Long-term project planning with the Gantt chart
For project work that spans weeks or months, the Gantt chart gives you the full picture: tasks, durations, dependencies, milestones. Assign resources here and the appointments appear on the planning board for day-to-day execution.
Before you start
Two facts shape everything else in this recipe.
Projects are created in the back office. Dime.Scheduler plans them; it does not create them. If there is no project to load, that is a back-office task, not a Gantt one.
Nothing you do in the Gantt is committed until you sync. Every edit is local. That is the point of the chart: it is a sandbox where a project manager can try ideas, undo them, and only push a plan that holds together.
1. Load the project
Two routes into the Gantt chart:
- The load-project icon on the Gantt itself, which opens a window listing every available project.
- The Open project item on the context menu of a project task in the open tasks, planned tasks, or route sequence grids.
Be aware that loading is not always limited to what you picked. When there are cross-project dependencies, Dime.Scheduler loads the entire graph, including projects you did not select.
2. Reshape the plan
Draw a dependency by dragging from one task's anchor to another's. A tooltip validates the link as you drag. Double-click the line to set its type (start-to-finish, finish-to-start, finish-to-finish, start-to-start) and its lag in days.
Constraints are the other half. Where dependencies wire tasks to each other, a constraint pins one task to a date: must start on, must finish on, start no earlier or later than, finish no earlier or later than. If a later edit would break one, the chart offers three ways out: cancel the change, drop the constraint, or move the task to satisfy it.
Editing a group cascades to everything beneath it. Push a phase out two weeks and every leaf task moves, and sibling dependencies fire too. That cascade is the feature and the hazard in equal measure, so make top-level moves deliberately.
Watch the sync icon: it turns red the moment anything changes. Undo and redo work on local changes, and reload throws them all away.
3. Use the lenses while you work
Several toggles exist to cut through a dense project:
- Critical path shows the chain that pushes the end date if anything in it slips. A long red line means tight slack everywhere, so it doubles as a risk readout.
- Progress draws a line per task against today: right of today is ahead, left is behind.
- Baseline shows the original plan frozen at sync time, underneath the current bars. This is the only reliable answer to "how far have we drifted?"
- Task groups shades the work breakdown so phases are obvious.
- Rollup controls whether subtask detail aggregates into the summary bar, project-wide from the toolbar or per task in the editor.
4. Assign resources
The Resources tab on the task editor is where the plan meets real people. Pick resources and set each one's percentage of involvement: 100% is full-time, 20% is one day a week.
5. Sync, and let appointments materialize
On sync, Dime.Scheduler reads those assignments and creates appointments on the planning board automatically.
The conversion takes two inputs, and understanding it prevents most surprises: the task's dates set the appointment boundaries, and the calendars (project plus resource) decide which hours inside those boundaries are actually working time. A task that nominally runs Monday to Friday becomes appointments only on the days and hours that resource actually works. The project stays an abstract plan; the board stays concrete.
Generated appointments carry an anchor icon so planners can tell them from manually scheduled work.
6. Know who wins when both sides edit
Planners can still nudge generated appointments on the board. Those edits are flagged back on the task assignment with a warning icon and a grid listing every change, so the project manager can see what happened.
The project manager has the last word: the next sync can override the planner's local edits, behind a confirmation prompt so the override is never accidental.
Worth telling both sides about up front. A planner who does not know this will lose an adjustment and assume it is a bug.
Verify
After syncing, check the planning board and confirm the appointments landed on the days you expected. If a task produced fewer appointments than its span suggests, that is the calendar doing its job, not an error.
Related
- Ad-hoc service planning for work with no project structure.
- The PDF export button renders the chart for meetings and email.