**Source URL:** https://clinical.veevavault.help/en/lr/37622/index.md

# Working with Up & Previous Milestones (Clinical Operations)

Clinical Operations Vaults manage milestone pre-conditions using [milestone dependencies](/en/lr/37552/#). Prior to V16, you could order milestones by using the _Up_ and _Previous_ milestone types and a _Sequence_ field.

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      <p><strong>Note</strong>: This feature is only available on Clinical Operations Vaults.</p>
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## Up Milestones

An "Up" milestone is the higher-level milestone in the _Study_, _Study Country_, and _Study Site_ hierarchy. For example, the _Up_ milestone for _Site Close_ is _Country Close_ and the _Up_ milestone for _Country Close_ is _Study Close_. Each of these milestones is dependent on one another in parent-child relationships.

The following rules apply to Up milestones:

  * When creating a milestone at the _Study_ level, you cannot select an _Up_ milestone.
  * When creating a milestone at the _Study Country_ level, you can only select an _Up_ milestone pointing to its parent _Study_.
  * When creating a milestone at the _Study Site_ level, you can only select an _Up_ milestone pointing to its parent _Study Country_.

A milestone can only reference one _Up_ milestone. However, many milestones can reference a single milestone, for example, the _US Close_ (Study Country) milestone has one Up milestone, _CC-001 Close_ (Study), but five different site close milestones have _US Close_ as their _Up_ milestone.

## Previous Milestones

A "Previous" milestone refers to the order of milestones within a sequence at the _Study_, _Study Country_, or _Study Site_ level. For example, the _Previous_ milestone for _Site Close_ is _Site Conduct_ and the _Previous_ milestone for _Site Conduct_ is _Site Start_.

The following rules apply to _Previous_ milestones:

  * When creating a milestone at the _Study_ level, you can only select a _Previous_ milestone pointing to the same _Study_.
  * When creating a milestone at the _Study Country_ level, you can only select a _Previous_ milestone pointing to the same _Study Country_.
  * When creating a milestone at the _Study Site_ level, you can only select a _Previous_ milestone pointing to the same _Study Site_.

A milestone can only reference one previous milestone.

If your Vault uses _Up_ and _Previous_ milestones, there are additional fields on your _Milestone_ object:

<table class="wbord">
  <tr>
    <td>
      <em>Up</em>
    </td>
    <td>
      A higher level milestone on which this milestone is dependent.
    </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>
      <em>Previous</em>
    </td>
    <td>
      The previous milestone in the sequence.
    </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>
      <em>Sequence</em>
    </td>
    <td>
      Optional numerical value used to define the absolute order of two or more milestones within a sequence (previous to next). For example, you would assign the <em>Study Start</em>, <em>Study Conduct</em>, and <em>Study Close</em> the sequence numbers 1, 2, and 3, respectively.
    </td>
  </tr>
</table>