Tasks Gantt Chart Basics – Kantata Knowledge Base

Overview

The Tasks Gantt chart provides a high-level overview of your tasks for all active projects on your account. This helps you manage timelines and/or conflicts and share cross-project information for your users and other participants.

With the Tasks Gantt, you can:

Quickly assess how many tasks are in every project.
Check the overall health of your tasks across all projects.
Expose potential task/project pitfalls.
View all subtasks by expanding task hierarchies.

tasks

To access the Tasks Gantt, hover over Tasks in the left navigation and select Tasks Gantt.

The Tasks Gantt offers several options to help you configure the view to best fit your preferences. To get started, click Filters at the top of the page to filter down which project tasks you want to see in the Tasks list.

Note: The Tasks Gantt can only display 1,000 tasks at a time. If your projects have a cumulative total of more than 1,000 tasks, you will be prompted to filter down the amount of tasks before the Task list can load.

The Tasks Gantt chart is separated into two sections, with the Tasks list on the left and the Schedule on the right.

When you hover over the vertical line that separates the two sections, you’ll see two gray arrows appear. If you click the left-facing arrow, the left side minimizes and the right side expands, displaying a more complete view of the Schedule. Alternatively, if you click the right-facing arrow, the right side minimizes and the Tasks list expands.

Note: There are some project-specific actions you aren’t able to perform in the Tasks Gantt that you can perform in the Local Gantt chart. This is due to the fact that every task from every project is combined into one list in the Tasks Gantt. For example, you aren’t able to create a new task from the Tasks Gantt chart because the application wouldn’t know which project to assign the new task to. If you need to create a new task or dependency from a Gantt chart, you can learn how in the Local Gantt Chart Overview article.

Tasks List

Some of the columns in the Tasks list are initially hidden due to the number of columns. You can adjust the vertical line that divides the list from the schedule to see additional columns, or scroll back and forth in the list using your cursor.

Most of the information in the Tasks list can be added or edited by double-clicking on the field or value you want to add or change.

You can also reorder tasks in the list by clicking and dragging them up or down.

When you click the Equals filter button in a cell, the Tasks list narrows down to items that have a value equal to that specific cell. For example, if you want to filter your Tasks list down to all tasks that are 50% complete, right-click a cell that is 50 % Done and then select Equals (“ ”).

If you have any Project and/or Task custom fields, the Tasks Gantt creates a column(s) to display that data.

Click the arrow to the left of a task name to expand or collapse any subtasks.

Tasks Gantt Schedule

The Schedule provides a graphical overview of each task so you can quickly evaluate the health of your various tasks. You can also adjust task dates by simply clicking and dragging.

The colored bars on the Schedule represent the timeline for each corresponding task in the list.

Green—Deadlines are being met; everything is healthy.
Red—The task has not been started or completed before the deadline.
Dark Green—The task has been completed.

The filled-in portion of a bar shows the completion percentage of the task. Hover over a task bar to see the scheduled Start and End dates, the total task Duration, and the percentage of the task that is Complete.

To adjust a task duration (number of days in the task), hover over one end of the task bar until the Resize (“ ”) cursor appears, and then click and drag the task to a new Start or End date.

To move a task on the timeline without changing the duration, hover over the bar until your mouse pointer turns into the Move (“ ”) cursor. From here, you can click and drag the entire bar to a new position.

Known Issue

When a parent task has subtasks with dependencies, shifting the parent’s predecessor will cause the subtasks to be realigned to all start on the same day. The dependency of the subtasks will not be respected.

To avoid this issue, connect the predecessor task to the first subtask instead of the parent task. Then when you shift the predecessor, the dependency will be respected, and the parent task will automatically recalculate based on the dates of the subtasks.

You can also double click the task bar to open the Information modal. From here, you can make more detailed changes under the General, Predecessors, Successors, Resources and Advanced tabs, or add a description by clicking the Notes icon. Add Notes.png

Gantt Chart Timeline Header

The timeline header above the Tasks Gantt chart has various actions available to optimize your Gantt view and experience.

Starting on the left side of the header, you can search for a specific task by typing the task Name in the Search tasks field on the left side of the timeline header.

Regardless of where you are on the timeline, you can click Default View at any time to return to the original view.

To expand or collapse all task hierarchies to view all subtasks in the list, click the Collapse All and Expand All buttons above the Tasks list.

On the right side of the timeline header, you can select Week, Month, or Year to move in or out on the timeline.

To see all your tasks at once, click the Zoom to Fit icon (“ ”).

Lastly, if you would like to export the Tasks Gantt chart as a Microsoft Excel (XLS), PDF, or HTML document, click the Export drop-down and select an option.

Note: If you are exporting to a PDF file, you can only export 200 tasks at a time. If your project contains more than 200 tasks, it's recommended that you export the chart data to an HTML file.

Column Actions

Reorder Columns

You can reorder a column by clicking on the column header and dragging it to a new position.

You can also sort information in ascending or descending order by clicking on the column header or the small, gray arrow that appears to the right of the column name. Alternatively, you can right-click on the header and select Sort Ascending or Sort Descending from the corresponding drop-down menu. The small, gray arrow indicates which direction it's currently sorted.

If you want to apply a secondary sort, you can use the Multi-Sort option in the Local Gantt Chart. For example, if you sorted by Task Type but you also want to list those items in ascending order by their Name, right-click the Name column, hover over Multi sort, and then select Add ascending sorter.

To remove a multi sorter, right-click the column, hover over Multi sort and then select Remove sorter.

Configure Columns

The columns in the Tasks Gantt list contain information relevant to your project tasks, including Project, Group, Primary Group, WBS, Name, Type, Start, Finish, Duration, Priority, Status, % Done, Assigned Resources, Estimated Hours, Budget, Logged Time, Tags, Predecessor, Successors, and any Project or Task custom fields.

If you want to hide or show columns, right-click the header, hover over Columns, and then check or clear the corresponding boxes.

Column Filters

Each column has a Filter option that allows you to filter the items that display in the column row. To do this, click the Filter icon (“ ”) to the right of the column name, and a filter option will appear.

The type of filter option will vary depending on which column you are filtering. For example, if you’re filtering the Task Type column, you can select Task, Deliverable, Milestone, or Issue from a drop-down menu.

When you want to remove a filter, right-click the column header, and select Remove Filter from the drop-down.