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Creating Project Milestones Projects in Vtiger CRM Time Tracking using Timelogs

Manage Projects with Gantt Chart

This article will help you ace your project management using Gantt Charts.

R

Rashmi Kashyap

17 Jun, 2024 - Updated 5 months ago

Introduction

Do you want to track your projects’ progress?

Do you want to plan and schedule your tasks to meet the project’s goal?

Use the Gantt chart to simplify the process.

A Gantt chart is a horizontal bar chart used in Project Management to provide a graphical illustration of scheduled tasks and milestones in detail. Gantt Chart helps you to plan, coordinate, and track specific tasks in a Project.

Benefits:

With the help of Gantt charts you can,

Know what’s going on in your projects
Avoid resource overload
Measure the progress of projects
See overlapping activities and task dependencies
Experience more clarity and transparency
Practice better time management
Work with remote team members and motivate them

Feature Availability

	Sales Starter	Sales Professional	Sales Enterprise	One Professional	One Enterprise
Feature Availability
Gantt Chart	-	-	✓	-	✓

Accessing the Gantt View

You can view the Gantt Chart in the Projects module. It is used to manage the projects.

When you click on a record from the Project’s List View, the Summary View of that record opens. You will find the Gantt View tab on the right side of the Summary View.

On clicking the Gantt View tab, the Gantt View window opens and displays the Task details. The Task details displayed are based on the Start date of the task.

Hence you can see the Start date, End date, and Duration values in the column form.

Note:

You can see tasks in the Gantt chart only if they have a valid start date and due date.
You can see the milestones in the Gantt chart only if the tasks displayed are linked to milestones.

Follow these steps to access the Gantt chart:

Log in to your CRM account.
Click the Main Menu icon.
Go to the Projects tab.
Click the Projects module.
Select the project of your choice in the List View.
Click the Gantt View button on the right side of the Summary View.

The Gantt chart of the project pops up. You will see a table of tasks and milestones along with the user it is assigned to. A milestone, along with the tasks related to it, altogether appear like a bunch. There can be multiple bunches of tasks and milestones in a single Gantt chart.

Did you know?

By default, only the current month’s tasks and milestones are displayed.
The task colors are based on the status color defined in the Picklist Field Values configuration. If colors are not defined, then random colors are picked.

Changing the View

Did you know that you can change the Gantt view according to your likes? Yes, in Vtiger CRM, you have many options to change the view and look at how the project is progressing towards its goal. Let us find out about these options one by one.

Filter the time range

The default time range is the current month, but you can change the time range according to your wish by applying filters.

Follow these steps to apply filters to the time range:

Click the time range displayed on the top right corner of the page.
Select a time range from the list.
Click Apply.

The data is automatically filtered and loaded based on the start date of a task in the defined time range.

Note: You can also enter a custom range by specifying the ‘From’ and ‘To’ dates.

Zoom the chart

You can change the Gantt Chart view by clicking on the Zoom options available above the table.

You can choose between 1 week, 3 weeks, 1 month, 6 months, 9 months, Year to Date(YTD), 1 year, and All. These options get highlighted depending on the data availability in the project. If the project has only one week of data, then the rest of the options will be disabled.

Note: If you don’t want to see the tasks or milestones that are completed, then enable the Hide closed records toggle button.

Change the date

You can change the start date and end date of the task by dragging the tasks’ ends in the left or right direction.

For the loaded data, from and to fields in the filter are set with minimum and maximum of task start dates. We can always customize the date range between the existing minimum and maximum start dates by dragging the date block below the table.

Actions Possible in the Gantt Chart

Along with viewing your projects’ details and progress, you can also do other actions in the Gantt chart. You can add tasks, or milestones, print the Gantt chart, etc.

Adding a Task

Did you suddenly plan a task while viewing the chart? You can create the task and assign it to your team with just a click. All you have to do is click the +Add Task button on the top of the view, enter the necessary information, and click Save.

Wasn’t that simple?

Editing a Task

You have the option to edit a task from the Gantt Chart View. Clicking on the Edit icon for a record opens the edit screen, which displays the quick-create fields for that record.

Adding a Milestone

You can also create a project milestone from the Gantt chart. Click the +Add Project Milestone button on the top of the view, enter the necessary details, and click Save.

Bingo! You created a milestone in a matter of a few minutes.

Other actions

Besides adding tasks and milestones from the Gantt chart, you can do the following by clicking the Hamburger icon:

Print chart
Download PNG image
Download JPEG image
Download PDF document
Download SVG vector image