Project Timelines

A Project's Timeline tracks progress against a set of milestones defined by a Timeline Template. A Project can have at most one timeline at a time.

Applying a Timeline to a Project

The Project's timeline is applied from the Project settings page (the Timelines tab). Users with the Project-level Manage Project permission can:

  • Select a Timeline Template from the URL to apply — the Project receives its own copy of the template's milestones.

  • Switch to a different template — the existing milestones are deleted and replaced with the new template's milestones.

  • Clear the template — the Project's timeline is removed.

Changes to the source template after a Project has applied it do not affect the Project. Each Project keeps the milestones it had at application time.

Working with the Timeline tab

Once a timeline has been applied, the Timelines tab on the Project home page shows the list of milestones and their status. Users with the Project-level Manage Timelines permission can:

  • Set the Project Start Date. The Start Date is used together with each milestone's Target Days offset to compute target dates.

  • Recalculate target dates — when the Start Date is changed a "Recalculate target dates" button appears. Checking it recomputes each milestone's target date as start date + target days.

  • Set each milestone's Status, Target Date and Completion Date. For manual milestones all three are directly editable. For auto-derived milestones the Status is computed from Label data and is not directly editable (see below).

Users without the Manage Timelines permission see the timeline read-only: dates render formatted according to the user's profile Date Display and Date Format preferences.

Every status / date / Start Date change is recorded on the Project's activities log so timeline edits are auditable.

Auto-derived milestones

Auto-derived milestones compute their completion from Labels applied to objects within the Project's tracked Drafts. The template defines:

  • The Drafts label — only Drafts carrying this Label on the Project contribute to the milestone. This lets you exclude archived or experimental Drafts from timeline tracking without removing them from the Project.

  • The Object type the milestone watches, and the Completion Label that marks an object as complete for this milestone.

An auto-derived milestone is Complete when every active object of the configured type across all tracked Drafts has the Completion Label. It is In Progress when some but not all do, and Not Started when none do. The milestone's progress column shows a labeled / total count so the team can see at a glance how close the milestone is.

Auto-derived milestones are recomputed each time someone opens the Timelines tab — there is no need to click anything to refresh the view.

Permissions summary

  • Manage Project — apply, switch or clear the Timeline Template (on the Project settings page).

  • Manage Timelines — edit Start Date, milestone dates and milestone status on the Timelines tab.

  • Without either permission a user sees the Timelines tab read-only.

See Timeline Templates for the URL-level configuration that drives Project timelines.