Creating Project Timeline Visualizations-Not Gantt View

Steve Reed

I am wondering if anyone has experience with creating a high-level project timeline view to put on a dashboard--and I am not talking about a Gantt view. What I am trying to do is avoid my customer from having to continue producing PowerPoint slides manually of the data they are managing in Smartsheet. Ideally, they would like to be able to have a single row per project, and show start/end per project phase on that row, as shown in the example below. I have tried with the Calendar app, but my experience there is limited. Does anyone have any other ideas that I can try?

Thanks,

Steve

Genevieve P.

Hi @Steve Reed

It sounds like creating a high-level Report would potentially give you this view! If each of your projects have a top row on the sheet with an overview (ex. Project Name, Project Start, Project End) then you can pull the top row from all of your project sheets and display this overview in a Dashboard.

See: Reports / SmartStart: Reporting

If this doesn't help, it would be useful to see a screen capture of two of these project sheets (but block out sensitive data).

Cheers,

Genevieve

Steve Reed

@Genevieve P. Thanks for your response, however, your suggestion does not address what my client is looking for. I have already shown them the report with the top line view of the project dates, but what they are looking for is a bit more functionality and flexibility. As displayed in the PowerPoint screenshot in my question (in rows 3 and 4, for example), they want the option to represent more than just the project start and end dates, including phase durations on a single row.

Steve

Genevieve P.

Hi @Steve Reed

What do rows 3 and 4 represent in your screen capture? Do you mean these are milestones or specific tasks within each project that you'd also like to see in the Report?

If your Project Sheets have a helper column that identify all the rows you want in the higher-level overview, you could then Group the Report by the Sheet/Project so you can have both a top level and individual rows from each plan. Would that work?

tc_castmember

@Steve Reed did you ever get a good option for this? I have the same issue right now. Our status audience cannot or do not want to digest the gantt view.