Timeline

Analysis of your To Do List is a key factor in focusing your efforts on the items that need to be done now to achieve your goals. The Timeline gives you a Gantt view of your items over a rolling 10 week window. The view shows each item from it's start date to due date displayed as a duration bar across the schedule. Many of our To Do List users use this view as their key project management tool to demonstrate the activities underway across teams and timeframes. While in the Timeline View you can click on any item to update the details and reflect that straight away in a refreshed view.

To access the Timeline View click on the 'Timeline View' image in the Analysis section of the ribbon.

When you click on 'Timeline View' the view is refreshed for the current items in the workbooks To Do Lists. The date used for the view will be the previous date used when the Timeline View was last refreshed. The key functions available on the calendar are shown for the pop-up menu and allow you to change the display, edit items or move to a particular month view. The functions are

Set Date - will pop-up the date picker and lets you set the date in which the Timeline is displayed. The date set here is used as the starting point for the display with 1 week prior and 9 weeks after shown.

Show/Hide Completed - will toggle the display of completed or cancelled items. Completed items are always shown in grey back colour

Next Month > - will refresh the view for the Set Date + 1 month

< Prev Month - will refresh the view for the Set Date - 1 month

Edit To Do Item - will pop-up an edit form for a To Do Item if you have selected a cell in the Timeline View that has the details for a To Do Item. See that in action further down this help article

Current Date - the current date is displayed with a green background for the date

The Timeline View shows details for each item from it's Calculated Start Date until it's Due Date. In the screen show above you can see an item R-10001 for the Health list that is set to start on Friday 19th October, that item has a due date on Monday 22nd October. Each day between the Start Date and Due Date that item is shown on the timeline with a coloured cell for that To Do List's back colour.

Key Note: The colours for your To Do List are used here to help you quickly recognise which To Do List the item comes from and can then use that to navigate back to the To Do List if required. We recommend that your To Do List colours are set to ensure you can distinguish between your lists quickly easily.

Edit Item from Timeline View

The image below will demonstrate the Item Edit that is available from the Timeline View. We perform a basic update to the item description and estimated effort.

Once updated the list is refreshed and then the Timeline View is refreshed, you will see the duration of the activity is extended as the estimate effort is increased the item must be started earlier.

The key parts of the Edit To Do Item form are

To Do List - the item selected will have the To Do List highlighted on the form including it's background colour and font colour

Key Fields for update - only some fields for the Item are shown on the form for update, the description, status, estimated effort, due date, completion date and notes. All updates are validated against the expect data for those fields and then updated to the entry on the To Do List for that item

Warnings are Ignored - when updating the Item any warnings that might be set from the changes (eg a change in due date could result in an overlapping task) are ignored as part of the changes. The warning will be displayed on the To Do List for you to see but the update itself will not be stopped due to that warning.