Timelining Multiple Projects

[Jon]

Hi Everyone

First post, relatively new to Airtable but getting in deep! I’m hoping you all can help and that Airtable is the right solution! I work for a company that makes artworks for artists and I’m hoping that Airtable can help organise what we do as it can get quite complex.

What I’m looking for help on is the scheduling of multiple detailed projects. There are all these lovely views - Gantt, Timeline, Calendar - but it seems like you can only view one table in such a view. But what if you need to coordinate multiple projects together? Is that possible in Airtable?

If it helps, the basic workflow is: set out a project timeline ie. durations > apply that to a timeframe ie. dates > look at those dates related to other project timeframes > move things around to avoid overloading, schedule more help for busy periods, etc.

Hoping there’s a solution…

Thanks

Jon

[Bill_French · Accepted solution]

Hi Jon, and welcome to the Airtable community!

Jon:

scheduling of multiple detailed projects

I’m not an expert at all concerning timelines, but I’m almost certain this is possible by simply adding a Group By filter. You can see that the opening video example here shows what appears to be three separate timeline clusters based on a Group By filter in the table. In this example, Status is the clustering field, but I assume it can be any field such as Project Name or Project ID.

[Jon]

Hi Bill

Thanks for your reply. Yes I’ve kind of got to that position already, it just means the table will have a LOT of entries, as our project planning gets quite granular. But I guess that is the solution in Airtable.

If anyone has any other ways of approaching this please let me know.

Jon

[Jon]

If anyone else is wanting to do something similar, the answer is as Bill highlighted above, you just need to have all of your projects in one database. That’s been an intuitive jump for me, coming from spreadsheet land, but makes sense - you can create numerous views to look at exactly what you want, based on the original data set.

For the record, Interfaces were not so helpful here for detailed examination, but could be useful for higher level views.

Thanks Bill!

Jon

[Bill_French]

Jon:

you just need to have all of your projects in one database.

Unifying information has many advantages, but Airtable has the ability to section off projects in different tables or bases and then unify them again in another base. (start here)

I can also think of ways in which projects are managed separately and roll-ups and/or relational points enable the unification for high-level timeline presentations.

[Jon]

Hi Bill

Thanks yes I’ve done quite a lot of syncing already so familiar with that.

I guess you are suggesting I could have multiple projects in different tables, then unify them for viewing. I need to check if I can then manipulate the data, ie. drag the Gantt chart around. Not possible between bases but perhaps would work between tables in a base? I’m hoping that when two-way sync comes out in 2023 it might also work across bases too. Do you have an Enterprise setup and have you been able to experiment with two-way-sync?

Also more importantly, do you know if you can automate or script to create new tables?

Jon