I am not sure if there is a consolidated topic about the current problems/limitations with the Gantt / Timeline view but going through the forums it seems that there is a global demand to get huge improvements on this view which, since its launch, did not receive a proper update.
Personally, as a project manager, I would really like to leverage this tool a bit more to provide metrics to my management but I cannot rely on it at all in its current state.
I would then suggest to have a single topic where people could centralize their suggestions (rather than complaints) so the Coda team can give some extra love to this feature.
My suggestions are the following
Implement a milestone capability - Airtable is able to handle it pretty easily. There is a trigger that will consider all the row with only an end date defined as a milestone (refer to belowâs picture)
Add view controls directly in the timeline rather than having to go in the view setting to change the scale
Change the dependency shape, the current one makes it completely unreadable. An elbow connector would be better
Possibility to add additional columns next to the headlines, Notion is offering this possibility and it had an extra level of readability
Freeze the timeline on the top while we scroll - For those who have a long list of items, it is currently very difficult to visualize the timeline.
Depending on people inputs I might edit the post directly so we can get a better consolidation.
If there is already an internal initiative to improve this extremely useful feature, I would really appreciate to hear about it.
Thank you for taking the initiative. Timeline view could definitely use more love from Coda.
I especially agree that ability to zoom in and out freely should be handed out to the end user instead of being restricted to a pre-canned setting (Day/Week/Month, etc.) tucked away in Timeline display settings. Here are are a couple more suggestions that make the top of my wish list:
Possibility to add additional columns next to headlines
I would reword this to say: Possibility to independently choose a display column for each of the lefthand side labels and in the labels of the timeline itself. This will open up the possibility of using calculated columns to customize the labels as we wish, instead of being restricted to using the default display column of the source table on both sides.
Axis labels should be displayed between the lines and not on the lines themselves. @MrChrisRodriguez, makes an excellent illustration of this point here: https://community.coda.io/t/codas-gantt-implementation-is-non-standard-and-confusing/19442.
And while weâre at it, more control over Axis label formatting would be nice (I am in China where September, 9th is â9æ9æ„â ,so âSEP 9â looks extremely confusing to my colleagues).
We are currently not Timeline view in any of our docs due to its many limitations, so even a few key improvements would be a game-changer.
I find it quite strange to leave the room for end-users to suggest and even vote for it but then donât provide any answers as to how you will consider it (or not).
Please provide better visibility on how you address the user requests.
Hi Johan, thanks for the note! As you may remember, this area was updated with our redesign of our community in December 2021. We certainly did not expect this level of popularity for our Suggestion Box area (though, a guess wouldâve been just as fair!) - That said, we Codans come through here time to time to give responses. Itâs a practice that we are still learning which we understand needs further attention on our part.
Thank you again for this feedback! I hope to have a response for you shortly.
I am totally fine with you scaling up on this aspect, I understand it can be difficult to let the possibility to people to ask for things.
Maybe just provide overall guidelines on how to contribute and how you will consider feedback so people know what to expect and I am sure you wonât get those questions anymore
Hey Johan, thatâs really good advice. I like that setting expectations with overall guidelines makes the most sense when respecting everyoneâs time and effort they put in this space. Iâll be sure to share this as soon as I have it ready. Thanks!
Hi @Johan_Bertin, thanks for checking back in with us!.
At this time, we have collected and processed all Suggestion Box topics. This was the first effort we wanted to get right: bring visibility to this area in a way that we can assign it out to the right teams here at Coda. We ran a community audit this week, so as to maintain and upkeep our current health in our discussions.
As for consideration, the second step in our effort is to bring these mentioned assignments to come with responses posted on the community. I feel the goal here to get clear answers from Coda regardless of our decisions. This is where youâll see the guidelines of this section outline specifics of what Coda does when we consider product feedback and feature requests.
And yes, weâve been very busy with Coda 3.0 so I hope youâll forgive us for the delay. I am very keen on offering a better experience of Suggestion Box especially after 3.0.
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