Plan on the Gantt chart

The Gantt chart is where schedule problems become visible: a dependency you forgot creates a hanger, a Christmas-week deadline shows the whole team booked off, the critical path makes it obvious which task slipping a day costs you a week on the project end. List views show you what; the Gantt shows you when, and most schedule-related arguments resolve in two minutes once everyone is looking at the same timeline.

Read the chart

• Bars are tasks, positioned by start and due date and colored by status.
• Arrows are dependencies between tasks, so you can trace what is waiting on what.
• Diamonds are milestones, rendered as zero-duration markers on their date.
• Zoom runs from day-level detail out to a whole-year overview.
• The today line marks today. On a page left open overnight, it moves on at midnight.
• The hover card: point at a bar to read its details. A task with a deadline shows a Deadline line, and when the task’s finish is past it, the line adds “finishes after it”. See Deadlines are a promise, not a constraint.
• Indentation in the task list carries the hierarchy: a subtask sits under its parent behind an expand chevron. Parent and subtask bars look the same on the timeline, so the shape of the plan is read from the list on the left rather than from the bars.

Find your way around the toolbar

Two rows sit above the chart. The first is about what you are looking at; the second edits, narrows and runs things on the plan.

The title row carries the chart’s name and its help link, then a line such as “24 tasks · 3 without dates are not drawn · Add dates”. A task needs both dates to be drawn, and Add dates opens the List view, where those tasks can be dated. At the end of the row are the views menu, the timescale, the zoom pair, Today (which scrolls the chart to today) and the full screen icon.

The toolbar row, from the start:

• Add Task, with an arrow beside it for New Subtask, then the Undo, Redo, Outdent and Indent icons and one Expand all or Collapse all icon.
• Find a task, Filter and the View menu.
• At the far end, the Schedule, AI and Share menus.

The menus hold everything that is not needed every minute:

Menu	What is in it
View	Columns, Display and Baseline, each opening beside the menu when you point at it, and Hide completed tasks
Schedule	Automatic scheduling, Recalculate now, Level resources and Restore a schedule. The button itself reads Auto or Manual, so you can see the switch without opening it
AI	Suggest schedule, Explain critical path (which opens the Critical path summary above the chart, see Focus the view) and Ask AI
Share	Share a read-only link and Export chart

A menu shows only what you can use. The Schedule menu appears for people who can change the schedule or restore it, Share a read-only link for people who can manage the project’s members, and Export chart everywhere except on a phone. Open in Onplana Schedule shows in a browser on a Mac or a Windows computer.

A dot on View means something in it is changing the chart, such as hidden columns, the critical path highlight or hidden completed tasks. Under the toolbar, a row of chips names every filter that is on, the sort and Completed tasks hidden, each with an x to take it off, beside “N of M tasks shown” and Clear filters.

From the keyboard, Enter, Space or ↓ opens a menu, the arrow keys move through it, → opens a flyout such as Columns, and Esc closes one level at a time, so one press does not take you out of full screen by accident.

Where the buttons went (15 October 2026)

The toolbar used to be five rows of buttons. Nothing was removed; the rarer controls moved into the menus. Hide done is now View > Hide completed tasks, Columns and Display are under View, and the Baseline button is View > Baseline. Automatic scheduling, Recalculate, Level Resources and Restore schedule… are in Schedule. Suggest schedule, Explain critical path (the button that sat above the chart) and Ask AI are in AI. The Critical Path checkbox under Display is now Highlight critical path. Share and Export chart are in Share, and Open in Onplana Schedule is its own button after it.

Change the layout

Everything below is a per-person view setting on your own screen. None of it changes the plan, and none of it is visible to anyone else, so there is nothing to undo after experimenting.

• Timescale: Day, Week, Month or Year, in the title row. The chart opens at the scale your project reads best at, measured from its earliest start to its latest due date: Day for a span up to about six weeks, Week up to eight months, Month up to three years, and Year beyond that. A project with nothing scheduled opens at Week. Pick a scale yourself and your choice holds for that project.
• Zoom: the minus and plus pair beside the timescale stretches or compresses the timeline without changing the timescale. Point at either half to see the current column width. Useful when a Month view is nearly right but will not fit the screen.
• Subtasks are always shown, nested under their parent behind an expand chevron in the Name column. Collapse a parent to put a branch out of the way; the collapse survives a change of timescale. The Expand all icon in the toolbar opens every parent at once, and becomes Collapse all once they are all open. To open the plan to a set depth, see Show the plan at an outline level.
• Hide completed tasks, in View: drops completed tasks so the remaining plan is readable. While it is on, a Completed tasks hidden chip sits under the toolbar; its x shows them again.
• Full screen: the icon at the end of the title row hands the whole window to the chart, which is the one to reach for in a review meeting. Esc leaves it.

View > Display carries Highlight critical path and Float Labels, and View > Baseline the baseline overlay. Those change what the chart emphasizes rather than how it is drawn, so they are covered under Focus the view below, and Filter has its own section, Filter the chart.

The task list on the left has controls of its own:

• Sort: click a column heading to sort by it, click again for descending, and a third time to go back to the plan’s own order. Status sorts from To Do to Done and Priority from Low to Critical, rather than alphabetically. Subtasks sort among their siblings and stay under their parent. While the list is sorted, rows cannot be dragged to a new position. The sort shows as a chip under the toolbar, such as “Sorted by Status, ascending”, and its x brings the plan’s order back.
• Filter a column: select the funnel in its heading. Name, Assignee and Constraint filter on text they contain, Status and Priority on one or more values you tick, From and To on a date range, and Days, Hours and Progress on a number range. A match keeps its parent rows for context. The Status and Priority headings and the Filter panel are the same filter, so a status ticked in one shows in the other.
• Show or hide columns: View > Columns. Name is always shown, and the timeline gains the space a hidden column gave up. From, To and Days show until you hide them. The rest start hidden: turn them on there. See Optional columns below.
• Column width: drag the divider at the right of a column heading. View > Columns > Reset column widths puts them back.
• Days is derived from the two dates rather than typed, so it always agrees with them.

Column widths, hidden columns, and the choices in the Filter panel (including the Status and Priority heading filters and the custom field filters) are remembered per project in your own browser. To keep several setups and switch between them, save them as views. A sort, and a text, date or number filter typed into a column heading, last until you leave the chart.

Show the plan at an outline level

View > Outline opens the plan to a set depth, the summary a management schedule shows. It is offered once the plan has subtasks.

• Level 1 shows the top-level tasks only.
• Level 2 and Level 3 open that many levels.
• All levels opens every parent.
• As the plan opens goes back to the default, which opens as many levels as fit.

While a level is set, its entry in View reads, for example, Outline: Level 1. Choosing a level replaces the parents you opened or closed by hand, and you can still open or close any parent afterwards. The level is kept in saved views.

Optional columns

View > Columns lists every column the task list can show. These start hidden:

Column	What it shows
ID	The row’s place in the plan’s outline, counted from 1. Sorting or filtering does not renumber it, so you can quote it in a meeting. Indenting a task or adding one does, as the ID does in Microsoft Project.
Predecessors	The task’s links by row ID, such as “3FS+2d, 5SS”. Type into it to change them; see Type links into the Predecessors column.
Assignee, Status, Priority, Progress	The task’s own fields.
Hours	The task’s estimate. Type into it to change it. A parent task shows the hours rolled up from its subtasks instead.
Constraint	The task’s scheduling constraint, such as “Must Start On: Oct 3, 2026”. Read only; see See and set constraints across the plan.
Optimistic, Pessimistic	The task’s three-point estimate range, in working days, such as 3d. You set them in the task form; see Give tasks a range.
Start variance, Finish variance	How many calendar days the task’s start or finish has moved since the baseline, such as +2d.
Work variance	How many hours the task’s Hours estimate has changed since the baseline, such as +4h.

The ID, estimate and variance columns are read only.

How the variance columns read. They compare the task with the baseline that View > Baseline shows, or with the newest baseline when none is picked there, whether or not the overlay is on. While a variance column is shown, the Columns flyout names that baseline: “Variance is against the baseline” and its name. A positive number is later or more work, in red; a negative one is earlier or less, in green. A task the baseline does not hold has an empty cell. With no baseline at all, the flyout says “Set a baseline to fill the variance columns.” See Capture and compare baselines.

Reschedule by dragging

1. Open a project, open the Tasks tab under the project header, and select Gantt.

2. Drag a bar left or right to move the task, or drag its edge to change its duration. The task’s dates update as soon as you release.

3. Drag any empty area of the chart to pan around the timeline without hunting for scrollbars.

A parent task that takes its dates from its subtasks cannot be dragged: its bar follows its subtasks, and the chart says to change a subtask’s dates, or to set the parent’s dates by hand in the task form. A parent set by hand keeps its own dates, and its hover card says where its subtasks run. See Dates from subtasks.

Turn automatic scheduling off

By default, changing a task’s dates, its duration or its links moves the tasks that depend on it. When you would rather place every date yourself, turn Automatic scheduling off for the project. It works like turning off “Calculate project after each edit” in Microsoft Project.

1. Open the project’s Gantt.

2. Open the Schedule menu, which reads Auto, and switch Automatic scheduling off. The menu button then reads Manual. You can also change it under Edit project > More.

While it is off:

• Editing a date, dragging a bar, or adding or removing a link changes that task only. The tasks after it stay where they are.
• Schedule > Recalculate now still works. It moves every task to match its links and the working calendar, as it always does.
• A notice above the Gantt, the list and the grid says the switch is off, so a task that did not move is not mistaken for a problem.
• Links, durations and constraints are kept, and still show on the chart.

Turning it back on reschedules the whole project, not just one chain, so a task you dated by hand can move too. Onplana asks first, naming how many tasks will move and listing them with their current and new dates, and reschedules them only when you confirm. If nothing needs to move, it turns on straight away.

The switch belongs to the project, so everyone on the project sees the same setting. Changing it takes the same access as Recalculate: an org admin, the project owner, or a project manager.

The setting is not saved into an exported file, and it does not travel to Onplana Schedule on your computer. A project with automatic scheduling off, exported and opened in Onplana Schedule, opens with it on: dates there move with their links, so the first date, duration or link you change reschedules the tasks that follow it. If the dates you placed by hand need to stay exactly where they are, make those edits here in the web app, where the switch applies.

Started tasks and late links

Once a task has started, Onplana by default holds it from its actual start: its links stop moving it, and its remaining work runs on from where it is. Some plans need the other rule, the one Microsoft Project calls “split in-progress tasks” and Primavera P6 calls retained logic: a late predecessor still pushes the work a started task has left.

The project setting Started tasks keep their links (retained logic) chooses between the two. It is off by default, so no existing plan moves, and it belongs to the project, not to your account.

1. Open the project and choose Edit project > More.

2. Switch Started tasks keep their links (retained logic) on or off. It sits beside Parent task dates.

3. Onplana asks whether to Recalculate now. The change applies the next time the schedule is calculated, so choose Recalculate now to see it straight away, or Later to keep the dates until then.

When it is on, a started task keeps its actual start, and the work it has left waits for its predecessors. A late predecessor pushes that remaining work, and everything after it, later. When it is off, a started task holds its dates from its actual start whatever its predecessors do.

Changing it takes the same access as Recalculate: an org admin, the project owner, or a project manager. If you do not see the setting, your workspace does not offer it yet.

Onplana Schedule has the same setting on its Plan menu, and an update from Onplana Schedule carries it to the project. See Started tasks and late links in Onplana Schedule.

Add, reorder, and edit tasks on the chart

You can manage the plan without leaving the Gantt:

• Add a task: type a name into the Add a task row under the chart and press Enter (see Type tasks into the Add a task row). The Add Task button in the toolbar opens the full New Task form, and the arrow beside it offers New Subtask, which asks you to pick the parent first. On a row, the branch button (Add subtask) adds a subtask called “New subtask” under that task, with the parent’s dates, ready to rename. A task needs a start and a due date to appear as a bar.
• Reorder rows: drag the grip handle at the left of a task’s name to move it up or down among its siblings. A toast with an Undo button appears after every reorder, so a mis-drop is one click to reverse. Rows reorder within their own level only; to move a task under a different parent, indent or outdent it (below), or open the task and change its parent there. Reordering is off while the list is sorted by a column heading.
• Indent and outdent: select a row and press Alt+Shift+→ to make it the last subtask of the task above it, or Alt+Shift+← to move it up one level, to sit just after its old parent. Ctrl+] and Ctrl+[ do the same (Cmd on a Mac, where Alt+Shift+Arrow selects words instead). The Indent and Outdent buttons in the toolbar do it too, and so does each row’s … menu (More actions), which appears when you point at the row. Several selected rows move together and keep their order; choosing Indent or Outdent from the menu of a row that is part of the selection moves the whole selection. Like reordering, it needs permission to edit the project and is off while the list is sorted.
• Work on several rows at once: Ctrl-click (Cmd-click on a Mac) adds a row to the selection or takes it out, Shift-click selects the rows in between, and Shift+↓ or Shift+↑ extends the selection from the keyboard. With two or more selected, the toolbar shows Change…, which sets the same fields on all of them in one go, and a delete button; Delete on the keyboard deletes the selection too, after asking first. See Change several tasks at once for what Change… can set and what it skips.
• Undo: the Undo button in the toolbar, or Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z), reverses the latest change made on the chart: a moved bar, a moved, indented or outdented row, a name, date or hours typed into the grid, a task added from the Add a task row, a delete, or a Change… batch. The button is named by the step it will undo, such as “Undo date change”, so hover over it to see what it will undo, and press it again to go further back. Undo writes the earlier values back to the plan, so it also replaces a colleague’s later change to the same field. Inside a text box, Ctrl+Z undoes your typing instead.
• Redo: the Redo button beside Undo, or Ctrl+Y or Ctrl+Shift+Z (Shift+Cmd+Z or Cmd+Y on a Mac), makes again the step you just undid. It is named the same way, such as “Redo date change”, and reads “Nothing to redo” when there is none.
• Edit in the grid: the Name, From and To cells are editable in place. One click puts the caret in the cell, so renaming a task or nudging a date is the same gesture as in a spreadsheet. Days recalculates from the dates and is not typed directly.
• Link two tasks: drag from the round handle on the edge of one bar onto another bar. The arrow is saved as a real dependency, and the ends you join set the type, so a drag from a bar’s finish to another bar’s start is finish-to-start. Removing a link on the chart removes the dependency too.
• Open the full task form: double-click a row. Status, assignee, priority, progress, description, subtasks and comments all live there. Open task in the row’s … menu opens it too. Clicking a bar opens the what-if preview instead.

Type tasks into the Add a task row

Under the chart sits a blank Add a task row, the same idea as the empty row at the bottom of Microsoft Project. It is there for anyone who can create tasks in the project, once the chart has at least one bar to show; on an empty chart, use Add Task in the toolbar.

1. Click into Add a task and type a name.

2. Press Enter. The task is added at the bottom of the plan, at the same level as the last task, so a list typed under a phase stays in that phase. It takes that last task’s start and due dates (today, if that task has none), so it appears as a bar straight away.

3. Type the next name. The caret stays in the row, and tasks are added in the order you typed them, even when you type faster than they save.

A few details:

• The new task is selected and scrolled into view. Adding clears the search box, and if a column filter or another filter still hides the new task, a message says “Task added. A filter is hiding it.”
• Each task you add this way is one step of Undo, which sends it to the recycle bin.
• Esc clears what you have typed. With nothing typed, Esc is left alone, so it still leaves full screen.
• A name can be up to 200 characters.

Keyboard shortcuts

The Gantt takes the same keys as Onplana Schedule and Microsoft Project. The full list is one click away: Keyboard shortcuts in the line of hints under the chart.

Press	To
Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z)	Undo
Ctrl+Y or Ctrl+Shift+Z (Shift+Cmd+Z or Cmd+Y)	Redo
Ctrl+F (Cmd+F)	Find a task, in the chart’s search box
Insert	Add a task: the caret goes to the Add a task row. Not on a Mac, whose keyboard has no Insert key
Delete (Fn+Delete on a Mac)	Delete the selected tasks. It asks first, and the delete keeps its Undo
Alt+Shift+→ or Ctrl+] (Cmd+])	Indent
Alt+Shift+← or Ctrl+[ (Cmd+[)	Outdent
Shift+F2	Open the selected task’s form
Ctrl+P (Cmd+P)	Open the PDF export dialog
F9	Reschedule now, the same as Schedule > Recalculate now
F11 (Ctrl+Cmd+F on a Mac)	Full screen

The keys work on the chart, not while you are typing in a field, which keeps its own keys. F9 needs the same access as Recalculate now; without it, the chart says “You cannot reschedule this project.”

Filter the chart

Filter in the toolbar opens a panel under it. Pick as many choices as you need; a task must match every choice you set, and within one choice, any of the values you picked.

Choice	Keeps
Status	Tasks in any of the statuses you pick
Priority	Tasks at any of the priorities you pick
Assignee	Tasks assigned to any of the people you pick. Unassigned finds tasks with nobody on them
Tags	Tasks carrying any of the tags you pick. No tag finds untagged tasks
Epic	Tasks in any of the epics you pick, or No epic
Sprint	Tasks in any of the sprints you pick, or No sprint. Shown only on a project that has sprints
Starts or finishes between	Tasks whose start or finish falls between the two dates. Leave one date empty to set only a start or an end
Milestones only	Milestones
Critical path only	Tasks on the critical path. It can be ticked once the schedule has loaded
Overdue only	Tasks due before today that are not Done
Assigned to me	Your own tasks
Custom fields	Tasks whose custom field values match. Select Add filter, choose the field, the operator and the value, and select Add. The operators are the Grid view’s, per field type, such as is checked for a checkbox. Shown only on a project with custom fields

Assignee and Tags list only the people and tags the project’s tasks carry, so each one matches something, and Epic lists the project’s epics. A choice with nothing to offer is left out of the panel. Custom fields need the Pro plan or above; see Create custom fields.

What to expect once a filter is on:

• A match keeps its parents. A matching subtask keeps its parent rows in view, so you can see where in the plan it sits. Only the matches are counted.
• You can see that the chart is narrowed. The Filter button shows how many filters are on, column heading filters included. Under the toolbar, each filter is a chip with an x, beside “N of M tasks shown”. The panel shows the same count.
• Clear filters removes them all, the column heading filters included.
• The Status and Priority headings are the same filter. A status ticked in the panel lights the funnel on the Status heading, and clearing it in either place clears it in both.
• Your choices are kept per project in your own browser, so the chart opens filtered the same way next time.
• A filter changes what you see, never the schedule. Dragging, Recalculate now and every other edit work on the whole plan, so a task hidden by a filter still moves when something it depends on moves.
• A share link shows the whole plan, whatever filters you have on when you make it.

Save views of the chart

A detailed schedule and a management summary are the same plan with a different filter, depth, time scale and columns. A saved view keeps one such set under a name, so you switch between them in one click.

A view keeps:

• the Filter panel’s choices, custom field filters included;
• the outline level (see Show the plan at an outline level);
• the time scale and the zoom;
• which columns are hidden;
• Hide completed tasks.

1. Set the chart up the way you want it: filters, outline level, time scale and columns.

2. Open the views menu in the title row, beside the time scale. It reads Default view until you pick a view.

3. Under Save current filters, type a name in View name… and select Save.

To switch, open the menu and pick a view, or Default view to clear the filters, the outline level and Hide completed tasks while keeping your time scale and columns. A dot on the menu button means the chart no longer matches the selected view (“Filters differ from the selected view”). On each view in the menu:

• the pencil (Rename view) renames it;
• the star (Load this view by default) opens the chart on that view; select it again to unset it;
• the bin (Delete view) deletes it straight away.

Views are your own: nobody else sees them. They belong to one project, because a view’s filters name that project’s fields, people, tags, epics and sprints. A view saved before a column existed opens with that column hidden.

Example: a management view and a detailed view. On a project with a “Phase” custom field:

1. Choose View > Outline > Level 1, pick Month, open Filter and add a Custom fields filter on “Phase”, such as the phases your sponsors follow. Save it as “Management”.

2. Choose View > Outline > All levels, pick Week, select Clear filters, and save it as “Detailed”.

3. Star “Management” if that is the one you open most.

Focus the view

• Find a task: type in the toolbar’s search box to narrow the task list by name. A matching subtask keeps its parent rows for context, so you can still see where in the plan the match sits.

• Critical path: View > Display > Highlight critical path draws the chain of tasks that directly determines the project end date in red, with a Critical path key under the chart. Anything on the critical path that slips, slips the project.

• Critical path summary: AI > Explain critical path asks the AI to name the bottleneck and what finishing it early would do to the end date. Opening a Gantt spends no AI; nothing is asked until you click. The answer appears above the chart as the Critical path summary, folded to one line: its name and the first sentence, cut to the width (on a phone, the name only).

  • The chevron at the end of the line unfolds the whole summary, and folds it again. Whether it is open is remembered for each project in your browser, so a project you unfolded opens unfolded next time. Full screen folds it, without forgetting your choice.
  • Unfolded, Highlight on chart turns on Highlight critical path when it is off.
  • The x hides the summary. It leaves the red bars as they are, and Explain critical path brings the summary back.

  The summary uses a small amount of your AI credit. The answer is shared with everyone on the project for five minutes, so a second click, yours or a teammate’s, costs nothing. When the AI is unavailable, a plain summary worked out from the schedule is shown, marked (deterministic, AI offline). A plan with no critical path, because every task is done or the open tasks still need dates and links, gets a line saying so instead.

• Float labels: View > Display > Float Labels writes each task’s slack onto the chart, so you can see which bars have room to move and which have none. A task with zero float is on the critical path by definition.

• Task path: View > Display > Task path, then select a task. Every task that leads to it and every task that follows from it is marked, with a coloured ring around its bar and a stripe at the start of its row, so the bar keeps its own colour. The line of hints under the chart names the four colours:

  • Driving predecessor (dark orange): the chain of links that sets the selected task’s start.
  • Predecessor (light orange): the other tasks before it.
  • Driven successor (dark teal): the chain of tasks whose start the selected task sets, link by link.
  • Successor (light teal): the other tasks after it.

  Until you select a task, the hints read “Task path: select a task”, and for a task with no links, “Task path: this task has no linked tasks”. A parent task has no path of its own, because its dates are its subtasks’; select a task inside it. It is the same idea as Task Path in Microsoft Project.

• Baseline: View > Baseline compares the plan with a saved snapshot. Tick Show baseline changes and pick the baseline. Each task that has moved since then gets a chip beside its name, such as +3d for a task starting three days later than the baseline planned, and a Baseline finish line marks the date the baseline was due to finish. On a project with no baseline, the flyout says No baseline yet and offers Capture baseline now to the project’s owner and managers. See Capture and compare baselines.

• Schedule quality flags: a small flag at the end of a task’s name marks a task that the schedule quality checks find fault with, such as no predecessor or successor, a lead, a hard constraint, negative float, a long duration or a missed date. A number beside the flag counts the findings, and pointing at it lists each one in words. The flags are worked out again after each edit, so fixing a link clears its flag. View > Display > Hide flags turns them off for that project in your browser. A project with nothing linked shows no flags, because every task would carry one; the Display menu says “This is a task list, not a schedule” instead.

Tip

Turn on the critical path before a replanning session. Effort spent compressing tasks that are not on the critical path does not move the end date; the highlight keeps the discussion on the tasks that do.

Try a change before you make it

What if… shows what a slip would do before you commit to it: which tasks move, whether the project finish moves, and who ends up with more work than hours. Nothing is saved until you choose Apply.

1. Open a task row’s … menu (More actions) and choose What if…, or click the task’s bar. A panel titled “What if:” and the task’s name opens beside the chart.

2. Choose the change. For a task: Slip by working days (a negative number pulls it in), New start or New finish. For a milestone: Slip by working days or New date.

3. Select Preview. Ghost bars on the chart show where each task would sit, and the panel lists:

   • What moves: every task that would move, with its start and finish now and after.
   • The project finish: “The project finish holds at” a date, or “Project finish:” the old date to the new one.
   • Becomes overallocated: each person the change would overload, with the week and their hours against their capacity.

4. Select Apply to make the change, or Discard (or press Esc) to close the panel with nothing written.

A few details:

• The preview is what Apply does. It is worked out by the same scheduling a saved edit runs, including work already in progress, so the list of what moves is the list Apply moves.
• Apply changes one task. It saves that task’s new dates with a constraint at the new date: Start No Earlier Than for a slip or a new start, Finish No Earlier Than for a new finish, or a Must Start On or Must Finish On moved to the new date. That keeps a later Recalculate now from pulling it back. The tasks it pushes follow through the normal scheduling.
• Undo takes it back. An applied what-if is one step on the chart’s Undo, labelled “Undo what-if”.
• Summary tasks are not offered. A parent’s dates follow its subtasks, so try the change on a task inside it.
• Anyone who can see the project can preview. Applying needs permission to edit that task; without it, the panel says you can preview the change but not apply it.

See why the finish date moved

When an edit on the Gantt moves the project’s finish date, the note that confirms the edit says so in plain words: the old finish, the new one, and how many working days lie between. Select Why to read the rest:

• which task’s change moved it, and what changed on that task;
• the Driving chain, the tasks in order that carried the change to the finish.

The note stays open until you close it, and it keeps the edit’s Undo. It appears only when the finish actually moved, and only with automatic scheduling on, since with it off no other task moves. An agent that edits a task through the Onplana connector gets the same explanation in its answer. The sentences in the note are in English for now.

Print or share the chart

The chart leaves Onplana as a PDF or a PNG, on every plan, from Share > Export chart on the Gantt toolbar or Export Gantt chart in the project’s actions menu. Ctrl+P (Cmd+P on a Mac) on the Gantt opens the same dialog. Anyone who can see the project can export it.

1. Open the project’s Gantt, open the Share menu and select Export chart, or press Ctrl+P. The Export Gantt chart dialog opens.

2. Pick the Format, then the options below, such as Page size, Orientation and Margins.

3. Select Preview to see page 1 as it will print, with the total page count. Change an option and select Preview again until the page looks right.

4. Select Export PDF (or Export PNG). The file downloads.

Which format. The PDF is paginated for printing, and is the one to use for a schedule of any size. The PNG is a single image with every task in it: the page size sets its width and it grows as tall as the task list, which is convenient for pasting into a deck and impractical past a few hundred tasks. A PNG that would come out too tall to read is refused with a message pointing you at the PDF rather than produced as a smear.

Options, the same for both formats:

Option	Choices
Page size	A4, A3, A2, A1, A0, Letter, Tabloid
Orientation	Landscape (the default) or Portrait
Margins	Narrow (0.25 in), Normal (0.5 in, the default) or Wide (0.75 in)
Time scale	Automatic, days, weeks, months
Layout	Fit the whole timeline to one page width, or tile it across pages at a readable scale. For a PNG, tiling widens the image instead of adding pages.
Table columns	Compact or full
Baseline overlay	Any saved baseline, or none
Critical path	On or off
Dependency arrows	On or off
Hide completed tasks	On or off
Date range	The whole project, or a window

Preview. Preview draws the same PDF the export would and shows its first page, with “Page 1 of” and the page count above it. The preview does not update by itself: after you change an option, a note says “The options have changed since this preview. Preview again to see them.” and the page fades until you select Preview again. With PNG chosen, the preview shows the PDF’s first page for the same options. Previews are counted apart from exports, so trying layouts does not use up your exports for the hour.

What comes out: WBS numbers, status-coloured bars with their progress, summary brackets, milestone diamonds, finish-to-start arrows, weekend and holiday shading taken from the project’s working calendar, a today line, a legend, and page numbering on the PDF.

Any language. Names print as they were written: accented Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. A name too long for its column is cut with “…” rather than running into the next row. Arabic and Hebrew are ordered right to left word by word, so a bracket or punctuation mark at the edge of a phrase can land on the wrong side. A character no font on the server covers, such as Thai or Devanagari, prints as ?, and both the footer and the export dialog say how many.

Read the footer before you send it out

The PDF footer tells you what it could not draw, and both cases are easy to miss on screen. Only finish-to-start links are drawn as arrows in the PDF, although the chart on screen draws every link type, so a plan built on start-to-start links will print with fewer arrows than it shows, and the footer counts them. Arrows whose two ends land on different pages are not drawn either, and the footer counts those separately.

Limits. A project over 20,000 tasks is refused, as is a PDF layout that would run past 600 pages, both with a message rather than a half-drawn file. Exports are capped at 30 per person per hour across both formats.

Note

The chart also exports as data rather than a picture. The project’s Excel export carries the schedule columns described below, and the Microsoft Project XML export carries the plan itself. See Export to Microsoft Project.

Share a read-only link

Share > Share a read-only link on the Gantt toolbar makes a link that anyone can open in a browser, with no Onplana account. They see the chart and its dates, and cannot change anything.

1. Open the project’s Gantt, open the Share menu and select Share a read-only link.

2. Read what the link will show, which the dialog lists before the button. Tick Show the schedule quality checks only if you want the 14-point assessment on the page as well. It is off by default, because it is a critique of the plan and anyone with the link would read it.

3. Select Create link, then Copy link, or Open it yourself to check what others will see.

The link is a frozen copy. It shows the project as it was when you made the link. Later changes do not appear on it; make a new link to share them.

What it shows, and what it leaves out.

• Shown: task names, dates, progress, milestones and dependencies, the names of the people assigned and of anyone collaborating on a task, and your organization’s name as Shared by.
• Left out: task descriptions, costs, custom fields and email addresses. A person whose name in Onplana is an email address appears as the part before the @.
• The page has a Download button, so anyone with the link can also save that same copy as a Microsoft Project XML file.

Who can share. People who can manage the project’s members: by default the project owner and project managers, plus your organization’s owners, admins and Portfolio Managers. Nobody else sees the button.

How long a link lasts. 30 days. The dialog lists the project’s live links with who made each one, how many times it has been opened, and the day it stops working. Turn off ends a link at once, and anyone who opens it afterwards sees “This link has been turned off”.

If sharing is refused

Sharing outside your workspace needs a verified email address. Until yours is verified, Onplana refuses with “Verify your email address before sharing outside your workspace. Check your inbox for the verification link.” and the message carries a Resend link. Links are also limited per person per hour: 30 an hour on the Free plan (5 an hour in a new account’s first day) and 300 an hour on paid plans. Past that, the message says how many minutes until you can create more.

Embed the plan on your own website

The same dialog has two tabs, Link and Embed. Embed gives you code to paste into a page of your own website, such as a contractor’s project page, a consultancy’s client page or a public timeline, so visitors see the chart there, read only.

Before you start. An Owner turns on Show plans on other websites in Organization settings → Sharing, in the Sharing outside the workspace section. It is off by default, and Admins see it but cannot change it. While it is off, the Embed tab says so and makes no code. Turning it off later asks first, and every plan of the workspace that is embedded on another site stops showing there within a minute; the links still open on their own.

1. Open the project’s Gantt, open the Share menu, select Share a read-only link and choose the Embed tab.

2. Read what the embed will show, which the tab lists before the button. Decide on Show people’s names: it is off by default, because the people in the plan did not choose the website it will appear on.

3. Under Stops working, keep Never (until you turn it off) or pick 30, 90 or 365 days.

4. Select Make embed code, then Copy code, and paste the code into your page.

What visitors see.

• Anyone who visits the page can see the plan, and search engines or web archives may keep a copy of the page.
• Shown: task names, dates and your organization’s name. People appear as Resource 1, Resource 2 and so on, and their names are not in the copy at all, unless you ticked Show people’s names; then the names of the people assigned and collaborating are shown too.
• Left out, as on a link: descriptions, costs, custom fields and email addresses.
• Like a link, the embed is a frozen copy of the plan as it was when you made the code. To show later changes, make new code and replace the old code on your page.
• A small Made with Onplana badge shows inside the frame. The code also puts a plain Made with Onplana link under the frame, which you may keep or delete.

Only embed links can be embedded. A plain read-only link from the Link tab cannot be shown inside another site; it opens only on its own.

Manage an embed. An embed link appears in the dialog’s list of live links, marked Embed, with three extra actions:

• Copy code copies the embed code again.
• Where it is embedded lists the websites the plan has been opened on, as reported by those pages and not checked, with when each last opened it. Turn off for this site stops the plan showing there within a minute while other sites keep it; Turn back on undoes it.
• Regenerate link makes a new address for the same link. It asks first, because every copy of the current code stops working within a minute, on every site. Paste the new code where you want the plan.

Turn off ends the embed like any link, and the frame then says the link was turned off. When a plan is opened on a website, Onplana records the name of that website, which is what Where it is embedded shows.

Who can embed. The same people who can share a read-only link (see Who can share above).

Schedule columns in the Excel export

The project’s Excel export gained three columns on its Tasks sheet, after Deadline, so a schedule read in a spreadsheet answers the same questions the chart does:

• Duration (work days), counted on the project’s working calendar with both ends included, so a task running Monday to Friday reads 5. A milestone reads 0.
• Total Float (days), how long a task can slip before it moves the project end date.
• Critical, Yes on the tasks that have no float and blank on the rest.

Total Float and Critical come from the same critical-path calculation that draws the red bars on the chart, so the spreadsheet and the chart cannot disagree.

Caution

When the schedule cannot be calculated at all, most often a dependency cycle that arrived with an import, those two cells come out blank and the rest of the export is unaffected. Blank there means “not calculated”, not “no float”.

Task sheet, Resource sheet and Resource usage

A row of four views sits above the chart: Gantt, Task sheet, Resource sheet and Resource usage. They are the same four views, in the same words, as Onplana Schedule, for a team that works in the browser and cannot install the desktop app. Your choice is part of the page’s address, so a link opens the same view, and the project remembers the last one you chose.

The Gantt and Task sheet are on every plan. Resource sheet and Resource usage are resource management, which needs Professional or above. On a lower plan the two tabs stay in the row, and opening one shows a lock note naming the plan in place of the view. Where a Free workspace can still try Professional, the note also offers the 14-day trial (see Try Professional for 14 days).

• Task sheet is the Gantt’s own table with the timeline hidden: the same columns, filters, sort, undo, row menu and export. You edit it exactly as you edit the table beside the chart, and an edit saves the same way.
• Resource sheet lists each person on the project’s tasks: their email, how many tasks they are on, and their first start and last finish. Select the number of tasks to open the Gantt filtered to that person; Clear filters in Filter shows everyone again.
• Resource usage shows each person’s work by Month, Week or Day, with the tasks behind it underneath. A task’s hours are spread evenly over its working days, as Onplana Schedule does it.

The Gantt and the Task sheet are on every plan. Resource sheet and Resource usage need the Professional plan or above; on a plan without them, choosing one says which plan includes it.

The two resource views only read. Change who is on a task, or its hours, on the task itself, and the views follow the next time you open them. They show what the project holds: a person is an assignee (and a collaborator, at no hours, where your workspace exports collaborators), so there are no rates, maximum units or groups to show, and several people cannot share one task at different percentages.

Why Resource usage and the capacity planner can differ

The capacity planner on the Resources page spreads a task’s hours over its calendar days, weekends included. Resource usage spreads them over working days only, the way Onplana Schedule does. For a task that runs over a weekend the weekly totals can differ, while the task’s total hours are the same in both.

A project with more than 20,000 tasks shows every task in the Gantt and the Task sheet, but is too large for the two resource views.

Open the project in Onplana Schedule

On a Mac or a Windows computer, Open in Onplana Schedule, the last button on the toolbar, opens this project in Onplana Schedule, the free desktop app, when it is installed.

1. Open the project’s Gantt, open the Share menu and select Open in Onplana Schedule.

2. The first time, your browser asks before opening another app. Chrome asks “Open Onplana Schedule?”; tick the box to always allow it, then open it.

3. The app opens the project, the same as picking it from the app’s home screen. If the app is not signed in, sign in and the project opens. If it is signed in to a different workspace, it says so instead.

The app needs to be version 0.1.10 or later to answer the button.

When the app is not installed. A browser cannot ask whether an app is installed, so the page waits about two and a half seconds for the app to take over. If it does not, the page takes the app to be missing, starts the download (the Mac disk image, or the Windows installer) and shows a message with an Install steps link to onplana.com/schedule.

• On a Mac, open the downloaded file, drag Onplana Schedule into Applications, then select the button again.
• On Windows, run the installer, then select the button again.

Where the button appears. In a browser on a Mac or a Windows computer, except Firefox. It is not shown on phones, iPads, Linux or Chromebooks, or inside Microsoft Teams.

The guess can be wrong

If the app is slow to start, the download can begin even though the app then opens; you can cancel the download. In Safari, a missing app can show Safari’s own “cannot open” alert instead, and then the download may not start. Use the Install steps link in that case. Every click also shows a first message with a Don’t have it? Get the app link, so there is always a way forward.

Best practices

1. Zoom out to year first. Most planning conversations start with “where are we going to land?” (a question the year view answers in five seconds). Zoom in only when discussing a specific week or sprint. PMs who default to the day view miss the big-picture drift.
2. Turn on the critical path before any replanning session. Compressing tasks not on the critical path doesn’t move the end date; the team will spend effort on the wrong tasks without the highlight. Five seconds to enable, saves an hour of misdirected work.
3. Capture a baseline at the moment the plan stabilizes. As soon as the dates feel right, take a baseline. The overlay becomes the reference for every change that follows, and answers “have we slipped?” with a visible answer instead of “kind of.”
4. Let the links carry the chain, and Recalculate after big changes. Moving a task already moves the tasks that depend on it, so there is nothing to propagate by hand. After an import or a change to the working calendar, Recalculate re-runs the whole project in one pass. Suggest schedule is a different tool: the AI proposes dates that hit a deadline you give it, optionally levelling people’s workload, and shows them as a preview you apply or discard.
5. Set the working calendar before planning. Dates respect the org-wide working calendar (default Mon-Fri); if your team works Sun-Thu or includes US holidays, configure that first or the Gantt schedules people onto days they’re actually off. See Configure working calendars.

Troubleshooting / common pitfalls

• A task isn’t visible on the chart. A bar needs both a start date and a due date. Open the task and set them; it appears immediately. The other views (list, Kanban, calendar, burndown) work without dates, but Gantt requires them.
• The critical path looks wrong / shorter than I expected. Two causes: (a) dependencies aren’t wired correctly (an implicit dependency in your head isn’t in the graph; add it explicitly); (b) the chart respects only the dependency graph and dates, not resource conflicts. If two critical-path tasks share an assignee, they don’t auto-stack. That’s a resource conflict the resource leveler addresses, not the Gantt.
• Dragging a bar moved other tasks. Dragging changes that task’s dates, and the tasks that depend on it follow, directly or further down the chain. Tasks in other chains never move, and a save that changes no date (a title, a status, an assignee) moves nothing. The Schedule updated notice lists every task that moved, with its old and new dates, and Undo puts the drag back. If the task you dragged waits on others, the date you drop it on is kept as a Start No Earlier Than constraint, so the next change up the chain cannot pull it back earlier. To stop edits moving other tasks at all, turn automatic scheduling off.
• The baseline overlay isn’t showing. Either no baseline has been captured (View > Baseline offers Capture baseline now), or the baseline toggle is off. Multiple baselines can coexist. Pick the one to compare against from the baseline selector.
• “Hanger” tasks (no dependencies in or out, mid-project). Usually means an implicit dependency was missed when the plan was built. The Gantt is the best surface for spotting these because the bar sits at an unexpected date. Add the dependency in the task edit view.

How this combines with other features

• Gantt + Dependencies + Baseline. The trio that makes schedule problems visible: dependencies make the structure clear, baselines pin the original plan, and the Gantt is the surface where you actually see drift. Capture the baseline immediately after wiring dependencies; every change after that is visible at a glance. See Link task dependencies and Capture and compare baselines.
• Gantt + Working calendar. The scheduling engine respects the organization’s working calendar. Changing the working week (e.g., adding a holiday) does not move saved dates by itself: run Schedule > Recalculate now on the Gantt afterwards, and the engine re-derives dates around the new non-working days. See Configure working calendars.
• Gantt + AI assistant. Ask the in-app AI assistant “what’s on the critical path of <project>?” or “what’s the longest dependency chain?” The assistant cites the tasks and renders the answer next to the chart. Available on every plan. See Chat with Onplana AI.
• Gantt + Sprints. A sprint is a date-bounded slice of the project. The Gantt shows the sprint’s tasks against the project timeline so you see whether the sprint commitment fits the project’s overall flow. See Plan a sprint.

Coming from another tool

Tool	Mapping
Microsoft Project	Gantt chart ≈ Gantt chart; arrows are FS/SS/FF/SF same as MS Project; critical path is computed the same way
Asana Timeline	Asana Timeline ≈ Gantt; Asana doesn’t natively show critical path
Jira Advanced Roadmaps	Roadmap timeline ≈ Gantt; dependencies render similarly; Jira’s “auto-scheduling” is closer to Onplana’s automatic scheduling plus Recalculate
ClickUp Gantt	Direct mapping; critical path toggle is similar
Smartsheet Gantt	Sheets ≈ list view; Gantt view is rendered from the same data, same dependency conventions

Still holding .mpp files rather than a plan that lives here? Onplana Schedule is a free desktop app that opens one on your own machine, with no account, and publishes a copy into a workspace when you want your team on it. See Open Microsoft Project files with Onplana Schedule.

FAQs

Why don’t some tasks appear on the chart? A bar needs dates. Tasks without a start or due date cannot be placed on a timeline; give them dates and they appear.

Can I create dependencies from the Gantt? Yes. Drag from the handle on the edge of one bar onto another and the dependency is saved, with the type taken from the ends you joined. To set a lag or change the type, double-click the arrow, or right-click it and choose Edit dependency…. The lag is typed in days, hours or weeks. See Lag and lead time.

Does dragging a bar move its dependent tasks too? Yes, the tasks that depend on it, directly or further down the chain, and nothing else. A task in another chain never moves because you edited this one. The Schedule updated notice lists what moved, and Undo reverses the drag. With automatic scheduling off, only the task you dragged moves.

Can I stop Onplana recalculating my dates? Yes. Turn Automatic scheduling off in the Gantt’s Schedule menu. Dates then change only when you edit them or press Recalculate. See Turn automatic scheduling off.

Which plans include the Gantt? All of them, Free included, with the critical path, all four dependency types, and the baseline overlay. Paid plans add sprints, resource capacity planning, and portfolio rollup on top. See Compare plans and upgrade.

Can I export the Gantt as a PDF or image? Yes. Share > Export chart on the Gantt toolbar is the direct route. The Reports tab also renders a Gantt-shaped snapshot suitable for stakeholder updates, and the browser print dialog produces a clean PDF of the current zoom level.

Can someone without an Onplana account see the chart? Yes. Share > Share a read-only link on the Gantt toolbar makes a read-only link to a frozen, redacted copy of the plan that works for 30 days. See Share a read-only link.

How does Suggest schedule decide what to move? You give it a deadline. The AI proposes a start and finish for every task that meets it, the scheduling engine checks each proposal against every link, its lag and the working calendar, and you see the result as a preview before anything changes. Tick Level resources and it also keeps people inside their weekly capacity. It is included from the Pro plan up. The dependency pass on its own, with no deadline and no AI, is Recalculate. Before 24 September 2026 the button was called Auto-Schedule; it was renamed so it is not confused with the Automatic scheduling switch. It is in the AI menu.

Why is my critical path empty? You don’t have any dependencies wired yet. The critical path is the longest dependency chain from the project’s start to the project’s end; without dependencies, no chain exists. Wire dependencies and the path appears.

Related

• Switch between the new and classic Gantt, which of the two charts you are on, and how to change it
• Duration, remaining work and actual start, what a task was planned to take, what is left, and when it really began
• Link task dependencies, wire FS/SS/FF/SF arrows the Gantt renders
• Change several tasks at once, set fields on a selection of rows here or in the Grid
• Capture and compare baselines, the baseline overlay for drift detection, and capturing one from the Gantt
• Plan team capacity, the resource view that complements the Gantt’s date view
• Open Microsoft Project files with Onplana Schedule, the free desktop app for reading and editing an .mpp before it comes here