Gantt Diagram help build and follow project planning and show how its phases articulate. It is an indispensable tool to report progress made, highlight key deadlines and milestones and ensure projects are on schedule.

With Power-user you can create Gantt charts in PowerPoint or Excel. 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Creating Gantt charts in PowerPoint
• Creating Gantt charts in Excel

Creating Gantt charts in PowerPoint

To create a Gantt chart in PowerPoint, click the Gantt diagram button from the Power-user ribbon. 

• The below window will open:

• Define a time unit (daily, weekly, monthly or yearly).
• Define the number of tasks and the number of periods to display.
• Alternatively, you can also a start date and end date.
• Click Insert to validate and the Gantt will be created like show below.
• Manually adjust the shapes to define the beginning and end date of each task, add milestones, etc.

The Gantt chart in PowerPoint is one of the oldest feature of Power-user. It does not allow dynamic updates of chart after creation (only manual update). We plan to completely redesign this feature with a dynamic behavior, rules to create dependencies between tasks, as well as multiple design and customization options.
In the meantime, we recommend using the Gantt chart template in Excel, which can be easily customized and offers dynamic behavior.

Creating Gantt charts in Excel

Gantt charts in Excel work differently than in PowerPoint. Because of Excel's capabilities, they can be dynamically updated.

To insert a Gantt chart in Excel:

• From the Power-user ribbon in Excel, click the Library. 
• Under Templates, browse for Gantt charts.
• Click the Gantt templates of your choice: with days as base time unit, or with weeks as the base time unit.

To edit and customize the template:

• Insert the Start date for your project in the yellow input cell.
• List your categories, tasks and owners in the [TASK CATEGORY], [Task],  [Owner] placeholders.
• For each task:
  • Define the duration in the Days (or Weeks) column
  • Define the start date in the START column. You can specifty start dates specifically, or use formulas to create dependencies, like making a Task 2 start the day after the end of Task 1 for instance. This way if there is a delay for Task 1, the rest of the chart will adjust automatically.  
  • The end dates are calculated automatically based on the START and DAYS columns (beginning and duration of tasks). If you have specified holidays in the Holidays sheet, they will be taken into account for calculating the end dates.
  • Optionnally, you can also define a percentage of completion of the task, in the % DONE column. When a task is partially completed, it will show partially in one column and partially in another.
• To customize the colors for completed or remaining tasks, select one of the cells and click Conditional Formatting. Change the rules to apply the colors of your choice.
• The current date will automatically appear on the Gantt chart based on Conditional Formatting as well.