Snapshots

A snapshot is a validity period for a resource's field data. It is not a backup, a frozen copy of the entire project, or a history of every edit. Field definitions remain shared across that resource's snapshots; values and conditions belong to individual snapshot value rows.

The fictional Product Atlas fixture contains Aster Mini and Aster Pro under Products / Lumen devices, plus Orbit Dock and Orbit Hub under Products / Orbit devices. Its Project snapshots are Planning, Launch, and Scale, with an inactive Concept branch. A local-timeline exercise below changes Aster Mini beyond the fixture's initial Project mode.

Training Fixture Periods

These fixture boundaries are listed in UTC to identify their exact instants. The editor shows them in the Project timezone, Europe/Berlin: the January boundary is 01:00 and the September boundary is 02:00 locally. Planning, Launch, and Scale touch without overlapping. Concept branch overlaps Launch but is inactive, so it supplies no effective data.

Project And Local Timelines

New resources default to the Project timeline. Existing migrated resources can be Local; inspect the mode rather than assuming every resource follows the Project. Structural Resource groups are not field-data owners.

In the resource's Timeline source control, Global means the shared Project timeline, and Local means that resource's independent timeline.

Sharing a Project period does not mean Aster Mini and Aster Pro share field values. A price entered on Aster Mini remains Aster Mini's price. In the unchanged fixture, Aster Pro's default price is 229 in Planning and 249 in Launch and Scale; contextual price conditions are authored in Scale.

Permissions

• Project Admin or Owner manages Project snapshot creation, changes, and delete-and-merge operations.
• Project Editor or higher can switch an editable resource between Project and Local mode and author local timelines.
• Viewers and Analysts can inspect permitted data but do not gain timeline authoring rights from being able to configure a View.
• Linked occurrences and shared read-only resources remain read-only. Open the original when you have access.
• Local timeline creation requires All data; it is disabled with an active Layer. Layer-only access is not Project timeline administration.

Some controls can remain visible when the server will reject the operation. Visibility is not proof of authorization.

Dates, Boundaries, And Status

Starts and Ends are date-and-time inputs interpreted in the Project timezone. Internally, timestamps represent absolute instants. A blank Starts means no lower time boundary; a blank Ends means no upper boundary.

A period includes its start and excludes its end: at the exact boundary Starts <= time < Ends. Two periods can touch without overlapping. A finite period must end after its start and last at least one hour.

There are only two authored states:

• Active: eligible for effective-data resolution during its date range.
• Inactive: retained for inspection but excluded from effective-data resolution.

Past, current, and future styling describes a period's dates relative to today, not additional activation states. Multiple snapshots can be Active. There is no single-active selection or primary-tag setting.

Selecting a snapshot in Details lets you inspect that period, including an inactive one. It does not activate it, change a View's as-of date, or make it the project's calculation default.

Shared Tags And Overlap Rules

Each snapshot may have up to 10 tags. Tags are shared within the Project and can be reused on Project and local snapshots. The limit is per snapshot, not a ten-tag limit for the whole Project.

In the tag picker, search for an existing label or type a new label and choose Create or press Enter. Remove a chip to remove that snapshot's association. Change a chip's color using its swatch, then save the snapshot. A shared tag's color is not a private per-snapshot setting. Tag order has no primary meaning and does not control effective-data priority.

An overlap conflict requires both overlapping periods to be Active and one of these conditions:

1. Both are untagged.
2. Their tag sets share at least one tag.

Otherwise the overlap is allowed. Inactive periods may overlap active or inactive periods. The check applies within the same Project timeline, or within the same resource's local timeline, not across unrelated local timelines.

Every tag participates. Adding a second tag can introduce a conflict even if the first tag is different. Tags label allowed parallel periods; they are not independent versions of the field data within one snapshot.

Which Snapshot Supplies Effective Data?

For a calculation instant, the resolver first excludes Inactive and out-of-range periods. It then chooses one effective snapshot for the resource:

1. An in-range Active untagged snapshot takes priority over tagged snapshots.
2. If only tagged candidates remain, the candidate with the latest Starts wins. An unbounded start sorts earlier than a finite start.
3. Equal Starts are resolved deterministically by snapshot identifier, not tag label, color, or chip order.

If no Active period contains the instant, there is no effective snapshot. Calculations must not use expired or inactive field data as a fallback. Details can still select a period for inspection, so its selected row is not proof that the period is effective today.

Product Atlas Example

The seeded periods above do not overlap while active, so they do not demonstrate priority between overlapping candidates. For a separate hypothetical exercise, remove Scale's Released tag and add two differently tagged overlays. Do not treat this table as the fixture's initial configuration:

At October 15, Scale supplies its default of 249 because it is untagged. Inspecting Pilot overlay in Details may show 239, but does not change that effective snapshot. Use an Eastreach context with no additional conditions when checking the default-price result; Northland and Westhaven have separate seeded Scale price overrides.

If an administrator makes Scale Inactive, Release overlay supplies 245 at October 15 because it has the later Starts. At October 5, Pilot overlay supplies 239. If all three are Inactive, none supplies an effective price on these October dates: Launch has already ended and Concept branch remains inactive.

The overlay values and tags are hypothetical additions, not seeded project data. Overlap permission does not imply a separate customer-facing tag-selection calculation mode.

Inspect A Timeline

1. Open Product Atlas and select Aster Pro under Lumen devices.
2. Expand Snapshots in Details.
3. Check whether Global or Local is selected.
4. Click a period or choose it in the snapshot selector.
5. Inspect the corresponding Fields below it.
6. Use Today, Fit all, Zoom in, and Zoom out to inspect the timeline. Drag the track to pan.

Expected result: the selected period and its resource-specific field data are shown. The timeline groups periods under Active and Inactive and uses visual lanes to accommodate overlaps. Lanes do not create additional tag statuses.

Create Or Edit A Project Snapshot

1. As an Admin or Owner, open Project snapshots from the Project controls.
2. Use New active snapshot, New inactive snapshot, or an available insertion control on the timeline.
3. Enter a nonempty Label and the desired Starts and Ends.
4. Add zero to ten tags. Check Active; switch it off if the draft should remain inactive.
5. Choose Add. For an existing period, select it, change its draft, and use Save snapshot.
6. Resolve any reported overlap deliberately, then wait for the updated timeline.
7. Inspect a resource in Project mode to confirm its linked period now reflects the Project label, dates, tags, and status.

Expected result: Project-mode resources follow the shared period definition; their field data remains separate. Local-mode resources do not become Project-mode automatically.

If a message says the snapshot was saved but could not be refreshed, reopen the timeline to refresh it. Do not repeat creation solely because the refreshed row is not yet visible.

Resolve An Active Conflict

The conflict dialog identifies existing conflicting periods. It offers:

• Keep inactive: save the proposed period as Inactive without replacing the active coverage.
• Activate and move conflicts to inactive: retain conflicting periods' original dates and data, but make them Inactive.
• Activate and trim or split: preserve non-overlapping portions of conflicting periods, splitting a containing period when necessary.

Example: an existing Active DEV period runs October 1 to November 1. A proposed Active DEV-and-INT period runs October 10 to October 20. They conflict through DEV. Trim or split preserves the outer October 1-10 and October 20-November 1 portions, subject to validation. Move conflicts to inactive retains the original whole period as Inactive instead.

Review all shared tags before resolving: a multi-tag conflict affects the snapshot as a whole, not just a selected tag chip. Do not assume other tagged overlaps need adjustment when they share no tag.

Conflict adaptation can change more than one period. It is not currently covered by global Undo. See Undo before making a high-impact timeline change.

Use A Local Timeline

1. As a Project Editor or higher, choose All data and select the original Aster Mini resource.
2. In Snapshots, choose Local and confirm Use local timeline.
3. Inspect the retained periods and data.
4. As an additional exercise, use a local timeline insertion control to create Aster pilot, enter valid dates and optional tags, and submit. If it overlaps the tagged Scale period, use a disjoint tag or keep it inactive; an untagged overlap can be allowed but changes effective priority.
5. Select that period and author its field values and conditions. Save ordinary Details drafts with the pane-level Save action.
6. To change a local snapshot label or its tags, edit the selected snapshot's inputs and save Details.

Expected result: this resource's timeline can change independently of the Project periods. Switching Project to Local retains the materialized timeline and its resource-specific data.

Dragging the current timeline pans the visible time range; it does not resize a period or move it between Active and Inactive. The current local editor exposes creation, selection, label, and tag controls, but no direct form for changing an existing local period's dates or status. Do not treat a grab cursor as a period-editing control. Project administrators can change Project period dates and status in the Project snapshot form.

Return To The Project Timeline

1. Select the local resource and choose Global.
2. Read Use Project timeline and confirm only after comparing local and Project intervals.
3. Wait for the checked operation to finish.
4. Inspect the mapped periods and resource data.

Expected result: local data maps into corresponding Project intervals. The operation is blocked when one Project interval overlaps multiple local snapshots; the app does not guess which local dataset should win. Align the timelines deliberately before retrying. This switch requires Project Editor rights even when you are a Layer Editor.

Delete And Merge A Project Snapshot

1. As an Admin or Owner, select the period in Project snapshots.
2. Choose Delete and merge snapshot.
3. In Merge data into, choose an adjacent period whose boundary touches the source period.
4. Choose Delete and merge and wait for completion.

Expected result: resource-specific data moves atomically into the chosen period and the source period is removed. The Project must retain at least one snapshot. If no adjacent recipient exists, deletion cannot proceed.

If both source and target have value rows for the same field on the same resource, the entire merge is blocked. An empty but visible field still has a value row; equal displayed values do not mean merging is safe. No field is silently overwritten. Review the conflicts and decide how to preserve the intended data before retrying. A local snapshot selector is not a general local delete-and-merge interface.

Troubleshooting And Administrative Checks

Administrators should coordinate tag meaning, timezone, boundaries, and the choice to keep a baseline untagged. Snapshot tags are not access permissions. Snapshots do not provide backups, restore deleted projects, retain every past edit, or guarantee Undo coverage. For contextual data changes use Conditions; for historical visualization use Timeline.