While this guide has described the tracking features of milestones in various sections throughout, this section brings those features together under one heading. The main purpose of milestones is to assist agencies in tracking important events in the life cycle of a service plan. They allow expected time frames to be associated with the life events. Should delays occur in achieving the milestones, additional processing can be called to get things back on track.
When created, each milestone has an expected start and an expected end date. Each milestone also has a placeholder for recording the actual start and end dates. The application can be set up to look out for a lapse between the expected start date and actual start date, as well as between the expected end date and actual end date. Additional processing can be triggered to handle these lapses. For example, a plan item may be scheduled to start on a particular date. Should that plan item go past its scheduled start date, a workflow can be enacted to handle the delay.