Milestones centered on the day

Rightnow the milestones are represented by a diamond in between two days.

(not actually centered, but no doubt it's a milestone on a friday).

Is there a way to choose how the diamond milestone is placed? It would be a great enhancement to be able to choose in the settings how milestones are placed.

Almost every other Gantt tool I've come across are placing the milestones on the day and not in between two days. In my oppinion this is a big design flaw of Smartsheet.

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Tim Meeks

Anders,

I did a quick check in MS Project and it puts the milestone at the start of the day.

PMI.org defines a milestone as "Milestone. A significant point or event in a project, program, or portfolio."

I've never noticed this before, but to me the milestone would be at day's end since it's a zero hour duration that must occur that day.

Maybe it could be added as a feature in settings.....

Tim

Jeff Smith

I would say it would be the end of the day. If you put it in the middle of the day there might be some who would say is it at 12:00 that day or 1:00?

Travis

Tim - you are correct!

Milestones have a 0 day duration so it will be aligned with the start of the day. This ensures tasks that are dependent on it will start at the beginning of the day rather than halfway through.

You could add a half day lag to get the milestone icon to the middle of the day but keep in mind, tasks dependent on it will start halfway through the day (noon), rather than the start of the day (8am).

I did a quick search and it appears MS Project handles milestone placement, the same way we do - in line with the start of the day.

Tim Meeks

Travis,

Thanks for clarifying. It's good to know Smartsheet is consistent with MS Project.

That's a good point on the milestone being at the start of the day....especially for tasks that are dependent on starting (Start/Start) in reference to the milestone.

Tim

J. Craig Williams

Sorry guys, but what you said is not quite true for Smartsheet.

0 duration tasks (milestones), occur at 0 elapsed time after the predecessor.

If you link the MS to a task that ends at the end of the day, so does the MS.

I determine the start and end times by using DATEONLY

=[Start] - DATEONLY[Start] strips out the date and leaves the time.

Row 3, no pred, starts & ends at time 0 (8am for all work-hours-per day less than 16 hours)

Row 4, task based on MS, starts at 8am and ends at noon.

Row 5, MS based on Row 4, starts and ends at noon.

Row 6, task based on MS, starts at 1pm, ends at 5pm.

Note: There is ALWAYS a 1 hour break for lunch between noon and 1 for all work-hour days of 4 to 16 hours per day.

The start and end time for MS's with predecessors is always based on the predecessor end time (assuming SF type)

Craig

J. Craig Williams

"Danger" is my middle name.

I've been spent a lot of time trying to understand the way Smartsheet deals with time.

Every once is a while, it throws me a curve but otherwise, I think I've got it.

Craig

Tim Meeks

so Craig.. first of all you are awfully brave to tell Travis he's not 100% right....

But in this case, you may be correct....

In Smartsheet I did a milestone at the beginning of a task (predessesor) and at the end (successor) and the milestone was at the beginning when it preceeded the task and at the end of the day when it followed the task. At least from a "visual" gantt display.

milestone 1.JPG

Travis

Craig Danger is correct!

I said milestones start at the beginning of the day which is true if they are standalone row (no predecessors) but as Craig mentioned, they will adhere to predecessor start/end times (like your example when the predecessor ended halfway through a working day).

Anders Bøgh

This is purely a design/interface issue. It doesn't matter if the Milestone is at 0:01, 12:00, 15:00 or 23:59 during the day.

A Milestone is a deadline/event which falls on a given day, and as you say it's a 0 hour event. So it doesn't stretch from 12:00-15:30, it's not a calendar event. What it is, is an important Milestone and it needs to be VERY CLEAR which day it falls on.

This is a frontend fix, and the backend doesn't need to be altered (for dependencies you probably need to have it at a specific time during the day, and that's fine). As all your screenshots show, a dependent task below stil needs the arrow to go back to catch the start of the task, it's a few pixels more i'm asking the arrow to strech :-)

I can see why you want the default look to be like MS Project, but as i stated in my first post most other Gantt tools choose to show the diamond centered on the day. So why not make it an option/setting the users can choose from? It's a simple frontend fix (and user-setting implementation) ...

J. Craig Williams

Anders,

To be clear, only Travis is an employee of Smartsheet.

Personally, I don't use Gantt charts very much. I create them and give them to the cusotmer and then manage the project from the dates and numbers.

While there are things I miss about MS Project, I am not wedded to any particular toolset. And I'm opposed to "that's the way it used to be" as an argument against change.

I agree with you that your second image in the original post is missing some arrows.

I've seen that behavior too and would prefer it fixed.

From a PM perspective, I believe Smartsheet is closer to right than some of the others in this instance. If i finish everything needed to declare victory/deliverable/milestone at 4:59pm on Thursday, then that is what the Milestone is declared. Not at noon on Thursday or Friday. So visually, in my opinion, showing it at 4:59pm more correct than putting it anywhere else.