More Gantt Timeline Display Options (+customizable headers)

Due to limited screen space, I find the available Timeline Display options either far too dense to be useful, or too expansive.

I propose:

more Zoom settings. my issue is really that the zoom settings correspond to the heading incremements. my usability issue would be mostly resolved with more zoom level granularity.
more week and month heading options. E.g. "D" for December"
more Secondary Heading increment options, to be able to align to Scrum/Agile sprints. E.g. 2wk, 3wk periods, etc.

Thanks in advance for consideration,

Joe

Sign in to vote!

Find more posts tagged with

Dashboards

functionality

On Wishlist

Gantt View

Project Management

Update Requests

Comments

Mher89

In settings -> timeline display -> Heading, I would like to see an option for third heading. Our company represents multiple known retail brands like Nike and Hugo boss and it would be a really good feature for our projects to have a 3 header options. I would put first as month year and then week number followed by day of the week in number. It would be great if you could add this feature. Thanks.

Alvarj3

100% agree with you Joe.

I love the Gantt view, and it's powerful to see how things are connected and driven by each other fast. Obvious when you consider that humans aggregate visual content 60,000 times faster than text, and 90 percent of information transmitted to the brain is visual!!!

The great thing about Asana and MS Project is the ability to titrate the zoom for the best resolution. My Gantt is either super condensed or expanded too far to be helpful.

@Smartsheets - Please implement some better zoom control 🙏

ScottZT

For years I've suffered with the ridiculously coarse and uneven zoom levels in Smartsheet's Gannt charts. No more, I'm now raising my hand to say it's 2023 and we should have far more granularity in zoom levels on a Gannt chart view!

Ideally a zoom slider tool (like, for example in MS Word and Excel) rather than fixed increments. Twice the number of levels would be good, but really it should be at minimum 3-4x the levels of granularity than what exists today, if a zoom slider cannot be developed.

Let me express it in terms of how much time (schedule time in the Gannt chart) fits in 2" of screen width (the 2" is arbitrary and not what's important):

Fully zoomed out, I see about 18 months - i.e. 1.5 years - shown/labeled as quarters (Q1, Q2, etc)
1st level zoom in: about 6.5 months (roughly 2.8x zoom from above 0 level zoom)
2nd level zoom in: about 1 month (roughly 6.5x zoom from above 1st level zoom)
3rd level (max) zoom in: 10 days (roughly 3x zoom from above 2nd level zoom)

Sorry, but that doesn't cut it -- the jump between 1st and 2nd level is massive (6.5x) and inconsistent with the other zoom levels. That's where the huge problem lies - every time I go from 1st to 2nd level zoom, it's jolting, frustrating, enormously dissatisfying, and therefore it's a tremendous disruption to my work flow! Is this how you want customers to feel using Smartsheet?!

Thank you for prioritizing this change, which should not be a terribly difficult one to make.

kck

The ability to add headers to the Gantt Chart and Calendar View to represent a grouping of dates (i.e. Sprints, Quarters, Fiscal Year, School Year).

Bmullan

It would be incredibly beneficial if the Gantt chart functionality could be expanded to allow for more headings, fiscal year, etc. There is a need for a dedicated timeline feature within Smartsheet. Currently, to create detailed timelines, many of us have to rely on external tools, such as Microsoft Timeline. This is not efficient and typically does not produce a quality output without a lot of effort.

Most leaders do not want to look at the details of a Smartsheet. Having an integrated timeline function would enable us to share the big picture of our projects and communicate timelines clearly with all stakeholders.

These enhancements would significantly elevate the user experience, improve efficiency, and keep Smartsheet competitive in the rapidly evolving field of project management tools.

rossgsolphi

The zoom in/out feature in Gantt view is far too clunky. Add granularity to the zoom increments to allow Gantt charts to be easier to read and able to be sized to the window size.

spauliszyn

Yes, the one-size-fits-all does not work with us as well.

Levitch

It would be useful to have a function to include multiple Secondary Headings in Project Settings -- Gannt Timescale Settings.

Currently you can only choose one secondary heading which shows either day of week or date, but it would be much easier to read the schedule if we are able to display both 'day of week' and 'date' simultaneously under the Primary Heading.

JUST PJM

I fully agree with your request and my complete project management team is asking for this feature that would Smartsheet make just smarter. Please implement!

JUST PJM

Fully agree. Please implement.

Schnautz

Now that we can add sub-second durations, please allow a zoom level that can view such durations. I need to visualize processes that are on the order of milliseconds.

Kyle.Baker

Agree 1000% - we share a full-width-of-page project timeline in our dashboards.

Minimally, need a "step" between Zoom Level 1 and Zoom Level 2… which would show approx. 12 months in the width (green screengrab mock-up). Preferably, would have much more control as @ScottZT suggests. Thanks!

** please ignore the ugly blue background in the cells which carried over from our initial Control Center template and I haven't taken time to cleanup yet.

Ed McClung

This one issue keeps us from using Smartsheet to communicate a portfolio timeline to executives outside the project structure. Because the primary/secondary zoom level options are either Quarter / Month (in which case a month takes up something like 1/2" of screen/print width) or Month / Week (making a month maybe 2-1/2" wide), we have to take our project data out of SmartSheet and do some manual work in Excel or PowerPoint etc, just to show a reasonably readable 6 month timeline on screen.

J. Michael Brown

Add my name to the list of people wanting a more granular Zoom capability to the normal Gantt view (and Timeline view)

Andy Silber

You're more patient than I am. After using SmartSheet Gantt function for one day I was trying to figure out how to make a feature request, because this is unacceptable. Other than that, I've been pretty impressed with SmartSheet Gantt. It's better than I expected. But I wouldn't recommend it until this is fixed.

Quick Links

Trending ideas

Attachments in Cells
I rely heavily on Smartsheet’s Document Generation. However, this workflow is currently dependent on having photos stored inside cells, since row attachments alone cannot be used directly in document generation.. If Smartsheet allowed attachments to be displayed as thumbnails in cells (as a reference), document generation…
Resource Management Plan Settings in Control Center - add Client and Project Code fields
In the Resource Management Plan Settings in Control Center, there is no way to link the Client and Project Code fields even though they are not Custom fields and part of the first 3 fields you enter when creating a new project. I can't select them in the Custom Resource Management Information Fields because they are not…
WorkApp Analytics
I’d like to see user analytics for WorkApps. I’ve checked the user report available in the Collaborator Pack, but it only shows how many times someone has clicked into the WorkApp each month. I’d like to know: Which resources (dashboards, sheets, forms, etc.) are getting the most traffic? Where are people spending their…