Project Gantt chart

The Gantt view is the second tab of the project schedule, next to List and Kanban. It shows tasks, phases and milestones on a timeline. Tasks are wide bars, phases (summary tasks) are narrow bars above a group of tasks, and milestones are diamonds. By default the bar colour shows progress: unfinished items are light blue and finished ones are dark blue.

The chart is meant for quick schedule editing by dragging: dates, duration, progress and dependencies. The bar above the chart has the buttons New task, Filter, Chart (only in the Gantt view), History and Settings. The item name opens its panel, which has all the actions available on the list (see Project schedule). The chart appearance and the filter are remembered separately for each user and project. Without the right to change the schedule, the chart is read-only.

Customizing the Gantt chart

Chart settings

1. Open the project schedule and go to the Gantt view.
2. Click the Chart button. A list of switches expands.
3. Switch on or off the elements to show: Number, WBS, Dates, Owners, Baseline (when the project has a baseline), Today line, Critical path, Resource workloads (when the Resources tab is switched on in the project).

Baseline and WBS are on by default. For Resource workloads you choose the scope: Current project or All projects.

Colour

The Color list in the same panel decides what the bars are coloured by. By default it is progress. You can also choose any single-choice list schedule attribute switched on in the project. The bars then take the colours of the list options (see Schedule attributes).

The colour of a single task is changed separately, in the task context menu.

Zoom

The zoom slider has five levels: day, week, month, quarter and year. Dates on the axis group according to the chosen level.

Editing dates and dependencies on the Gantt chart

Changing dates and duration

• Moving in time – hold the bar of a task, milestone or phase and drag it left or right. The dates change when you release it.
• Changing duration – drag the left edge of the bar (start date) or the right edge (end date).
• Progress – when you hover over a task bar, an arrow appears at the bottom. Drag it to set the progress value; the darker part of the bar shows it.

A date that falls on a day off is moved to the nearest working day. If a task has dependencies and after recalculation the dates differ from the ones you dragged, the message Dates have been updated from relations appears.

Creating a dependency

1. Hover over a task bar. Dots appear on both sides of the bar.
2. Hold a dot and drag it to a dot of another task or milestone. A dependency line is visible while you drag.
3. Release the cursor on the dot of the target item. The dependency appears as a line connecting the two items.

You can also add a dependency from the item context menu (Add dependency). In the window you choose an element from this project or from another project. Dependencies between projects are not recalculated immediately, only after approval in the project program.

Editing a dependency

Click a dependency line to open the Edit dependency window. It lets you set the Predecessor and the Successor (the Reverse dependency button swaps them), the Dependency type (End – Start, Start – Start, End – End, Start – End) and the Lag. The lag field is enabled with the Fixed lag option. You can also delete the dependency in the window. The concepts and other ways of adding dependencies are described in Project schedule.

The conditions are checked on save, and a message appears when one is violated, among others:

• You cannot add dependencies that will create cycles…,
• You cannot add dependency to element with subtasks,
• There cannot be multiple dependencies between the same tasks,
• Days cannot be removed for element with dependency.

Exporting the Gantt chart

1. Open the project schedule and go to the Gantt view.
2. Click the Export button. A list of formats expands.
3. Choose a format: Document (.pdf), Image (.png) or Microsoft Project (.xml).

The file contains the whole chart in the current view, including the filter, displayed columns, appearance settings and zoom. You can open and edit the XML file in Microsoft Project. The PDF document opens in the browser PDF viewer in a new tab, where you can save or print it. The PNG image suits presentations and documents.

The schedule list is exported separately (see Exporting the schedule list).