Align a plan to the project dates

All plansProject owner or manager

You set the project’s dates, but the tasks sit somewhere else on the Gantt, and pressing Recalculate leaves most of them where they were. That is the scheduler respecting the dates you typed. This page shows how to hand the dates over to the scheduler, so the whole plan follows the project start and moves with it from then on.

How the scheduler places a task

Three rules decide where a task lands.

The project start is the anchor. The schedule is counted from the project’s Start date. A task with no predecessors and no dates of its own starts on the project start.
A task with no predecessors and a typed start date is yours. Automatic scheduling and Recalculate now never move it. The scheduler keeps the date you typed, because nothing in the plan tells it the task should be anywhere else.
A linked task follows its predecessors. Once a task has a predecessor, the scheduler places it after that task (with any lag), and moves it again whenever the predecessor moves.

So a plan where every task has typed dates and no links is a list of fixed dates. Recalculate has nothing to recalculate, and changing the project start moves none of it. Link the tasks and the plan becomes a chain that hangs from the project start.

Align the plan

Set the project start. Open the project, choose Edit project and set Start date to the day the work begins.
Anchor the first task. Give the first task the project’s start date, or clear its start and due dates so the scheduler starts it on the project start. A task with no dates at all is scheduled from the project start the next time the schedule is calculated.
Link the rest. Give every other task a predecessor: type it into the Predecessors column on the Gantt (for example 3 or 3FS+2d), or drag from one bar to the next. A task that should start with the project and waits on nothing can keep the project start as its date instead. See Link task dependencies.
Let the scheduler place them. On the Gantt, the Schedule menu reads Auto while automatic scheduling is on, and every edit reschedules the tasks that follow it. If it reads Manual, choose Schedule > Recalculate now, or switch automatic scheduling back on. Either way the linked tasks move to follow the chain.

Recalculating, and switching automatic scheduling on or off, takes an org admin, the project owner or a project manager.

Parents and subtasks

A parent task whose dates come From subtasks spans its children: it starts with the earliest subtask and finishes with the latest, and its dates cannot be typed. Link the subtasks, and the parent follows them. A parent set to Set by hand keeps its own dates. See Dates from subtasks.

The project end date is a target

The project’s end date does not hold the plan back. If the linked tasks need longer, the plan finishes after it, and the scheduler does not squeeze the tasks to fit.

To see whether the plan overruns the date you promised, put a deadline on the last milestone: open the task and set Hard Deadline. On the Gantt the deadline is drawn on that task’s row, green while the finish is on or before it and red once the finish is past it, and the bar’s hover card says the task “finishes after it”. The deadline moves nothing; it tells you when the plan no longer fits. See Deadlines are a promise, not a constraint.

Troubleshooting

A task did not move after Recalculate. It has no predecessors and a typed start date. Link it to the task it waits on, or clear its dates.

A task starts before the project start. It was typed with that date and has no predecessors, so the scheduler keeps it. Change its start date, or link it.

Tasks have no bars. A task with no start or due date is not drawn. The Gantt shows how many tasks have no dates; press Recalculate to schedule them from the project start, or add the dates in the task list.

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