Sort Gantt Chart?

[Rose_Haft1]

Hi there -
We are setting up our Gantt chart to have phases, tasks and milestones, but there is not a way to sort so that the phases are on top, or also in the right order.

How do you organize your Gantt views?

[Bill_French]

Rose_Haft1:

How do you organize your Gantt views?

You’re not gonna’ like this - Coda. :winking_face:

Seriously, though, I have not seen a success story using Gantt sorted; everyone who encounters this issue tends to either rebuild the underlying data logically or switch to Vega-Lite which is no bed of roses either.

[Rose_Haft1]

Bill.French:

Seriously, though, I have not seen a success story using Gantt sorted; everyone who encounters this issue tends to either rebuild the underlying data logically or switch to Vega-Lite which is no bed of roses either.

Yeah, Coda has limitations. When will the airtable allow Gantt charts to be sorted? ><

[Bill_French]

Rose_Haft1:

Coda has limitations.

Yes - all product vendors who choose to undertake the challenge of data visualization, paint themselves into a corner that precludes a win. If instead, they would focus on the integration adhesives that make it easier to lean on D3, Vega, Charts.js – they would be able to put a checkmark in the win column in 80% of the cases while giving customers the ability to help themselves in the remaining cesspool of deeply complicated data visualizations that arise.

[Rose_Haft1]

It shouldn’t be too hard to have a sort column option for grouping & then sub tasks.

[Bill_French]

Rose_Haft1:

shouldn’t be too hard to have a sort column option for grouping & then sub tasks.

One would think. But, if it were simple, I would have guessed that by now they would have added such support. Ergo… they designed it in a way that it is not so simple to apply arbitrary reordering.

[wellwisher]

Rose. There is a workaround to do what you would like. In short, you have to use a formula to create a "grouping category" and group your gant chart by that.

This may sound a bit esoteric, so I attached a picture of what I'm doing:

I'm a product manager, so prioritization of Initiatives is key for me.

And having their associated Epics, in priority order, then features and tasks the same, is key as well. 

Problem is, as you found, AirTable only does things by earliest to latest.

In my case, I created a formula field and concatenated the name of the work with a number from a sequential number field.

This forces a "stack rank" order of all items that will be respected when you group by that concatenated "grouping field"

This video goes over it really well (I'm not associated with the dude who made it, lol) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mMbyRY-6E0

I really banged my head against the wall on this one.

You can also add a custom extension that will automatically renumber/stack rank your table and that can be used for your "grouping field". It's called "Save view ordering to field".

I hope this helps!