Syndeia 3.6 introduces Baselines for Digital Thread Projects.

A Baseline represents the state of a Digital Thread Project and its contents at a specific point in time. A Baseline is identified by its unique timestamp. Users can create new baselines and compare baselines to review digital thread relations created, updated, and deleted between the baselines. Users can also compare a baseline with the current timestamp (Now) to view changes in the Digital Thread Project since the last baseline, or any given baseline. The Baseline feature is accessible from the Baselines tab of the Digital Thread Project Dashboard, as shown in Figure 1 below. Two (2) sub-tabs - Manage and Compare - are used for managing and comparing baselines, as shown in Figures 1 and 2 below.

The Baseline feature is presented in details in the following sub-sections.

View Baselines

Baselines in a given Digital Thread Project can be viewed from the Baselines → Manage tab of the Digital Thread Project Dashboard, as shown in Figure 1 above. For each Baseline, users will see the following details.

Name - name of the Baseline, can be modified by a user
Description - short description of the Baseline, can be modified by a user
Timestamp - timestamp at which the Baseline was created, cannot be modified by user or Syndeia application
Created By - user who created the Baseline, managed by Syndeia application
Created Date - timestamp when the Baseline was created, managed by Syndeia application
Modified By - user who modified the Baseline, managed by Syndeia application
Modified Date - timestamp when the Baseline was modified, managed by Syndeia application

Create a New Baseline

Follow the steps below to create a new Baseline.

(1) Click on the Create button (top RHS) under the Baselines → Manage tab, as shown in Figure 1 above.

(2) Provide a Name and Description, as shown in Figure 2 below.

(3) Select Timestamp - Keep Current Time or select a specific date/time (with timezone) since the Digital Thread Project was created until now as the timestamp for the Baseline. Note that users can create a baseline in the past (since the project was created). This is a very powerful feature and allows the flexibility to create Baselines if a user/team missed creating them at a given time. However, once a Baseline is created, the timestamp cannot be changed. Users have the option of deleting the Baseline and recreating it at another timestamp. In essence, this works similar to Tags in Git version control system.

(4) Click on the Create button.

(5) The Baselines tab should update and show the newly created Baseline.

Compare Baselines

Baselines in a given Digital Thread Project can be compared from the Baselines → Compare tab of the Digital Thread Project Dashboard, as shown in Figure 12 above.

Follow the steps below to compare any two (2) Baselines.

(1) Click on the Baselines → Compare tab in the Digital Thread Project Dashboard.

(2) Select a Reference Baseline from the drop down, as shown in Figure 3 below.

(3) Select a Target Baseline from the drop-down, as shown in Figure 4 below.

The Target Baseline needs to be a Baseline with a later timestamp than the Reference Baseline.

If you select the Reference Baseline first, you will only see Baselines with a later timestamp when selecting a Target Baseline.
If you select the Target Baseline first, you will only see Baselines with an earlier timestamp when selecting a Reference Baseline.

(4) After both the Reference and the Target Baselines have been selected, a difference table will be generated. Depending on the changes between the Reference and Target Baselines, the difference table may show the following types of changes. Click on each to view the changes of that type.

Created - Set of inter-model (digital thread) relations created between the Reference Baseline (timestamp) and the Target Baseline (timestamp).
Updated - Set of inter-model (digital thread) relations updated between the Reference Baseline (timestamp) and the Target Baseline (timestamp).
Deleted - Set of inter-model (digital thread) relations deleted between the Reference Baseline (timestamp) and the Target Baseline (timestamp).

If none of the above are shown, it implies that there are no digital thread relations created, updated, or deleted between the Reference Baseline and the Target Baseline.