Graphic representation of planned vs. actual start and end dates

I’d like to set up some tracking for my development initiatives/epics: I’d like to have a field for a row that will represent them which is “creation date” - this is when the idea is conceived. Then, “planned launch date” to represent when we discussed launching it in a meeting, and finally “actual start date” when it actually starts, and show all three on a timeline. This would give visibility into company progress in terms of when ideas get conceived, planned, and actually launched, and how bad the slide can be.

Likewise I’d like to set up similar with due dates: An ability to have an “original due date” and then the “actual end date” and show on a graph, to show how effective, or bad, planning was.

Thanks for any pointers you guys have!

Hey!

Here’s my take on the problem. The most obvious to represent this data is a Gantt chart. Unfortunately, these are limited in Coda: you can have only one entry in the chart per one table row.

Solution 1: have a table of | Task | Start date | End date | Is actual (checkbox) | and log two separate rows for actual and expected, then have them grouped by Task, and make a Gantt chart view of this table, also grouped by Task.

Solution 2: If you absolutely want to have one row per task and log | Expected start | Expected end | Actual start | Actual end | as separate columns, you can create a separate derived table and use automation to populate it with separate rows every time you add a new task to the master table.

Here’s solution 2 for you. Play around: add rows to the master table (*), change values. Examine the automation rule and formulas in the derived table.

Hope this helps.

  • — Automations seem to not be working in embed mode. Copy the doc and play around with that one.
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Alternatively, instead of a Gantt chart you can make a new column and render “progress bars” inline right in the table. These two progress bars would be for expected and for actual times respectively, drawn one above the other.

You can make progress bars with Rectangle. For inspiration see here.

UPD: Solution with inline charts here. You can further improve the formula to better color-code e.g. on-time and overdue tasks

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Paul, many thanks! This is pretty much what I was looking for, will play around with it a bit. Another example of the power of Coda - I don’t think any other Project Management App out there could handle this…now I just need to figure out how to integrate something like with with the rest of my Software development, which in Coda I’d probably put in another doc, as well as CRM, etc…my biggest hold up on moving out of all tools to just Coda remains the lack of ability to connect Docs.

Anyway, thanks again really appreciate the tip!

Paul, you are awesome!!!
Якщо знаєш українську буду 5ти хвилинам розмови (rroman79@gmail.com)

  • I’ve failed to find how you managed auto-creation of 3 rows in the “Derived table” for every Task in “Master table”. Could you prompt?

Thanks in advance!

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