Creating Timeline for a project

[EAdams]

Hello -

Our project managers create a timeline for their projects in Excel to give to the team. It's what they have done for a long time and is easy and quick to them. We have project templates that they use for each project, but those are almost too detailed for what they need for this timeline. I'm curious if anyone has ever put in a project for timeline purposes and also had the active project in as well? Seems redundant in some sense, but we'd like for them to keep the timeline in Workfront. 

I would create a view for them so it's easy for them to export it and make the changes when needed. I attached two screenshots. One is the timeline from Excel and one is from what I created in Workfront. The dates don't match since the timeline was created a while ago. To me it seems like it should work just fine, but not sure if we are overthinking it and thinking it will be harder in Workfront than Excel. Holidays are already built in because of the schedules we have attached to each user along with skipping weekends.

A few things I can see being a pain are:
- We'd have a project in as a timeline and one in as the active project. 

- They'd have to switch views when looking at the timeline and then looking at the project.

- They might need to adjust predecessors a bit more to hit the dates they need to hit.

Are we overthinking this? Crazy to want a timeline AND a project? Any tips?

Thanks!!

[skyehansen]

I'm really not sure what you're thinking here.

Ideally the way things would work in Workfront is that you have a combined list of tasks in 1 project, that runs like this:

Workfront task

Workfront task

Timeline task

Workfront task

Workfront task

Workfront task

Timeline task

Workfront task

Workfront task

Timeline task

Timeline task

Then build a filter for your PMs that filters out the non-relevant tasks so they can just download the timeline tasks. Other customers normally achieve this using the "milestones" functionality or simply a task custom form.

Would this be possible or are the timeline tasks so separate from the workfront project tasks that there's no overlap? I'm just not sure I understand.

[EAdams]

Thanks for your thoughts on this! Everyone is doing something different as I learned that some are using Workfront. I'm not exactly sure what they are doing, but I'll explore these ideas and see what will work for us. 

[ChloeWY]

I second @skyehansen 's idea for using Milestones.

Our PMs create and manage the timelines in Workfront.

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Hi @EAdams,

Excellent questions, and I have many thoughts!

The main one that jumped to mind is that next month, we'll be publicly releasing our new Lite-Brite solution, which lets you control project plans and resourcing with Lite-Brite cells that show the Planned and/or Projected timing of Official Baselines and/or Current Workplans.

Lite-Brite has been used in production for over two years now and exports beautifully to Excel for "conversational purposes" (which was the most recent feature we added). I've attached the glossy below, and (once it goes live) the catalog listing has images, videos, and more details ready to go.

If you'd like more information (or -- what the heck -- even the catalog password so you can sneak a peek), you're welcome to email me at doug.denhoed@atappstore.com.

Regards,

Doug