Gantt is one of the view modes available on Placker, and the most used format of showing the start and end dates of a project's tasks and deliverables.

Also known as "Bar chart", it was made famous by its application on planning work by Henry Gantt, in the beginning of the twentieth century. Since then, the Gantt chart has been developed and information technology made it easier to plan the schedule of complex projects.

With a Gantt chart, you will be able to view the project's end date and answer questions such as "which are the tasks that will be done today?".

This article will give you an overview of the Gantt chart and show you the tools you can apply to make your projects more effective.

Click on the embedded video below to watch our webinar and discover how you can take advantage of it:

There are basically two ways you can open the Gantt view: accessing Placker.com or using a Trello Power-Up.

When you access Placker.com and sign in, you can open a new or existing board. By default, Gantt will be one of the tabs that you can click and see the Gantt Chart.

Another option is to add the Gantt chart by Placker Power-Up to one of your Trello boards. There will be a "Gantt" button in the menu that will take you straight to the Gantt view. If not, it will be under the "Power-Ups" button.

Setting the days when the cards are going to start and finish are great to make clear to your team the schedule of the tasks.

To set this, you can either single-click a card on the left column and use the panel on the right hand side, or double-click the card to open the card overview, then change dates at the sidebar:

If you are using a board linked to Trello or Planner, the dates will be synced automatically, as will other attributes.

The difference between start and end dates is the duration, calculated automatically considering weekends and holidays.

It is possible to adjust this, by double-clicking the board title, and in the board settings click Calendar and set the preferred options.

You can for example set the days of the week and number of hours that your team actually works, and also add holidays or days where there will be no work. This will make the overall task dates and project duration more reliable.

After the planning process, it's also important to keep the status of the cards up to date. This can be set in the card panel or overview, as shown in the plan start and date section.

Also, when the card is set to "Started", this means that there is work in progress, so the actual start date is automatically set, as a timestamp. And likewise, when it's "Completed", there will be an actual end date. You can change the automatic dates in case this doesn't reflect the reality.

In other words, when the status is still "Open", the card is still in the plan stage, which means that there is no actual start and end date.

There are many cases where a task can only start after another has ended. In these cases, there is a dependency between cards.

You can set predecessor and successor relationships for cards as shown in the recording below and in this article.

To be effective in completing your projects on the right time, it is important to not only plan the task dates, but also making sure that all the team members and stakeholders are communicated about the progress.

A great way to share the Gantt chart is to simply send the link of the Gantt view, and they will be able to see it in real time. It's required to have an active Placker subscription and be a board member to open the Gantt.

To share it with external members, another alternative is to export it to PDF, image or other formats. The recording below shows where to click, and there are more details in this article.

Placker allows you to change the structure how cards are grouped so that you can see your project through different points of view.

To see which tasks are assigned to each member instead of the default lists. Clicking "Layout" in the menu will group cards by a different attribute.

Another option to narrow down the analysis when dealing with a big number of cards is to use a filter, which can be used to show only cards that have the urgent label, for example.
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After changing this, if you wish the new layout or filter to be shown every time you open this Gantt view, you can click "Save changes" next to the Gantt tab.

For more adjustments to be made on the Gantt view and fully customize it to your preferences, you can check the menu and explore the options.

Here are some of the things you can do:

By default, there will be only one Gantt tab in a board, but you can create additional Gantt tabs.

For example, having one view with the layout by lists and showing all the cards, and a second view where the layout is by member and filtering only cards that are overdue.

You can even select from template to have the same settings as you have used in a different board.

For this, you can click "Add view" at the top left corner of the screen.

In the same timeline where the card bars are displayed, you can visualize the resource planner at the bottom, which shows how many hours each member is working each day.

This article will show you how to enable and use the resource planner.

Placker provides a complete Gantt view where you can apply tools and adapt to your way of working. Check out every Gantt feature available by looking at the Gantt section in our help center.