The Job Timeline is the best way to see the bigger picture of a job. This article will guide you through all of the Timeline's handy features, including how to add and change dates for items and set milestones for key project events.
🗺️ Access the Job Timeline
To access the Job Timeline, just click "Timeline" from the job screen.
Down the left you can see all your Items and Phases within the Job.
Up in the left corner, you can see the navigation tools. Use the plus and minus to zoom in and out, the arrows to navigate the timeline and the calendar to head to a specific date.
✴️ Adding Milestones
Our client has given us four milestones for this project. In this case, the milestones are when the client wants us to send them our progress.
Our client has put our first milestone as the 5th of May. When we hover over Friday the 5th in the header, we can see the milestone tooltip appear. Hit the "Create Milestone" link to create our milestone.
Now, we can name our milestone.
🔮 Planning The Job
Now that are our Milestones are set, it's time to start planning out the Job.
Our client has provided the following note for the first milestone:
"Completion of research on the Falls Festival brand and aesthetic"
"Presentation and approval of initial concepts for the custom Snapchat filter."
"Research" and "Develop concepts" are the ones we need, so let's paint in the time we plan to work on these Items.
Remember, you can extend or decrease an item using the grab bars. This will help us make sure we have enough time for each task and stay on track to meet our milestones.
Now, let's plot the rest of the project and zoom out to view our timeline.
🧩 Dependencies
Get your bits and bobs sorted and link them up to create date dependencies - this will help you plan your timelines, and shift them when things inevitably change.
Streamtime supports two kinds of dependencies. Fixed (also called lead/lag) and Minimum (also called float)
⚓️ Fixed
When an event needs to start an exact number of days before or after its parent start or end date.
⛵️Minimum
When an event needs to start at least a number of days before or after its predecessor starts or finishes. This is used when the break between events doesn’t need to be exact. If you move an event with a float dependency, its linked event won’t move along with it until it hits the minimum number of days.
You’ll see that the fixed dependencies appear in a darker grey, whereas minimum dependencies are a lighter grey.
👷🏽 Setting up dependencies
Hover over an event bar on either the festival timeline or the schedule. You'll see the grab handles appear on either side, as well as a white circle on each end of the bar.
Click and drag the white circle of the event you'd like to connect with another, and hover over the event to connect it with. The first event you select will be the parent of the dependency, and the second will be the child.
The line will snap to either the start or the end of the child event. You'll see a line connecting the two events. The arrow denotes the way in which the dependency is structured, and which event is dependant on the other.
You can create four types of links:
Start to Start. Parent event must start before Child event starts.
Start to End. Parent event must start before Child event ends.
End to Start. Parent event must end before Child event starts.
End to End. Parent event must end before Child event ends.
Hover over the dependency row, and a handy tooltip detailing exactly what is dependant on what will appear.
💡 Tip: Power up your planning by setting up dates and dependencies. When you duplicate a template, those dates can be copied over and set to start on whatever date you like.
🔧 Troubleshooting
If your dependency line shows red, that means there's a conflict (you've drawn a dependency that isn't currently working). We don't automatically make assumptions about how to resolve the conflict for you, we'll just call it out to tell you so you can fix it the way you want to.
However, when you start changing dates of an event with a conflicted dependency, we then take that to mean that the event you're editing is the one you want to dictate the relationship - and we'll resolve that conflict for you then
📤 Export Your Timeline
To make things even smoother, it might be handy to share this timeline with your client or print it off and stick it up in the office.
That's why we made it easy to export your timeline. Simply hover over "Create" and click "Timeline PDF." 📄💻
And just like that, you can select either a summary or a full timeline to share with your clients or colleagues.
Summary
Timeline
⏬️ TL;DR
Streamtime's Job Timeline is a project management tool that helps you plan your project in a visual format, set milestones, and create dependencies between job items. You can access it by clicking "Timeline" from the job screen and export your timeline to share it with clients or colleagues.