Extracting Milestone Dates to Timelines & Gantts

[Gal_R]

We are looking using a Timeline or perhaps Gantt to assess producer workload at a glance. I have a Gannt and Timeline working at a basic level but need additional detail.

I would like our team to input milestone dates into the base spreadsheet for each project line, to have those milestones show and update in the project blocks in Timeline/Gantt. 

Is there a way to include Milestones from date columns in a spreadsheet?

Thanks

[TheTimeSavingCo]

I don't think so; milestones need to be their own records with a start date and no end date for both the Gantt and Timeline view

You could try to streamline the process I suppose?  Maybe have an automation that looks at that date column, and if it's updated either:
1. Create a new record with that date value and link it to the triggering record
2. Update the linked record with the new date

[Gal_R]

Thanks very much (:

I’m don’t know much about the automation side yet, but that’s a great suggestion and I’m having a play. Do we know that it’s possible?

Also wondering can you create an automation attached to a particular view, or does it have to be attached to a base?

cheers,

[TheTimeSavingCo]

Oh yeah, it's definitely possible 

When "Milestone" gets updated, it looks for a record that has the name "[TASK NAME] Milestone".  If such a record exists, it'll update the "Start" date.  If not, it'll create the record

Link to base

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re: Also wondering can you create an automation attached to a particular view, or does it have to be attached to a base?

For the purposes of our conversation, most of the automation triggers usually ask for a view to look at, yeah

Some automation triggers (such as "when webhook received") are attached to the entire base though

[Gal_R]

Adam, thanks so much for taking the time to share your knowledge. 

I've spent the past 24 hours trying to digest this info and playing with the Timeline. I have that view working as I need to at about 80% now. I've manually created some Milestones in the Timeline they are displaying as I would like, but they are independent of the job, so they don't move when the job moves. 

I've tried creating a new base for the 3-4 Milestones I'd like to link to each job but I still don't fully understand lookup and linking, and I need to make sure that each Milestone can display in my Timeline with a particular name; either Toolkit, Shoot, Material Deadline 1 and Material Deadline 2.

I'm not sure if I should be using the linked records alone or plus automation, but it all does make a little more sense each time I come back to it, so I think I'll be able to work it out with the info you've given me.

I don't expect you to spend too much more time, just letting you know I'm still working on it 🙂

[TheTimeSavingCo]

Glad to have helped!  Hm, I don't think I would create a new base for milestones actually.  I'm not too sure what your use case for that is though, so I can't say for certain whether it's a good or bad idea

Are those milestones static for every job?  If so, you could create formula fields that will calculate each milestone with `DATEADD()`, and then plug those into the automation to create 4 milestone records, named and dated appropriately for you? 

Best of luck with everything!  Let me know if you hit any roadblocks and I'll see what I can do!