Gantt Charts

Gantt charts are great for planning and scheduling projects. They are essentially project maps, illustrating what needs to be done, in what order, and by what deadline. You can visualize the total time a project should take, and the resources and personnel that are allocated to various project tasks.

When to Use a Gantt Chart

• Use to plan projects with have tasks that need to be completed in a clear sequence
• If you need to coordinate with multiple teams or people to complete the project
• When you have teams or people working on multiple projects at once to schedule their tasks during their available times.
• To track deadlines and understand task dependencies.

When to Avoid Using a Gantt Chart

• If the project is highly fluid with a constantly changing scope, or unknown tasks
• If resource management is very complex
• If a project is small and simple, a Gantt Chart may be unnecessary

Example Use Cases for Gantt Charts

1. Planning out the phases of construction projects
2. Coordinating various aspects of a large event
3. Mapping out a product launch process

Set-up Instructions

Below are the Chart settings used to create the example Gantt Chart shown above. 

1. Choose which fields to include in the View. Keep in mind that you will need to choose a field to use as a Start Date, and another field to use as the End Date for the task bars shown on the chart.

2. On the "Format" tab, select the fields to use as the Name, which will appear on the chart as the Name in the first column (see red arrow below), the Row Label, which will appear as the labels for each task bar on the chart on the chart (see purple arrow below), and two date fields to use as the Start Date and End Date for each task bar. 

3. On the "Customize" tab you can check the "Group By Row Label"  checkbox to group all task bars associated with the same Project into the same row (see purple arrow below), and you can either leave the "Show Row Label" checkbox unchecked and the names will not be shown, or check the checkbox to have the names shown as seen in the red boxes below. 

Related Videos:
Webinar - Automating Gantt Charts with Task Dependencies

Related Articles: 
Charts Overview
How to use a Timeline | Calendar view