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Gantt Chart

What is the Gantt Chart used for?

While the gantt chart looks a bit like the calendar's grid view, they are really for different things, and the gantt chart is best at looking at the activities over the course of a project. If you don't have project records in your file, you likely don't need the gantt chart.

On the grid view, each row is a resource in the calendar, so you can have may activities associated with that one resource: this makes the grid view great when you're looking for gaps in your schedule.

Rows on the gantt chart, in contrast, each represent an event, so you'll never see more than one thing happening in a row of the gantt chart.

A few other things to note...

The gantt chart can show any range of dates (any range 2 weeks or longer) while the grid view can show any 2 week range, or events within a single day when it is set to show hours or minutes (the gantt view will not show hours, only days).
You can filter the gantt chart as you can the calendar, to show just items for a single resource or a single project.
The chart's default sort is by project, but you can also sort by date. Sort buttons are just above the column of event names.

Can I delete the Gantt Chart view if I don't need it?

Absolutely. The gantt chart is just a tab on the calendar: enter layout mode, double click the tab control and delete the gantt tab. Just be sure to do that on the "Calendar - no Side Bar" layout also.

When do items show up on the gantt chart?

When you first arrive at the gantt chart, it will show you all the events which match the active filters occurring in the two weeks starting from the focus date of the calendar. Once you're on the chart, you can select any range of dates you'd like using the default date ranges at the bottom of the screen, or the "custom" range button which lets you type in your own dates.

If some of the events on a project occur before the left hand side of the chart, we'll preface the project or phase name with "..."

Tips & Tricks

Shift-Drag to change duration. If you hold down the shift key when dragging the start or end of an event, you can change the duration of the event. (this works in other calendar views as well).
Show just a single project's events by selecting that project on the calendar's filters tab. You can also show just one project by visiting that project's layout (SampleProjects) and clicking "view on gantt chart". This is a button you'll likely want to add to your project's layout.
Chained Items. Items with a little chain beside then are tied together within the project so that changes to the dates of one linked item cascade through to change the dates of downstream items on the project.
Quickly jump to a project. by clicking on any event for that project and clicking the green arrow pointing to the project's name (this also works in other views of the calendar).
Printing. Printing the gantt chart is limited to what you can see on screen. If you need more sophisticated printing options we may be able to build something for you as a custom modification, so please get in touch.

Adding fields to the Gantt Chart layout.

You can add fields to the left side of the gantt chart (the white column before the gantt bars) and even make that area wider if you'd like to allow for more fields. How you do this differs depending on which version of the calendar you have.

Calendar Versions prior to v7

The fields on the left side of the gantt chart (the ones on a white background) are simply fields from the CalendarEvents table and you can add any calendar event fields here you'd like. You can also add fields from any of the TOs related to SampleEvents:

SampleProjects
SamplePhases
SampleContacts

You'll want to copy and paste one of the fields already there--ideally a field from the same table occurrence you're hoping to add a field from--as the fields already there are conditionally formatted to only show on the right rows. This formatting prevents the project name, for example, for displaying on top of the event name for every event on the project.

Calendar Versions > 7

In order to get access to the fields in your events table you'll need to make a new relationship. On the relationships tab of manage database, create a new instance of your events table named something like "SampleEventsDirect" (append "Direct" to the name of the table occurrence you're using for events). Link this to CalendarRows as shown below:

  

Once that relationship is in place you can add any fields from "SampleEventsDirect" to a row on the gantt chart: this works in both the regular gantt chart and the one in WebDirect.

You can also add fields from table occurrences you'd like to related to "SampleEventsDirect".

When adding fields to the gantt chart be sure to apply a "hide objects when" calc so the new field only shows up on rows that are events. That hide calc is:

CalendarRows::CalendarSourceReptCalc ≠ "Event"

Adding rows to the Gantt Chart layout.

You may want to increase the size of the gantt chart by showing more rows, or maybe you'd like to add a scroll bar to it. In this case you can adjust the number of rows that can be displayed at the beginning of the script "Load Calendar Settings - Each Redraw" by changing the value of the variable $$sc_GanttRows

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