Creating and Managing Timelines

Project Timelines

Factor provides timeline tools at both the project level and the cross-project portfolio level, giving you visual control over when work is planned and how schedules relate to each other.

Project Timelines

Factor provides timeline tools at both the project level and the cross-project portfolio level, giving you visual control over when work is planned and how project schedules relate to each other.

Each project has a Schedule tab that provides a Gantt chart view of that project's budget phases, work tasks, and milestones. This is where you set and manage the timing for individual project elements. Milestones are single-date markers that typically represent key billing points or delivery deadlines.

The Timelines page under PULSE provides a cross-project Gantt chart view displaying phase dates, task dates, and milestones for all projects, with filtering options. This gives firm-level visibility into how work is distributed across the portfolio and helps identify scheduling conflicts or gaps.

Timeline views display three categories of items:

Each category section can be expanded or collapsed. Budget phases can be filtered to show only specific types (e.g., hiding non-billable phases). Category date ranges are automatically calculated from the earliest and latest dates of the items within them.

One of the most powerful timeline features is anchoring — the ability to link dates in a cascading hierarchy:

When phase dates shift, anchored milestones shift automatically, and tasks anchored to those milestones shift as well. A single date change at the phase level can cascade through the entire project schedule.

Timeline views pull from data entered elsewhere in the project:

If nothing appears on the schedule yet, start by setting up budget phases and tasks on their respective tabs.

The most efficient way to establish project timelines is through project templates. Templates can include pre-configured phase date ranges, milestones with anchoring relationships, tasks anchored to milestones, and relative date offsets. When a project is created from a template, use the Push Dates feature on the Schedule tab to push all dates to align with the actual project start date.

Individual phases can be shown or hidden on the timeline. Click the three-dot menu on a project and select the show/hide phases option to toggle visibility for individual phases. This is useful for keeping the timeline focused on the phases most relevant to your current view.

Viewing and modifying the project schedule requires the appropriate project permissions. Editing tasks on the PULSE Timelines page requires task edit permissions. These are configured under SETTINGS > Your Team.

On the Schedule tab, when specifying dates for a milestone, choose to anchor it to a specific phase. When specifying dates for a task, choose to anchor it to a specific milestone. The anchoring hierarchy is: phases → milestones → tasks. All anchoring relationships can be pre-configured in project templates.

Timeline views can be printed or exported as PDFs or images for sharing with clients or team members.

Phases and tasks must have start and end dates to appear on the timeline. Also check whether individual phases have been hidden — click the three-dot menu on the project and use the show/hide phases option to verify all expected phases are toggled on.

If a phase or task date shifted on its own, it is likely anchored to a parent item whose date changed — this is expected behavior of the cascading date system. Open the item and check its anchor relationship. If you want the item to have a fixed date, remove the anchor.

Milestones must have a date assigned to appear on the timeline. If the milestone has a date but still isn't visible, the timeline view may be zoomed or filtered to a date range that doesn't include it. Adjust the view range or check that milestone visibility is toggled on in the view options.

If a task or milestone didn't shift when its parent date changed, verify the anchor relationship was saved by opening the item and checking the anchor setting. If the parent item was deleted or changed, the anchor may be broken and will need to be re-established.

You may not have permission to edit the project schedule or tasks. Contact your administrator to review your permissions under SETTINGS > Your Team.

Use filters to narrow the view — a large firm-level timeline with many projects can be slow. Also try clearing your browser cache and reloading the page.

Look for zoom or range controls on the timeline view and adjust to show the date range you need.