How to successfully plan your projects with Ora's Timeline

The Timeline was created with the goal of facilitating an optimized view of your team’s workload at a glance, what you and your team need to do next, and tracking the progress of the tasks. The Timeline gives you an integrated view of how your team’s work fit together in chronological order and allows you to plan ahead knowing exactly how much work you and each team member have, avoid overloading, and viewing and forecasting blockages you or they might face in the future in completing work that needs to be done.

The Timeline in a nutshell 

Every task/card in Ora can be scheduled and once it is, it will appear in the Timeline. Ora timeline is a multi-project timeline which you can preview By Project or By Assignee

Control what you see using the top-bar filters

Use the filters located on the top-bar of the Timeline to select which assignees from your team you wish to visualize tasks from, which projects you wish to visualize the tasks from and the state of the tasks you wish to visualize ( Frozen, Open, Review or Closed)

The Backlog helps you schedule

Use the Backlog (right sidebar) to easily drag and drop items onto the Timeline to schedule them. 

Use the backlog filters to find the right tasks. You can also sort the backlog items by due date, date created, date updated and story points, and arrange them in descending or ascending order. The Backlog filters are separate from the top bar filters. They work as a second pass filter of items already filtered in the top-bar filters. 

Use the Card Attribute buttons located on the right top corner of the Timeline to select the attributes you would like to see displayed on the cards that are showing on the backlog sidebar.

Multiple schedules for the same task / Split a task

You can split the task schedule into two parts and drag and drop each part of the task to different days and change assignees on the Timeline directly without opening the task, or you can enlarge or shorten the duration of the task by moving the arrows to the left or to the right. When you click on any of the parts of the task, the task will open and you will be able to see the split in the schedule when you hover over the calendar icon on the top side of the task.

Set hours, color for the task, assignee, and dates

Right-click on any task on the Timeline and select the color, the number of total hours this task should be completed for, the start and end dates for the task and the assignees. You can also delete the schedule of the task directly from this box.

Draw connections to set task dependencies (Pro feature)

Create relationships between tasks with one click, by dragging a line between two tasks on the Timeline. To use the line you must click on any of the two small circles located above and beyond the text area of the task on the Timeline, and drag the line to the task you wish to create a relationship with. To unlink the task relationship go inside the task and click on the "unlink" button.
Keep in mind the Task Relationship Add On must be active inside your project, or this option in the Timeline will not be available. Relationships between tasks from different projects is not currently supported.

Click to create a task

Create a task directly on the Timeline by clicking on the day you want the task to start and on the horizontal line level on the Timeline corresponding to the assignee you need the task to be performed by. You can then right-click and set the color, other assignees, the number of hours or change the dates, or just open the task so you can add everything you need.

Natural language schedule using "from" "to" / "till" / "until"

Save precious time using the "from" "to" / "till" / "until" words on the task title while creating a task. If you create a task in your project and use the words "from" "to" / "till" / "until" in the title of the task followed by a date or a day in the week, this will create a schedule automatically without you needing to open the task and setting the dates manually, and this task will go to the Timeline automatically. 

For example: 

"Task 1 to be worked from today till next Friday" 

"Task 2 from tomorrow until Monday" 

Create Milestones to track important events

Create Milestones directly on the Timeline by clicking on the day of the calendar on the top of the Timeline, on which you plan the milestone to be achieved. You can select the project from a dropdown menu when creating the milestone.

Note: You can shrink or expand the Timeline to view more or fewer days at once by holding the command button then using your mouse wheel or pinch it if you're not using a mouse to adjust the zoom.