This article gives an overview of the basics of working with scenarios in Meisterplan.

• Implementing Planning Alternatives with Scenarios
• Data in the Plan of Record and in the Scenario
• Viewing and Editing Scenarios
• Selecting a Scenario
• Scenario Comparison

Implementing Planning Alternatives with Scenarios

• Use scenarios to create different plannings based on the plan of record or another scenario.
• At the point of creation, a scenario is a full copy of the plan of record or another scenario.
• While you are working with a scenario, you can graphically compare it to the plan of record or any other scenario.

Data in the Plan of Record and in the Scenario

• All project fields except for the start and finish date (e.g. name or custom project fields) are global. Changing these fields in the plan of record or any scenario will also change them everywhere else. The same applies to the name and project phase of milestones.
• The scenario stores movement of projects on the timeline, project breaks, changes of rank, changes of duration, program membership as well as any changes made to milestones, dependencies, financial events and role and resource allocations, including creating or deleting them. Changes made to this data in the plan of record do not affect any scenario. Changes made to this data in a scenario do not affect the plan of record or any other scenario.
• The Must-Have and Cut-Off line positions are also specific to the plan of record and each scenario.
• Role capacity changes are also specific to the plan of record and each scenario.
• Projects, milestones, dependencies, financial events as well as role and resource allocations may be deleted from a scenario or created in a scenario without affecting the plan of record.
• Likewise, projects, milestones, dependencies, financial events as well as role and resource allocations may be deleted from the plan of record or created in the plan of record without affecting any scenario.
• Please note that the Date Range cannot be saved for individual scenarios.

Viewing and Editing Scenarios

• All users can view, open and compare all scenarios in the dropdown menu in the header, but can only edit those scenarios to which they have been granted edit rights.
• You can define for each user group whetehr they have the right to edit scenarios.
• Users with edit rights can configure new and existing scenarions under Manage > Scenarios.

Find more details in the Manage User Groups and Adding, Editing and Deleting Scenarios articles.

Selecting a Scenario

The scenario menu is displayed next to the Portfolio menu in the header for all views in Meisterplan, except for Integrations and Manage. It shows the active scenario or Plan of Record when no scenario is active.

Open the menu to select one of the five most recently used scenarios. Additionally, you may open a list of all scenarios by clicking View All Scenarios.

If you are not allowed to edit data in the active scenario or plan of record, an eye icon will be displayed in the scenario menu.

To manage your scenarios, click Manage > Scenarios. There, you can add new scenarios, as well as duplicate, archive and delete existing scenarios. You can also adjust which users and user groups have access to each scenario there. Learn more in the article Adding, Editing and Deleting Scenarios.

Scenario Comparison

• You can compare the active scenario to the Plan of Record or to any other scenario.
• The scenario comparison can be started in the drop-down menu under the current selected scenario. Once you have started it, you have access to the scenario comparison menu in the header, where you can select from the last compared scenarios and the Plan of Record, or end the scenario comparison.
• Projects existing both in the active scenario and in the compared scenario or plan of record will be displayed with a light gray shadow above the project bar, indicating the project position in the compared scenario or Plan of Record. For selected projects, milestones and dependencies will also be displayed. Just as with the active scenario, milestones with unmet dependencies in the compared scenario or Plan of Record will always be displayed on their respective project shadow.
• Projects that only exist in the active scenario will be centered vertically to indicate that they don't exist in the compared scenario or Plan of Record.
• You can also compare scenarios and the Plan of Record in integrated reports.