How to use the roadmap

The roadmap puts every campaign, project, milestone and dated task on one horizontal timeline, with the names frozen in a column down the left. It answers "what is happening between now and the drop", and you can reschedule a project by dragging its bar.

Open it from Work › Roadmap, or from the Roadmap button in the header of Work › Tasks. Everything on it comes from What are projects and campaigns?.

Before you start

Anyone who can open Work › Roadmap can read the whole chart. Dragging needs a permission, and anything you cannot move still shows; it simply does not drag.

• A project bar needs Edit, archive and delete projects in that project's own department. Department leads and admins have it by default.
• A milestone diamond needs Create, edit and delete milestones in the project's department, which leads and admins also have by default.
• A campaign band needs Create and edit campaigns and cycles, which admins have by default.

How do you group and filter it?

Two pills above the chart switch the grouping between Campaign and Department. Campaign answers "what is in the Autumn drop". Department answers "what is Marketing doing", and each band becomes a team instead of a campaign.

The two pickers in the header narrow what is on screen. All departments filters to one team, and All campaigns filters to one campaign. Milestones follow their project, so a filtered-out project takes its diamonds with it.

How do you open and close the rows?

Each band starts open, showing its projects. Each project starts closed, hiding its tasks. Click the arrow beside a name to expand or collapse it.

We recommend opening only the band you are working on. The chart is much clearer that way than with every project expanded down to its tasks.

What are the shapes on the chart?

• A band is a campaign, or a department when you group by Department. Projects with no campaign sit together in a band called No campaign.
• A bar is a project, running from its Start date to its Target date. It fills from the left as its tasks are done, and once it has tasks, the percentage complete sits just past its end.
• A chip beside each project's name is green while it is on track and amber once its target date has passed and the project is not Done.
• A dashed rose tail runs from a bar's end to today when the project has passed its target and is not Done.
• A grey diamond on a project's row is a milestone, with its name underneath. It turns solid grey once the project is Done, and has a rose outline when its date has passed and the project is not Done.
• A status dot on a task's row marks its due date: a dashed ring for backlog, a blue ring for to do, a half-filled amber circle for in progress and a green tick for done.
• The blue pill at the top of the chart shows today's date, such as OCT 20, with a line running down from it.

A project needs both a Start and a Target to draw as a bar. Set them in the Dates row of the project's Properties card, covered in How to start a project. Milestones with no date are listed under No date set below the chart.

How do you reschedule by dragging?

Drag the middle of a project bar to move its start and target together, or drag either end to change just that date. Drag a milestone diamond to move its date. A campaign band drags the same way as a project bar.

Each drag snaps to whole days and saves when you drop it. This is the quickest way to replan a slipped launch, because you move the thing itself rather than opening each project.

A campaign band drags when the campaign has its own Start and Target. Without them, the band stretches from its earliest project to its latest one, and moves when you move those projects. How to set up a campaign covers giving a campaign its dates.

Do the tasks move with the project?

No. Dragging a project bar moves the project's dates, and its tasks keep their own due dates.

To move the tasks too, open the project's List tab, select them and use Reschedule, covered in How to change many tasks at once. Planned items on a project's Overview also move by dragging, covered in How to plan what goes out and when.

What does clicking a diamond do?

It opens a Milestone panel on the right with the milestone's Name, Date and Project. The project name links straight to that project.

If you can manage milestones in that project's department, you can rename it, pick a new date and press Save, or press Delete and then Confirm delete to remove it. Everyone else sees the same panel without the controls, which is still the quickest way to find out what a diamond is.

Clicking an entry in the No date set list opens the same panel. More on milestones is in How to add and reschedule milestones.

Why is a campaign still on here when we finished it?

Because a project that is not archived still points at it, even one marked Done. A campaign band appears while at least one such project belongs to it, so the band follows the projects.

Archive the finished projects, covered in How to archive, restore or delete a project, or change their Campaign on the project's Properties card. Once no remaining project points at the campaign, its band leaves the roadmap.