Projectal stores all changes made by users.  That includes changes to projects, staff, customers, resources, companies, departments and more.

Projectal includes Time Machine features that let you drill back into this historical data so you can see what has changed at any time.  

For data views, that allows you to create reports and charts that show how data has changed over time.

Example 1: You wish to generate a report that shows the staff head count and costs by department for the past 12 months. 

Example 2: You wish to generate a report that shows the project costs from start of the project to the current date.

To drill into historical data using Projectal's Time Machine features, follow these steps:

1. Locate the data view in the left sidebar and click on it to open it.
2. Click the Date Settings button on the data view screen toolbar to display a popup menu.  There are 3 modes to choose from:
   • View Current Data
   • View data By Date
   • View Data As Time Series

View Current Data

Click this menu item to see the data as of today.  There are no Time Machine features available in this mode.

View Data By Date

Click this menu item to see all the data in the data view at a particular date in the past.  This lets you go back in time to see any data at any moment in time.

To turn on the Time Machine features, click the Time Machine button on the data view screen toolbar.  

Now, choose the date that you wish to see and Projectal will retrieve the data that was stored in Projectal at that particular date.

Tip: When using Time Machine, you cannot choose dates into the future.  These future dates will be grayed out in the date picker.

Example: You wish to see the estimated, planned and actual costs of a project at specific points in time so that you can understand what has change in the project to make it run over time or over budget.

View Data As Time Series

Click this menu item to see a particular column of data from the data view over a range of date intervals in the past.  This lets you go back in time to see a time series of a particular data attribute over a chosen date range.

To turn on the Time Machine features, click the Time Machine button on the data view screen toolbar.  

Now, choose the date range that you wish to see and Projectal will retrieve the data that was stored in Projectal at that particular date for the chosen data attribute.

Tip: When using Time Machine, you cannot choose dates into the future.  These future dates will be grayed out in the date picker.

Example: You wish to see the changes to the overall staff costs for your company over the past 12 months.