Subscriber Guide

How to get the most out of ScheduleLens, from your first login to a month-over-month tracking workflow. Written for project directors, planners, and delay analysts who want defensible insight without re-learning a forensic tool.

If you only read one thing: track your Project, upload the new schedule each month against your baseline, and let the dashboard carry the trend. The rest of this guide explains why.

1. The three analysis types — which to run

Type	Upload	Answers	Run it when
Health	1 schedule	“How sound is this schedule right now?” (DCMA, float, critical path, logic quality)	A one-off quality check, or the first look at any programme
Comparison	2 schedules (a baseline + an update)	“What changed, and what drove the movement, between these two?”	The standard monthly review — see §3
Series	3+ schedules (chronological)	“What happened across every period — recurring drivers, float erosion, the full trajectory?”	A claim/EOT submission, or a periodic forensic deep-dive

A Comparison gives you one before/after delta. A Series gives you the period-by-period view (the forensic “windows” method) plus the cumulative position — it's the richest single document, and the only one that surfaces recurring drivers and the float-erosion trend.

2. Your first 10 minutes

1 Sign up / log in.
2 Upload a schedule (.xer, P6 .xml, MS Project .xml/.mpp, or Asta .pp) and run a Health analysis to see the report format.
3 Create a Project and attach the analysis to it (the upload form lets you pick or create a Project).
4 Turn on Tracking for that Project (the “Tracking on” button on the dashboard) — this is what lets the dashboard trend month-over-month without re-uploading old files.
5 Set your baseline — on the dashboard's snapshot table, click “Set” in the Baseline column on the row that is your contractual plan of record.

That's the setup. From here it's one upload a month.

3. The recommended monthly process

Once a Project is tracked, the tool does three different jobs with your uploads — keep them straight:

The report = the forensic deep-dive for what you uploaded this run.
The dashboard = the longitudinal trend, built up one snapshot per upload over time. It does not need prior months re-uploaded.
The agents = conversational Q&A grounded in the engine's results. “Ask the analyst” (on any single report) digs into that analysis; “Ask about this project” (on the dashboard) answers across months — trends, snapshot-to-snapshot comparisons, and how an activity moved over the series.

As a PM you want both “what changed since last month” and “where are we versus the baseline.” The tracked dashboard gives you both — it carries a vs-prior axis and a vs-baseline axis.

The routine (90% of months)

Because the Project retains every schedule, you only upload one file — this month's update — and pick how to compare it. No re-uploading the baseline or prior months.

1 From the dashboard, + Add snapshot (or the upload page with the Project selected).
2 Drop in this month's schedule and choose vs Baseline.
3 You get: this month's comparison report (movement vs the plan of record and its drivers) and a new dashboard snapshot. The dashboard's vs-prior-month delta updates automatically from retained data.
4 Ask the analyst about that month's report if you want to dig in.

The first upload to a new Project should be a Health Check of the baseline programme — that becomes the retained baseline. Until a Project has one snapshot, the “vs …” options are greyed out.

The single-file comparison options

When a Project is selected, you pick what to compare this month's upload against (the other schedules come from retention — you never re-upload them):

vs Baseline — against the project baseline (plan of record). The default monthly choice.
vs Prior month — against last month's update only (not the baseline) — a clean before-and-after of what moved since the previous run.
vs All updates — a full Series across the baseline and every retained update — float-erosion trend, recurring drivers, cumulative-vs-baseline, all in one report. Use this for a claim, EOT, dispute, or quarterly review. No extra cost on a subscription.

(You can still upload multiple files as a one-off Comparison/Series without a Project — useful for schedules you don't want retained.)

When your programme is re-baselined

An approved EOT, a contract amendment, or an agreed re-plan gives you a revised baseline — a new plan of record from a certain date. A real programme can go through several. Rather than replacing the original (and losing the ability to measure early history against the plan that was actually in force), ScheduleLens models the baseline as a timeline of eras: each snapshot is measured against the plan in force for its own era.

1 + Add snapshot and upload the revised baseline programme.
2 Open the Baseline timeline panel on the dashboard and click + Add baseline era. Pick the revised-baseline snapshot, set the effective-from date (when the new plan took effect), give it a label, and — for the record — the instruction reference (EOT award / amendment) and whether it is agreed, disputed, or unknown.
3 From that date forward the vs-baseline trend measures against the revised baseline; earlier snapshots stay anchored to the original era. The trend re-anchors at the boundary (marked on the charts) instead of smearing one anchor across both plans — a pre-re-plan snapshot no longer reads as “ahead of” a plan that didn't exist yet.

Never been re-baselined? You don't need the timeline at all — leave it, or click Set in the Baseline column to pin a single plan of record. The eras are only for programmes that genuinely re-baseline.

The dashboard also recognises a snapshot that looks re-baselined or re-sequenced — a large jump in activity count or a re-routed critical path — and marks that period, limiting the float and attribution comparison there rather than reporting a misleading figure.

Running a Series across a re-baseline? A Series (“vs All updates”) compares each snapshot to the one before it, so the period that spans the re-plan shows large movement — new scope, re-sequenced logic, a re-drawn critical path — that reflects the re-plan itself rather than a month's slippage. Read that period as a re-plan, or run the Series from the revised baseline forward for a clean picture of what has moved since.

4. Projects & the dashboard

A Project groups a programme's monthly snapshots and powers the dashboard. Each analysis you attach becomes one snapshot.

Tracking (opt-in, off by default). Turning it on retains a small, encrypted, per-activity fingerprint (float + dates + constraint markers — never the full schedule, never the source file) so the dashboard can compute vs-baseline and vs-prior trends without you re-uploading priors. Turning it off deletes every retained fingerprint immediately. This is a security model (encrypted, scoped, deletable), not zero-knowledge — the server computes the comparison, so privacy-sensitive one-offs should simply leave tracking off.

The dashboard shows

Headline tiles: forecast finish (vs plan), DCMA, critical-path length, activities at risk.
Trend charts across snapshots: DCMA, forecast-vs-plan, critical path, BEI vs baseline, float consumed vs baseline.
A snapshot table — one row per upload, with the Baseline control.
A Baseline timeline panel — the eras behind the vs-baseline trend, for programmes that have been re-baselined (see §3).

The three “baselines” (this trips people up)

There are three distinct things called baseline; they do different jobs:

Upload baseline picker — at upload time, picks which of the files you uploaded is the baseline for that one comparison/series report.
Dashboard “Set” baseline — designates a snapshot as the Project's plan of record (the anchor for the vs-baseline trend).
What the trend measures against — the retained baseline fingerprint.

Set your plan-of-record baseline on the dashboard once, at the start. If your contract is re-baselined later — e.g. an approved EOT — don't replace it: add a new baseline era from the Baseline timeline panel so early history stays measured against the plan that was actually in force (see §3).

5. Ask the agents

There are two chat panels, both grounded only in the engine's computed results — they never see your raw schedule, and they can't invent numbers (every figure traces to an analysis).

“Ask the analyst”

On any completed analysis.

Digs into that one report. Good questions:

“How many DCMA checks fail and which are the worst?”
“What's driving the slip?”
“Is this schedule on Progress Override?”
“Which milestones are most at risk?”

“Ask about this project”

On a tracked Project's dashboard.

Answers across months, over every retained snapshot:

“What's the trend over the last six updates?”
“Which activities have lost the most float since the baseline?”
“Compare this month against December.”
“When did the forecast finish first slip past the contract date?”

Use the per-analysis agent to interrogate a single report; use the project agent for the longitudinal story.

6. FAQ

Do I need to re-upload old schedules every month?

No — if the Project is tracked, the dashboard remembers. Upload only the new schedule (plus your baseline for the comparison report).

Health, Comparison, or Series each month?

Comparison (new + baseline) for the routine month; Series for claims/periodic deep-dives. See the monthly process above.

Which agent answers cross-month questions?

“Ask about this project” on the dashboard sees every retained snapshot — use it for trends, comparisons between months, and how an activity moved over the series. “Ask the analyst” stays scoped to the single report you opened.

Which formats are supported?

Primavera P6 (.xer, .xml), MS Project (.xml, .mpp), and Asta Powerproject (.pp).

Is my schedule data stored?

Source files are deleted immediately after processing. Only your reports (and, if you opt into tracking, the encrypted fingerprints) are retained. See the Privacy Policy.

See the Privacy Policy for the full data-handling detail, and the Methodology page for the standards behind every check.

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