hey again it's Jason freed from 37 signals and today I'm going to show you a brand new feature in Basecamp 4 called the lineup now the lineup addresses a weakness that's been in base camp for a number of years which is um it's been sort of hard in base camp to get a bird's eye view of all the projects that are currently in play now we've always had this home screen here the home screen of course we've changed over the years but it's a collection of all the projects you have access to that doesn't necessarily tell you what's being worked on right now or if this project is current or past or coming up in the future right so this is just a collection of projects there was also ways to get some of this information by looking at some reports or an activity stream but we didn't have a really good bird's eye view that you could just go to and at a glance have a really good view of what's going on right now now we do it's called the lineup so let me show you how it works you go up to the lineup here and what you get is a timeline view it's a bunch of weeks to the left and a bunch of weeks to the right and today always straight down the middle as a vertical line now today happens to be Wednesday October 12th and that's why the date is Wednesday October 12th here in this line but whatever day it is today is always right down the middle now any project that has a start date before today and an end date after today is going to show up on this timeline as a card all right so you'll see there's some different lengths of projects these are actually real projects we're working on right now so this is real data you're looking at we'll take this one for example this one starts on the 10th of October and ends on the 21st of October right the project is called cycle five hey that's the product we're working on show shared links Matt's working on programming Michelle's on design here are their pictures down here so at a quick glance I can get a sense that I know that this Project's being worked on and that we're you know I don't know maybe 10 of the way through the time allotted this doesn't show you how much of the project is actually complete so this isn't measuring work done this is mentioned measuring time passed so we're you know 10 of the way through roughly right these two small projects they start on the 10th and the end of the 14th there's two of them they're about halfway done right here's one that started back in September 27 is ending on October 22nd it's more than halfway done right visually I can get a sense of where things stand and who's working on what which is really nice now as a manager this is a wonderful view I'm going to scroll down all the way just to show you all the stuff that's currently in play in our account and I'll come back down and talk about this in a minute but it's a wonderful view for managers because for example I'm in charge of the product basically right so I want to have a sense of where we're at and who's on what and what projects are in play without having to jump in to each individual one to see where things stand I don't have to go around asking everyone hey how much time is left hey how's it going hey how are this how's this how's that how are you all the things that you might do here and there but I don't want to do this all the time to get a sense of what's actually happening across the company so for someone like me or project managers in general coming in here and being able to just simply scroll and at a glance fill my mind with a feeling of where things stand It's a Wonderful useful thing so a couple little details here let's say you've got a few projects these happen to be three projects all starting they started and the ending they're ending at the same time let's say something came up and we had to bump all three of these out an extra week right it's really easy to do that on the timeline you just click on one of the dates like that and you get a new calendar and you can of course pick a new end date now these are real so I'm not going to do it but you could quickly you know move this out a week move this out a week move this out a week like no big deal or shave time if you needed to as well really easy to act on these things in this View now down below at the bottom um there's a few different styles of other things that appear in the timeline I want to walk through what that means so again up top anything that's currently active meaning it's start and end date is between today is sort of large card style okay down here you're going to see things that are coming up in the future so if something's coming up it's treated differently it's not as prominent but it's there so you can sort of have a sense that in about a week or whatever these things are beginning and you can also see things that have already happened so recently these projects ended now as long as it fits within the the weak spans we have here right each one of these lines is a week so you know going back about what six weeks back six weeks forward it depends how wide your screen is the whole thing you'll see whatever is coming up that's already been scheduled or has passed at the bottom of the timeline at the bottom of the lineup so we always show current stuff that's active at the top so you don't have to go digging or fishing for it and then future and pass stuff at the bottom now of course you can get to any of these projects this is actually a really nice sort of jumping off point by just clicking on the project and going into it um you'll see here that this project that's probably not a really let's pick this one there's a little bit more activity here um at the top of the project if a project appears in the lineup you're gonna have a little timeline up at the top September 27 October 22. now that's the same as right here September 27 October 22. so that's going to show up at the top and there's going to be a little vertical line here as well a red one just like there was in the lineup this shows you where today is on that schedule so again from within a project right at the top no digging no fishing around no wondering where things are you just have a nice tight little timeline at the top so you have a sense of where things stand and where things are based on time and to add a date to a project to start and end date you just go up here and you say edit project details and you can add the date here right and you can also do this when you create a project so if you already know the start date and end date for a project when you make it you can create that upon creating the project and it will be added to the top so you get this little timeline up here you get a big timeline here with all the projects plotted and you now have a really good sense of who's working on what what's in play what just starting what's just ending what's coming up in the future what just ended how much time is left roughly on each thing that's currently going on and it's a wonderful helpful view now one last thing this is not a Gantt chart because this does not show phases within a project and there's no dependencies here this is simply today what's happening what's in play start and end project names who's on it project descriptions in a general sense an intuitive sense of how much time has passed and how much time remains if you have any questions about the lineup just post a comment down below happy to answer and I'm going to be working on some more videos soon so hopefully you're enjoying these and thanks again for watching