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. On the upload form, the Project picker is what puts the snapshot on your dashboard: create a Project with + New, or pick one. Once you have a Project, the picker starts on Choose…, so every upload is filed on purpose, and a Project you pick shows the filename of its last upload. If this month's file is a different programme, pick One-off (no project) or + New rather than adding it to the wrong one.
3 Check the Project on your dashboard. Your snapshot should be listed against it. If you are a subscriber with no Projects yet and leave the picker on One-off (no project), one is created for you, named from the uploaded filename — the form shows a ticked "Track this programme on the dashboard" box that you can untick if you would rather not.
4 Tracking is already on. Every Project retains an encrypted copy of each schedule you add to it, which is what lets the dashboard trend without re-uploading old files. To stop retaining, use Forget on a snapshot row (or Forget all for the Project) on the dashboard — the snapshot and its report stay; only the stored schedule is deleted.
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.)

Uploaded into the wrong Project? Open the analysis and use Move to… to move it — the retained schedule goes with it and both dashboards re-anchor. Detach removes it from the dashboard and deletes the retained schedule.

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 (on for every Project). Each schedule you add to a Project is kept as an encrypted copy, so the dashboard can compute vs-baseline and vs-prior trends — and re-anchor them when you change the baseline — without you re-uploading priors. Forget on a snapshot row, or Forget all for the Project, deletes the stored schedule immediately (the snapshot, its report and its current numbers stay). This is a security model (encrypted, scoped, deletable), not zero-knowledge — the server computes the comparison, so a privacy-sensitive one-off should be uploaded as One-off (no project). Untick Keep a copy for 90 days (or Track this programme on the dashboard, if you have no Projects yet) and no copy of the schedule is kept; the report and a 30-day programme view still are, encrypted and only available to you.

The dashboard shows

Headline tiles: forecast finish (vs plan), DCMA, remaining duration, activities at risk.
Trend charts across snapshots: DCMA, forecast-vs-plan, 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).
Required pace: the pace the programme's finish needs from the remaining work, against the pace achieved, measured against your baseline.
Update-integrity signals: concealed slip (a lower bound on slip hidden by shortened durations), rewritten actuals (recorded actual dates that changed after they were first reported) and critical-path churn between updates.
Bounded what-if: one change at a time (“if activity X takes 10 more working days”), reported as movement against the same engine's base run. No Monte Carlo, and never a forecast.
A supported-EOT range built from the responsibility you tag on each delay event (Employer / Contractor / Neutral).
The Programme tab on each snapshot's analysis, which opens the schedule in your browser.
A digest email after each upload, summarising what moved in that update.

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 copy of the baseline schedule.

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 and pick what to compare it against — the baseline and prior months come from the Project's retained copies.

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?

Your file is deleted after analysis. What we keep (your reports, a 30-day programme view, and for subscribers any schedule you add to a Project) is encrypted by ScheduleLens and only available to you. A Project's copy lets the dashboard compare later months against it; delete it any time with Forget. A One-off upload keeps an encrypted copy for 90 days so it can still be added to a Project, unless you untick “Keep a copy for 90 days”. 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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