Preview and apply
Every change in Plenar opens a New Plan preview before it touches your Plan of Record. You see exactly what would move and whether the plan gets better or worse, then choose to apply it or throw it away. This page explains why that step exists and what the preview shows. For the step-by-step mechanics, see Manage your schedule.
Why the preview exists
In a continuously recomputed plan, one change can cascade. Bumping a single task’s estimate might push three other tasks later, which slips a goal past its target date, which shifts who works on what. Without a preview you wouldn’t see any of that until after it happened.
The preview guarantees one thing: you always see what moves, and whether it helps, before anything is committed.
What the preview shows
When you make a change, Plenar builds the New Plan and compares it against the Plan of Record. The diff calls out:
- Moved tasks — which tasks shifted dates, and by how many days
- Assignment changes — tasks that moved to a different team member
- Goal impact — goals whose ETAs changed, with the slip or gain and the resulting health
- Milestone impact — milestones whose ETAs changed
- Whether the plan got better, worse, or stayed the same
Not every task is reconsidered. Plenar only re-evaluates what your change actually touches — the tasks you edited, anything assigned to a person whose availability changed, and the downstream tasks that depend on them. Everything else stays exactly where it is, so a small change produces a small, readable diff.
Better, worse, or the same
The preview tells you whether the New Plan is an improvement. Plenar weighs a few things in order of importance: first whether more of your deadlines are met, then how well auto-assigned tasks match the skills they need, then how compact and balanced the overall schedule is. A plan that hits one more target date wins even if it makes the project slightly longer.
If your change can’t be absorbed without pushing a deadline, Plenar looks for other arrangements that recover it. When one exists, the New Plan adopts it. When none does, Plenar tells you the current plan is already the best it can do given your constraints — you can still apply the change, but you’ll see the regression spelled out in the preview first.
Apply or discard
The New Plan is also a sandbox. You can stack several changes — edit a few estimates, reassign a task, add a dependency — and decide on them together:
- Apply promotes the New Plan to the Plan of Record. Plenar may then settle into a slightly better arrangement if one exists that doesn’t make anything worse.
- Discard throws the changes away and leaves the Plan of Record untouched.
So you can make a change purely to see what would happen — “what if I cut this estimate in half?” — and discard it once you’ve seen the answer. The detailed apply/discard workflow lives in Manage your schedule.
The Plan of Record
The Plan of Record is the currently committed plan — the one clients, execs, and teammates all see:
- Every task’s scheduled dates come from it
- Goal and milestone ETAs come from it
- The Timeline shows it
It changes only when you apply. Between applies it’s stable, so the plan you share doesn’t move under anyone’s feet.
Common questions
Does anything change while I’m previewing? No. The Plan of Record stays put until you click Apply. Until then you’re looking at a New Plan that exists only for you.
Can I explore a change without committing? Yes — make the change, read the New Plan, then Discard. Nothing is saved. The preview doubles as a what-if sandbox.
Why did only a few tasks move when I changed one thing? Plenar reconsiders only what your change actually affects — the edited tasks and their downstream dependencies. Untouched work stays where it is.
What if my change makes the plan worse? Plenar tries to recover the deadline by rearranging other work. If it can’t, it shows you the regression clearly and lets you decide whether to apply it anyway.
What to do next
- Manage your schedule — the edit → preview → apply loop, step by step.
- How scheduling works — what Plenar optimizes for when it builds a plan.
- Goal health — how target dates and ETAs decide whether a goal is on track.