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The Many Gantt Chart Views

Did you know that Project ships 8 Gantt chart views?  I thought I'd take today to go into what each one displays.  To get to most of these views you'll need to go to the View menu - More Views dialog. Gantt Chart - This is the plain Gantt chart. Bar Rollup - If you like to rollup subtasks bars to the summary task, this view helps you with formatting.     To roll a task up to a summary task, double-click the task to get to the task information dialog and check "Roll up Gantt bar to summary" on the General tab.  In this view you can then specify if you want the task name shown above or below the summary bar by using the Text Above column (only available in this view). Detail Gantt - This shows the critical path, how far you have slipped, and how far you can slip before other tasks/the project finish date is affected.     Red Bars - Critical tasks (tasks that must be completed on schedule for a project to finish on schedule)     Black Line before a task - Slippage: This shows how far the task's start date has slipped compared to Baseline Start.     Black Line after a task - Slack (specifically Free Slack): This shows the amount of time that a task can be delayed without causing its successor tasks to slip.  For a task without successors, free slack is the amount of time that the task can slip without delaying the finish date of the project.  Leveling Gantt - This view shows you how leveling has affected your project.  (Wondering what leveling is - check out this help article)     Green bars - Shows you where the bar was before the last time you leveled.     White diamond with black outline - Shows you where the milestone was before the last time you leveled.      Black line before a task - Delay: This helps to show you how leveling has caused a task to be delayed.  The line is drawn from Early Start (the earliest date that a task could possible being, based on early start dates of predecessor and successor tasks and other constraints) to Start.     Black line after a task - Slack (specifically Free Slack): This shows the amount of time that a task can be delayed without causing its successor tasks to slip.  For a task without successors, free slack is the amount of time that the task can slip without delaying the finish date of the project.  Milestone Date Rollup - When you roll up a milestone to the summary, this view displays the milestone name above the bar and the date below.  Regular tasks that are set to roll up will look like milestones on the summary bar. Multiple Baselines Gantt - This view displays Baseline, Baseline 1, and Baseline 2. Tracking Gantt - This is our second most popular Gantt chart and is best used when you want to see your critical path.     Red Bars - Critical tasks (tasks that must be completed on schedule for a project to finish on schedule)     Dark Gray bars - Baseline     There is a bug in Project 2007 where regular tasks and regular task progress are both drawn with the same blue color and fill.  To fix this, when you are in the view, go to Format - Bar Styles and set either Task or Task Progress to have a different look. Helpful tips: While I don't want to get in to editing bar styles too much since that topic deserves its own post, I'll mention one helpful hint.  All the above views are customizable to meet your needs.  For example, in the Tracking Gantt, Baseline is displayed but say you want to compare Baseline 5.  To do this, just go Format - Bar Styles, and for the Baseline bar style set From to Baseline5 Start and To to Baseline5 Finish.  You can do this with other fields too. Additionally, to quickly set a bunch of tasks to roll up/not roll up, insert the Rollup column.

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