Hello Community,
If you’ve used timeline view, you already know it helps teams visualize and manage date-based work in real time. It reimagines how work is managed in Smartsheet, allowing users to easily track tasks and milestones, group information by theme, and adjust plans with clarity and speed. Whether you're building robust roadmaps, managing complex campaigns, or following individual project plans, timeline view helps your team stay aligned and focused.
Since launching timeline view last May, we’ve made significant progress, delivering several highly requested enhancements based on your feedback. Read our roundup of the top timeline view updates released since the start of this year, and drop your feedback or questions in the comments below: your input directly informs what we build next.
Thanks for being a part of the Smartsheet Community!
1. Timeline view widget in dashboards: You can now bring project timelines, big or small, directly into your dashboards with the new timeline view widget. Give stakeholders a clear, at-a-glance view of key milestones, tasks, and project phases, all alongside your other key metrics. It's a powerful way to drive alignment and faster decision-making, right from your most-used dashboards.
2. Show/hide additional fields on bars: Need to tailor what stakeholders see on your timeline? With the new Show fields toolbar button, you can choose what fields appear on bars (right next to their title) by showing or hiding additional fields on each bar. This allows you to customize the data displayed on your view for your audience and gives you control over the level of detail shown in your timeline view.
3. Consolidated item details, attachments, and conversations: Double-click on any bar or milestone to view its details, attachments, and conversations all in one place. This gives you faster access to critical context without navigating away from your timeline.
4. Group by more column types: We expanded grouping options to provide even more flexibility in how you organize your data. In addition to single-select dropdown, contact list, and symbol columns, you can now group timeline items by single-select text/number, checkbox, and date columns.
5. Hide empty lanes when grouping: Cut down on visual clutter by toggling Show empty lanes off. This new setting helps create cleaner, more focused timelines by hiding lanes that don’t contain any items in the selected time period, thereby making your timelines easier to read and work with.
6. Add child items: You can now add child items directly in timeline view, without switching to a different view. This saves time and helps you instantly visualize task hierarchies alongside other bars and milestones.
7. [COMING SOON] Conditional formatting: Soon, you will be able to color your timeline by status, owner, priority, or any key indicator using conditional formatting. This initial release will allow formatting rules based on single-select dropdowns, contact lists, and symbol columns and includes an improved, intuitive interface for managing rules right from timeline view.
cc: @Olen Ronning
