Gantt chart and dependencies

See the schedule as bars, link tasks so they follow each other, find the critical path and compare with a baseline.

Open the Gantt chart

Open a project and click the Gantt tab. Each task with dates is a bar from its start to its due date; milestones are diamonds and the orange line is today. Subtasks sit under their parent, and a parent with subtasks shows as a thin dark bar.

Days / Weeks / Months change the zoom. Today scrolls back to today.
Click a task's name (or a bar) to open it in the side panel.
On a phone, swipe the timeline sideways; the task names stay on the left.

Change dates by dragging

If you can edit a task:

Drag the bar to move it - its length stays the same.
Drag either end to change the start or the due date.
A task without dates shows an empty row: click the row on the day it should happen to give it dates.

Durations count working days only, so weekends and holidays are skipped (see Workload and work calendar).

Link tasks (dependencies)

A link says one task waits on another. Drag the dot at the end of a bar onto another bar: the second task now starts after the first one finishes. You can also link tasks in the task panel, under Dependencies > Waits on.

There are four kinds of link:

Finish to start - starts after the other one finishes (the usual one).
Start to start - starts when the other one starts.
Finish to finish - finishes when the other one finishes.
Start to finish - finishes when the other one starts.

Add a lag in working days for waiting time (for example 2 days for paint to dry), or a negative lag to let tasks overlap. Click an arrow in the chart to change the kind or lag, or to remove the link.

A link can't make a loop, and a task can't wait on its own subtask or parent.

Tasks move by themselves

When a task moves later, the tasks that wait on it move later too, keeping their length - and the ones waiting on those, and so on. If you move a task earlier than its links allow, it goes to the first day it can. You'll see a message saying how many tasks moved.

Turn this off under Settings > Business settings > Work calendar if you'd rather move every task yourself.

Critical path

Tick Critical path to see in red the tasks with no room to slip: if one of them is late, the whole project ends later. Keep an eye on these first.

Baselines

A baseline is a saved copy of the plan - for example the dates agreed with the client.

Click Baselines > Save the plan as a baseline and name it.
Pick it in the No baseline list to show it as a thin grey bar under each task.

Now you can see at a glance which tasks have slipped from the plan. A project keeps up to 10 baselines; project managers save and delete them.

The Gantt chart and dependencies are in the Standard plan and above. Baselines and the critical path are in the Professional plan and above.