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Creating an automated timeline?

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Dasha_Romanowsk
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

Hi all :slightly_smiling_face:

I’m relatively new to Airtable (and formulas in general), and I was wondering if it’d be possible to create an automated timeline for a project based on the duration of workdays in between each project step.

To go further in depth, I’m hoping to input a single start date and the amount of workdays each step will take, and have the due dates and following dependent start dates be calculated automatically based on the data from the initial start date and duration of workdays that I’ve manually inputted.

Thanks in advance!

1 Reply 1

Easy answer: Yes.

More involved answer: See this.

If all you want to do is to be able to input some dates and numbers and have Airtable output a series of dates, that’s relatively easy — for a hardcoded algorithm that spits out the results within the same record. If you’re looking for a way to input a start date and have the application return a sequence of records, with each record representing a task with a start date, duration, and end date, you need something like my scheduling framework. Or if you’re looking for a way to do so for a number of different task groupings — for instance, one with 5 dependent tasks and another with 8 — you need something like my scheduling framework.

Note I say “something like my scheduling framework”; while the framework will do what you need, you might be able to get by with a stripped down or more tightly focused set of functions. If that’s the case, feel free to make a copy of that base and rip out everything you don’t need. :winking_face:

(I should mention there is a detailed users guide for the framework available as a PDF in the [Documentation] table of that base, which can be read by exploring the base on Airtable Universe. My original announcement of the framework, which includes screenshots and a more detailed description, can be found here.)