Launched: Native dependencies for easy and powerful project management

[Leo_Choi]

From managing a single project to planning hundreds of OKRs in Coda, your tasks and timelines can have complex dependencies. For those moments, we’re excited to introduce a new timeline feature that will help you update large and complex projects: enforced dependencies.

Dependencies add a layer of automation and smart logic to project timelines—a way to automatically adjust interconnected tasks so you can focus on the big picture instead of updating every line. Quick note: this feature is available to workspaces on our Team and Enterprise tiers so teams can ensure that their interconnected tasks adjust automatically when schedules change, making it easier to manage large and complex projects.

You can easily set up dependencies through the options menu for any timeline. You can customize how they work for you by defining specific task attributes. Namely, Start date, End date / Duration, Depends on, and Enforcement type. The enforcement types dictate how dependent tasks react when a primary task is moved and can be Flexible, Strict, or Visual.

Once configured, dependencies apply to the base table and all associated views. Any updates to values in the tracked Start date, End date / Duration and Depends on columns will trigger enforcement Flexible or Strict rules. This means your entire project stays in sync and your team stays on the same page.

Dependencies ensure that your team’s workflow remains as dynamic and interconnected as your projects. In this busy end-of-year planning season, we hope this makes managing tasks, timelines, and initiatives seamless and delightful.

[Piet_Strydom]

Wow.

I just cannot keep up with all the changes!! Galloping away…

This is a really powerful addition.

Thanks
Piet

[Johg_Ananda]

Wow this is amazing and will take Gantt to the next level and unlocks incredible power features on existing data.

I wonder if its possible to identify a critical path, perhaps with conditional formatting?

[Christiaan_Huizer]

hi @Johg_Ananda ,

Can you given an example of what is a critical path in this scenario?

cheers, christiaan

[Caetano_Brasil]

This is really, really great news!

[Caetano_Brasil]

I’ve been testing it, a few things:

• If I undo it, it sends me to the source table page instead of staying where the timeline is;
• Working days-based schedules don’t work, i.e., if I shift End from Thursday to Friday, the dependent task (next) should change from Friday to Monday, not Saturday. All my schedules are real work projects, so we calculate durations in working days. No weekends;
• I would like to move a task into strict enforcement mode and affect only dependent tasks (the next ones), not previous ones.

Overall, it’s a fantastic update! But I cannot use it now because of the Working Days limitation.

A side note: My timeline shows the End (Due) date as a full day! This is the fix for an issue previously reported below. But I do not see this working in all documents. I tested in two; one is now updated, and the other has the old issue. Not sure why.

Launched: Improvements to timelines

Thanks for showing it, @Quentin_Morel . I did the same, and the main issue is that Timeline lost the interaction, we can’t drag the bars anymore since we put a formula in the End date(Fin). @Sam_Harper , it would be great if you could address this issue. Dragging Timeline bars need to be interpreted as a full day. It doesn’t make sense to set a date like 23 July (example below), but the table shows it as 24 (because it’s considering 00:00h). My dates in this example should be 20 to 23. The da…

[Johg_Ananda]

@Christiaan_Huizer The critical path is, in a gantt/dependency chart’, the path of tasks that have to happen, to complete the project in the shortest time. For example if you are building a house, and you have 100 tasks to do, there may only be 1 or 5 that, if delayed, will actually delay the building of the house. Many of the other ones may have ‘float’ … like when you are starting, laying the foundation is ‘critical’ whereas putting in the landscaping is not (yet). So people who are optimizing want to use maths to find the ‘critical path’ through all the tasks, so they can complete as quickly and efficiently as possible.

[Ramesh_Nagarajan]

Thanks for trying the feature and reporting issues, some comments:

• This might be a bug, we will look into it.
• We are working on support for avoiding non-working days when shifting tasks, coming to a future release.
• We currently shift predecessors to maintain buffer between all connected items. It’s an area we will explore in improving in a future release.

Will follow up on why the timeline does not show as a full day in all documents.

[Christiaan_Huizer]

@Ramesh_Nagarajan

We are working on support for avoiding non-working days when shifting tasks, coming to a future release.

hi @Ramesh_Nagarajan , I am not sure how you interpret non working day, but the current set up of working days and non working days is typical USA and does not take into account other variations. Is this something you will look into?

The alternative is that users create their own working schema per employee, that is at least what I do.

[Christiaan_Huizer]

hi @Johg_Ananda , thanks for the clarification, I did not know this concept (the word group) , but of course I do see the logic of the principle applied. This would indeed be a valuable addition.

[Lars_Kristian_Aasbrenn]

I’m happy to see all kinds of new timeline features, but for me I’m a bit confused about how you can work effective in the timeline without the possibility to select and move multiple lines. In other software this is done by dragg-click a square with the mouse and/or select multiple times by using the shift key. I haven’t found a way here.

Is there a way, or could you please implement this?

[Ramesh_Nagarajan]

We are planning to let users customize non-working days and also supply list of special days/holidays to avoid starting/finishing tasks on.

[arvati]

I am on Pro Plan right now, need to upgrade to which plan to get this feature ?

[Ramesh_Nagarajan]

You would need to upgrade to Team.

[Sam_Harper]

Launched: Quick add dependencies directly from the timeline

Excited to share a small update that’ll make adding dependencies less cumbersome — you can now set them up by dragging and dropping, right from the timeline view!

To do this, first enable dependencies from the timeline display panel and hover over an event. You can click or drag the dependency handle from an event to another event you’d like to create a dependency between. To remove a dependency, right-click on the dependency line in the timeline and select “Remove dependency” from the menu.

[Stefan_Stoyanov]

Small but powerful! That’s a really good one!

[Piet_Strydom]

This is REALLY helpful.

Before it was painful to change only one side of the dates.

[Sam_Doughty]

Is there a way to have the “Off” “Flexible” and “Strict” options be determined at the row level, rather than for the entire table?

I have some projects that are more flexible than others, where the dates only need to move to keep up with each other.

Other projects need to maintain a certain distance between tasks, so they would use the strict dependency. Item 2 needs to be completed 3 days after Item 1

I also have some that are strict in the sense that, it must be done before x date. So if task 1 was moved it should not move the others beyond a certain point. So for example if we have an event scheduled for May 20th, and there are 10 tasks that have to be completed before May 20th for the event… I cannot do task 2 until task 1 has been completed, it is dependant on it HOWEVER I cannot have a cascading effect that pushes tasks past May 20th.

[Sam_Doughty]

Also, it would be great if we could toggle “respect working days” at the row level as well. Generally speaking we do all of the “work” during weekdays, but want to be able to show things that are happening on the weekends (like events, holidays, etc). So if I have “respect work days” off, it pushes tasks to the weekend which I don’t want, but if I have it on, it pushes events out of weekends, which I don’t want!