If you do not need to demonstrate costs and resources loads, but just need a timeline to show progress/priority/start/finish, setting up a basic Gantt chart may be the best solution.

Tasks: are the topic branches you see in Tree Mode that become Tasks when in Gantt Mode. A task is a duty/action you need to perform in your project. For example, a task may be 'Email David'.

Start/End: are time/date values that indicates when you will start working on the task and when you plan to finish. It is important not to confuse this concept with 'Work Time'.

Completed Progress: indicates the progress of the task and is used so you can track how much work has been completed. This value is adjusted manually and you should be re-adjusting this on a regular basis to reflect what is actually going on with your progress.

Priority: indicates the importance of the task in your project. This is a more fluid value than progress and has no direct impact on the timeline but is more for management purposes.

Relationships: are used to depict connections between tasks, allowing you to see work flows and dependencies. For example, a Relationship may be placed between two tasks to indicate that one task cannot be started until the other is finished.

Example 1:

Assumption: The following example will assume a project to open a new shop that will run for 4 weeks.

1. Open a new Solution File (CTRL + O),
2. In Tree Mode create 4 new topics,
3. Call the topics 'Clean Shop', 'Paint Walls', 'Furnish Shop' and 'Open Shop',
4. Change to 'Gantt / Chart' View,
5. Locate the first task 'Clean Shop' and click on the corresponding blue timeline bar,
6. In the Task Duration area in the left hand panel set the start date starting from the next Monday,
7. In the Task Duration area in the left hand panel set the end date on the Friday so the task is 5 days long,
8. Repeat this for each of the remaining 3 tasks but make them stretch out over the 4 weeks - start 'Paint Walls' on the second Monday and so on... each task is 5 days long,
9. You can now use 'Priority' in 'Task Duration' to indicate importance of the various tasks,
10. As you make progress you can adjust the progress of each task,
11. Your tasks are also shown in Calendar Mode and Tree Mode.

Example File: Gantt_Examples_Basic.ame

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