Visual Gantt with Milestones Embedded

Gladys Liley

I'm trying to add a dynamic visual Milestone gantt on a Dashboard which lists %progress.  This should be dynamic so that it displays real-time updates from the detail schedule that i'm pulling the Milestones from.  Any suggestions on what tools are available.

 

Chris McKay

Hi Gladys,

I'll need a bit more info about what you're trying to achieve, but you can easily create a Smartsheet report that pulls milestones out of a project plan, displays a gantt and will update based on information in the detailed schedule.

Gladys Liley

Here's a visual for reference. 

I am currently using a report change this to only display the timeline with milestones & progress. Is that possible?

Chris McKay

Hi Gladys,

Yes, you can create a milestone only report based on dynamic data from a project plan. However, you will not be able to pretty up the Gantt in the same way you have above, but something like the below images is possible.

I've added a symbol column to the left and asked it to look at 0 duration tasks and set the symbol to the diamond shape (advanced), then used conditional formatting to make it easier to distinguish milestones from tasks in the plan. I set the parent task milestone symbol to the green circle (easy) so I could include it in the report.I also used a dependency column to link the tasks together, so changing the date/duration will also change the dependent tasks.

For the report, simply choose the columns you'd like to display making sure to include Start Date and End Date, sort the report on the Start Date and finally set the What? criteria in the Report Builder to Milestone is Easy or is Advanced.

This will only pull out the parent row and milestones. Because it is linked to the plan, any changes to dates, durations, % complete etc. in the plan will be reflected in the report (and Gantt) automatically.

You could always export the report to Excel periodically and then plot the data there (as there are more formatting options) but then you'll lose the automation.

cchukwurah

I am still new to Smartsheet, and this sounds overly complicated. I am trying to build an executive dashboard where some of the tasks on my sheet will be listed as "milestones" on the dashboard. What is the easiest and most effective way to accomplish this?

 

 

Andrée Starå

Hi,

I answered in your other post, and I added the link here for others searching.

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/risk-flag-1#comment-166321

Have a fantastic week!

Best,

Andrée Starå

Workflow Consultant @ Get Done Consulting