Coda tables transform effortlessly into a variety of views, empowering each user to interact with the table data in their preferred way. And timelines are one of these views!

In Coda, timelines and Gantt charts are the same. They allow you to visualize and track a series of events that take place over a specific timeframe, which is great for project tracking.

There are two ways to begin building your timeline chart. You can either type /timeline into the canvas and follow the instructions, or you can first build out a table that you convert to a timeline view.

To convert the table to a timeline view, hover over the table, select Options in the top right of the table. In the panel that appears on the right hand side of your doc, you will go the far right and click on the More option. This will drop down a menu from which you can select Timeline.

For any timeline chart that you build, you must include a timeframe for each item. Take task tracking for example, you will either need to include a start date column and a duration column, or alternatively start date and end date columns. Some other typical data, and therefore columns, for timeline views include:

Since Coda’s timeline chart is a table at its core, we can use filter, sort, group, and conditional format features like we could on any table by clicking the respective options in the Options panel.

For one quick example, in a task tracker you may want to use grouping to display tasks by person so you can easily see each team member’s tasks together.

In addition to these, there are some timeline specific features for further customizing your chart. In the Options panel, click on Timeline display and find:

Milestones let your team understand what they are working towards. They mark significant moments in a project such as a launch date, phase completion, or any other moment that is important to your team. Milestones have no duration, so they’ll appear as small diamonds on your timeline - making them visually distinct. And like any items on your timeline, you can click and drag your milestones, and the date will change accordingly.

To enable milestones, follow these steps:

Now any row in your table that doesn’t have an end date or duration will automatically be considered a milestone.

To add more milestones, add a row to your table, assign a start date, but don’t assign an end date or duration. Alternatively, click the + on the left panel of your timeline, and select New milestone.

💡Pro tip: you can make your milestones stand out even more in your timeline by adding color via conditional formatting.

Dependencies are often an important part of project and task tracking. A dependency is a relationship between tasks, where one task is dependent on another. For instance, maybe you have Task B which can’t begin until Task A is completed. Or you have Task C which can’t begin until Task D also begins.

You can read more about using dependencies in your project tracker here.

Within timelines, we make it easy to set up - and even enforce - dependencies. Just follow these steps:

That’s it! You’ve now configured your dependency column for your timeline. You can click or drag the dependency handle from one event to the event you’d like to create a dependency between. To remove a dependency, right-click on the dependency line in the timeline and select Remove dependency from the menu.

If you’re on a Team or Enterprise plan, you have access to an additional feature: enforced dependencies. This feature ensures that when the date of a task changes, the dependent task will update automatically. And even better - you can simply click and drag tasks on your timeline, and dates of the dependent task will move automatically.

To enable dependency enforcement, just follow these steps:

That’s it! Try dragging tasks on your timeline and watch as the dependent tasks update and move automatically.

Coda has a handful of ways to navigate your timeline, all accessible in the top right hand of the timeline chart itself. Below we list these out in the order they appear from left to right.

First, you have the option to filter your own view as you are working in a timeline based on timeframes (day, week, month, quarter, year, and multi-year) in the top right of the timeline. This filter will be personal to your view, and won’t affect how others view the timeline.

Next, click Today to easily move the timeline to today’s date. Coda will continue to keep whatever timeframe you have selected!

Next, there is the Fit option. Use this to adjust your timeline’s view to show all the items. This is especially helpful if you are having trouble deciding the best timeframe to choose.

Lastly, you will see a calendar icon. By clicking this and selecting a date, you are able to jump to specific dates on the calendar for easier navigation.