan baseline captures information based on a specific point in time.
When you create a baseline, you select which objects you want to add. For existing baselines, you can add and remove objects, or replace objects with a different version.
You do not select what information is captured in the baseline. When you create a plan baseline, you automatically create a baselined version of all plan objects that exist at that point in time.
Once a plan baseline is created, you cannot add, remove, or change the baselined version of its objects.
Because managed baselines are dynamic, they have a broad functionality. For example, you can set a life cycle state for a baseline, add it to a workspace, and view its history.
Project managers can delete plan baselines and set an active baseline. Otherwise, plan baselines are read-only.



Plan Baseline Administration
Baselines capture out-of-the-box attributes. For plans and activities, baselines also capture soft attributes.
As an administrator, you can use the Type and Attribute Management utility to modify which soft attributes are captured in plan baselines:
• Deleting a custom plan type automatically deletes the parallel plan baseline type.
• If you edit the custom plan type after creating it, the plan baseline type is not automatically updated.
• You can manually edit the baselined plan type to add or remove attributes. If you want to include soft attributes, you must manually edit the parallel baseline type.
• Only the attributes defined on the baseline plan type are captured when users create baselines. This can be a subset of all plan attributes.
• If you change the internal name of the custom plan type, you must also update the internal name of the corresponding baseline type.
Use the following properties to control how baselined versions of custom types are created:
com.ptc.projectmanagement.plan.baseline.autoCreate
Default
false
Synopsis
Automatically create a parallel baseline type when creating a custom plan type or subplan type.
Description
• true—A parallel baseline type is automatically created when you create a custom plan type.
• false—You must manually create a baseline version of a custom type. If no custom baseline version exists, the default plan baseline type is used.
com.ptc.projectmanagement.plan.baseline.suffix
Default
_Baselined
Synopsis
The suffix used for the baselined type of a custom plan type.
Description
This property determines the naming convention that is used for the baseline plan type when it parallels a custom plan type. The property value is appended to the internal name of the custom type.
For example, by default, if you create a custom plan type with the internal name “EngineerPlan,” the baselined type is named “EngineerPlan_Baselined.”
• If the com.ptc.projectmanagement.plan.baseline.autoCreate property is set to true, a parallel baseline type is automatically created when you create a custom plan type.
• If the com.ptc.projectmanagement.plan.baseline.autoCreate property is set to false, you can manually create a baseline version of a custom plan type. Your new baseline plan type must follow the naming convention established through this property.
• In both scenarios, the association between the custom plan type and the custom baseline type is broken if you modify the internal name in one without updating the other.