Cannot format Milestones & Summary bars

I'm trying to use conditional formatting to change the color of milestones within the GANTT view. I've created a rule that looks for tasks with zero duration, and has the word Begin or Complete in it, and I'm able to locate the tasks, and format the text, but I'm not able to format the Summary Bars or Milestone indicators. Am I missing something?

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IT & Operations

Conditional Formatting

Gantt View

Comments

Tim Meeks

Found this here. Doesn't appear to be able. Anybody else able to do?

http://help.smartsheet.com/customer/portal/articles/516441

You can use the Conditional Formatting icon in the left toolbar to set up rules that automatically apply colors to Gantt and calendar bars based on criteria.
When dependencies are enabled, the color of parent row Gantt and calendar bars will always be grey and this can’t be changed.

Clifford Musante

Yes, I have read the article that you referred to. In that article, it appears that you should be able to select any conditions, and based on those conditions, you can open the "apply this formatt" selector, and choose what you want to happen to the item selected. The problem is that it simply does not work.

Overall, I've used conditional formatting to change the color of Text, apply bolding, etc. The problem is that if the line that you've selected (through the Set Condition selector) is not a task, but instead is a milestone, or summary bar, the formatting does not work.

Any help?

Travis

Hi all! Currently, there is not a way change the color of a milestone from black. As a workaround, you could change the duration to 1, then change the color of the 1-day Gantt bar.

Clifford Musante

Thanks,

that is unfortunately what I expected to hear. Certainly, numerous documents, help topics and videos all imply that you can change any of the GANTT representations, and there is even a way to select how you want the GANTT portion to be modified. So, it seems like there is either a bug/defect, or a great deal of documentation is incorrect.

It is very helpful to get the facts. So, the fact that we now know that it is not possible to do what I'm trying to do is very helpful. That said, SmartSheet should try to address the question based on what is written in their documentation and videos, so that we can understand whether there is bug which will be fixed, or if this result is due to a decision that the SmartSheet team has made.

Travis

Hi Clifford, I dug through our Help Center articles on Gantt charts and I was not able to see any mention of the ability to change the color of milestone diamond icons. I was only able to find information on changing Gantt bar colors. If you could point out and provide the URL where you saw the incorrect information, I can submit it to our website team.

Thanks!

Clifford Musante

Hi Travis,

Perhaps I was not clear enough. Sorry about that. What I was trying to say is that as you read through all of the information about conditional formatting, there is no mention that you cannot apply conditional formatting to a specific type of GANTT object. Instead, what is written down is how you can use conditional formatting to change the look of a GANTT chart. Further to that end, the formatting selection dropdown allows you to select any type of formatting for the GANTT chart, and it never suggests that this will only apply to tasks, and not to summary bars, or to milestones.

Sorry if I was not clearer.

Travis

Thanks for the clarification! I will submit your suggestions to our content team.

Jennifer Greenough

Hi Travis - have you considered being able to change milestone colors? I'm working on a report to compare a baseline schedule to the current schedule, and it is really hard to differentiate them in the Gantt, particualrly since Smartsheet only allows one type of text associated with the items on the Gantt.

Kurt

+1 It would be very helpful to be able to change the color of milestones and especially summary tasks because Summary tasks and milestones are the tasks that are most commonly used in reports to show progress and status.

Here is an example: I would like to change the colors of the Gantt bars in my Report, but Smartsheet doesn't let you set the bar color within a report, only the underlying sheet/project. But, if the task from the underlying sheet/project is a summary task, then I can't change the color there either. See the problem this presents???

Pat Leonard

I too am having this same issue as the progress bar in the Gant view for parent level items/milestones does not follow the same conditional formatting rules as task level items, and this is not helpful to me when having to report on status of projects at a milestone level. Please address this feature request as soon as possible. Thank you!

Pat Leonard

Note, that as a workaround, I built a report off the original smartsheet that only includes those milestone rows, and that view does update the Gant chart based on the conditional formatting values I originally created in the sheet. So as the status for a milestone changes, it does change in the Gant view of the report. Just offering a possible alternative in absence of this functionality for the project sheet.

Tylast

+1 for milestone colors!

Todd Smelser

+1 for Milestone colors. They should also be included in conditional formatting.