Create a timeline view

The way you choose to view your gathered data depends on the level of clarity you need. Workfront Planning provides various ways to visualize data, including a timeline format known as the Timeline view.

A timeline view offers several advantages. It provides a clear visual representation of events over time, highlighting the sequence and duration of activities along with important dates. This creates contextual understanding by showing relationships between events and are crucial for strategic work management and business goal alignment. Timeline views are also more engaging and easier to interpret at a glance, which is beneficial for presentations and reporting to teams and/or executives. So, let’s create a timeline view and make adjustments to it where needed. To create a record type timeline view, click on the desired record type.

In the views area of the record. click “+ View”. You may also see a plus sign if your browsing window is condensed.

From the new view window that appears, give the view you’re creating a name.

Then select the timeline from the available options. If the timeline option is grayed out, it’s because the record type must have at least two date fields to be created.

Click next. From here, you need to select what start and end date fields to use for the timeline. You may see several options available here.

If you’ve connected record types to each other, you’ll see those options available.

Otherwise, you’ll only see start date and end date as your options.

Once selected, click create and the page will refresh to show the timeline view.

The timeline view defaults to show all the records for the year, allowing you to see everything planned at a glance.

From here, if you’re looking for a specific record, you can use the search option to find it. Simply enter a key word or phrase from the record.

To bring it up. Otherwise, you can adjust the default view to meet your needs. For instance, executives seek a comprehensive, high level perspective that the default timeline view offers. It enables them to develop more informed and efficient strategies to achieve overall business objectives. And although the high level view is helpful, individual teams and contributors usually concentrate on short term goals that drive those higher objectives towards the desired outcome.

So let’s look at ways the timeline view can be customized to suit your audience’s needs. By clicking the Time Frame dropdown menu. You can narrow down the time frame to more clearly identify where specific projects, work orders, or requests overlap.

In addition, you can filter the records that appear. For example, the social media marketing team would like to see the campaigns that are going to be geared towards a specific set of audiences.

Using the filter option in the timeline view, select from the list of fields provided.

Next, choose the filter modifier to specify the condition the field must satisfy. The list that appears here depends on the field selected. For instance, if start date was selected, the list of modifiers looks like this. But if target audience is selected, the list of modifiers looks like this.

Finally, select the value that ultimately filters your view.

The view does this in real time so you can see what results appear. If necessary, you can add multiple conditions to your filter to further refine your view and focus on exactly what you want to see.

Now, if you still want to see all the records listed but organized by specific criteria, you can use the grouping option to achieve this. For example, the brand marketing team wants to see records focused on specific products in the next two quarters.

By selecting products in the grouping option, they can see all the records listed for each product in the desired time frame.

Now, whether you use the search option, filters and/or groupings, there are some additional settings to think about when looking at records in a view. Those settings can be found by clicking the settings icon.

From here you can do several things. First, you can adjust the selected start and end dates. If the records you are looking for are not appearing in the timeline as expected.

You also have the ability to update what information appears in the timeline record bar. For instance, although you can click on the Timeline Record bar to gain further insight. It may be nice to have some of that information automatically appear in the view. Through the bar style option, you can add fields to the records that appear in the timeline view.

Keep in mind that the information appears within the bar itself, and may be truncated.

Therefore, carefully decide which information should be visible at a glance. The final setting involves choosing the timeline bar color.

While this may seem trivial, it can provide valuable insight at a glance. For instance, if you want to know the status of each record in the timeline view, you can click on the record to find that information, along with other details. Alternatively, you could add this information through the bar style setting, but it may be truncated if additional details are included.

So instead, why not, through the color setting, use the status field to determine the bar color. This way you get a quick visual cue without taking up extra space or needing to click into the record. Timeline views offer a powerful and flexible way to visualize and manage data. Providing clarity and context for strategic decision making. By customizing these views, you can address the specific needs of your team, whether focusing on high level objectives for executives or short term goals for individual teams. This makes Timeline Views an essential tool for enhancing collaboration, improving reporting, and aligning work with business goals.