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Gantt charts

The easiest way to plan your project

Written by Ellen Kajca

Gantt charts have been around for a long time - what was missing was the ability to actually use the Gantt chart to execute your project.

With Gantt charts, Hive allows you to plan and execute your project, all in the same tool. Let's take a look.

Create a Project in Gantt View

  • Create a project. See Creating a new project for the steps.

  • Open the project's Gantt tab. If the project doesn't have one, click + next to the view tabs and add a Gantt view.

  • Click + Add an action, type the name, and press Enter. Click on the timeline to give it a start date and deadline, or enter the dates in the Gantt table.

  • In no time, your project plan is all set up!

Create subprojects in Gantt

If your Gantt view shows project rows, you can add a subproject without leaving the view. Under the parent project, select the arrow beside + Add an action, then choose Project. Type a name in the New project row and press Enter. The new subproject appears beneath its parent, and another row opens so you can keep adding.

To add several subprojects, paste a list with one name per line. Press Esc, or press Enter on an empty row, when you are done. The Project option appears only if you have permission to create projects.

New subprojects use your workspace’s default project template, if one is set. They also start with the parent project’s sharing settings and project custom field values.

Updating Gantt View

Once you've created a Gantt view, there are lots of ways to customize it for your needs.

Row order

Gantt lists actions in the order they are saved in the project, the same order as the list. Start and end dates place the bars on the timeline. They do not decide which row is on top. Calendar always places work by date. Table view can sort by the date column without changing this saved order. That is why those views can look chronological while Gantt does not.

To put the earliest start date on top:

  1. Open the project and stay on the Gantt view.

  2. Open the project menu (the three dots in the project header).

  3. Under Gantt view settings, choose Cascade sort.

Cascade sort is a one-time reorder, not a switch that stays on. It reorders the actions under each parent by start date and saves that as the new list order. The list follows that saved order afterward. Dragging a row also changes the saved order.

The same menu also has Show critical path, Use flat row numbers, and Auto-scheduling.

Changing the timeline

Gantt view shows a monthly timeline by default, but you can change it. Click Configure (the sliders icon), and under Display > Scale choose Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Yearly, or Multi-year view.

Click Today in the bottom-right corner of the timeline to jump back to the current date.

Going fullscreen

If you want to make your Gantt view bigger, click the expand icon in the bottom-right corner of the timeline to cover your whole screen.

Changing assignees

Show the Assignee column on the Gantt table (see Settings) and change the assignee there, or open the action card.

Marking complete

Click the check circle next to an action's title, or right-click the action row and choose Mark Complete. The same menu lets you update the status, add dates or priority, duplicate the action, mark it as a milestone, and more.

Hiding subactions

Click the arrow next to a parent action to collapse or expand its subactions. To collapse or expand everything at once, see Expand your Actions.

Add dates

There are different ways to add dates to your actions in Gantt view! You can click on the needed cell on the timeline or use our Gantt Table to select dates from the date picker.

Pro-tip: to easily update multiple actions with a new date, you can simply copy the date cell on Gantt Table and paste it into the needed one.

Add Dependencies

Hover over an action's bar, click the circle at its end, and drag it to the beginning of the next action. The arrow between the bars shows the dependency, and the Predecessor column on the Gantt table lists it too.

Expand your Actions

Use the arrows to expand or collapse each layer of your subactions. Click the arrow at the top of the Project/Action column and choose Expand all or Collapse all.

Wrapping Column Text

Right-click the action row, then choose Wrap column text.

This will make the text wrap around in the column.

Add colors

To make your Gantt more customizable and visually appealing, as well as create better organization, you can change the color of action card bars.

To do that, right-click the action's bar on the timeline and select a color. The color will automatically override any label colors from actions, and apply to all project views and summary views.

Displaying Percentage Completion

If you wish to display the percentage completion of your parent action card by its subactions, click Configure and choose an option under Display > Display percent complete.

You can also set percentage completion manually. Change Display percent complete to Manually Update, then either:

  • Drag the progress handle on the Gantt bar, or

  • Type a value from 0 to 100 in the % complete column on the Gantt table (show that column in the view’s column settings if it is hidden).

Typing in the % complete column works for action rows and project rows when Manual mode is on. In automatic mode (percent driven by subactions), the column stays read-only. On a Dashboard Gantt widget, the Columns picker updates as soon as you switch Display percent complete — you do not need to reload the page to see % complete as an option.

Hide/show elements

Click Configure to filter the view and hide or show elements such as milestones, actions, and sections. The Show dropdown under the Display section will allow you to better visualize independent goals within Gantt. The Display section also has Group by, Bar color mode, and options such as Show week numbers.

Highlight changes

When a date is changed, you'll see Hive highlighting action start/due dates that were changed as well.

This makes it easier for your team — specifically project managers — to run "What if" scenarios in Gantt before taking action.
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The highlight will disappear when you change a new date or leave the project & come back in.

Select multiple actions in Gantt

In Gantt, you can hover over the action row to find the checkbox, which will help bulk-select action cards. A toolbar appears at the bottom of the screen so you can update all selected actions at once.


Another way is holding Shift to select all actions in between!

Manage project rows

Right-click a project row to open or edit the project, make a copy, copy its link, or archive, unarchive, or delete it. Available options depend on your permissions.

To manage several subprojects at once, hover over each subproject row and select its checkbox. When you select two or more projects, use the toolbar to archive or delete them. You can also right-click the selection for those options. Hive asks you to confirm before making bulk changes. Projects and actions cannot be selected together.

Settings

You can also customize your Gantt view and enable or disable different columns based on your needs. Click the columns icon next to Configure and check the columns you want. These include WBS, Description, Status, Start and Due date, Duration, Predecessor, Assignee, Labels, Estimate, Total time tracked, % complete, and Custom Fields.

If you have the Duration column enabled, you can see the total project duration which can be extremely handy. The duration is calculated based on the start date of the first action, the due date of the last action, and the number of working days between those days.

Export

To export, open the project menu (the three dots in the project header) and choose Export. From Gantt view you can export to PDF, PNG, MS Project (.xml), Excel, Excel Chart, and CSV, and adjust export settings such as hiding assignees or the timeline, which action cards to include, and the date range.

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