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Multiple timeline templates for project management, teaching, business presentations and more.
True PM software helps project managers and organizations execute projects: unique initiatives with a set scope (deliverables), timeline, and budget (resources). These tools help businesses plan, monitor, and control costs, schedules, and resources so they can deliver value and meet project success criteria. Professional templates and powerful features for advanced visualization. Create timelines for project management, company history and more. Lines, shapes, icons and other design elements to decorate your timeline.
Advanced built-in diagramming to define project parameters, plan events, or create learning material for students.
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What is a Timeline
Timeline diagram is a tool used to visually represent the steps of an event or process in chronological order. They make complex information easier to comprehend. They are popularly used in project management, business profiling and presentations, and in teaching and learning.
How to Create a Timeline
- Gather the information you need. Depending on whether it’s a project timeline, an agenda, or an outline of a historical event for a school project, first identify the key details you need to add to your timeline.
- Create a rough outline of the timeline by arranging the gathered information in chronological order. This step will also help you filter out the key details from the rest of the researched data.
- Pick a layout for your timeline. While you can use a vertical layout when you have multiple points to include, you can use a horizontal layout for a timeline with fewer points, and a snake layout for a timeline with many points, but little text. Creately offers an array of timeline templates that fall into these categories, and you can pick one of them to start quickly.
- Once you have selected the Creately timeline template, write the start date at the beginning of the line and the end date at the end. Keeping space in between, add each event/step to the timeline. Make sure to keep the descriptions under the events brief.
- Style your timeline and add images. With Creately you can quickly style your timeline with preset color themes. While you can import images, clipart, gifs, logos, icons, etc. right from your device to customize your timeline, you can also use the built-in Google image search to find more images from across the web.
- Share your timeline with other key stakeholders or team members to gather their feedback with contextual comments on Creately. You can download your timelines as PNGs, SVGs, PDFs, and JPEGs for printing, sharing or publishing on websites, presentations, etc. You can also share it with anyone via an email or link invite.
When creating a timeline for a project or important event, it is best to use helpful tools or templates so that the timeline can be created accurately without any kind of miscalculations or flaws. One way of doing this is to use PowerPoint templates, such as the Workplan or Arrow PowerPoint timeline template. How to make a timeline in Pages for Mac This step-by-step Pages timeline tutorial explains how to make professional timelines using the popular word processor for Mac. Although primarily designed for processing text, Pages allows Mac users to also create basic timelines starting from a 2D Bubble Chart.
Timeline Maker Pro is the only timeline software that lets you enter BC dates if you need a macro view of world history, or enter time in as little as 1 second for planners, investigators and researchers who require that level of precision.
“Are we on track to meet our deadline?”
Not too long ago, project managers dreaded getting that question from a stakeholder for one of two reasons:
- The project was so far behind you’d need a Concorde jet to bring it up to speed OR
- You honestly didn’t know at the moment- although a hurried conference with the team usually delivered a (hopefully accurate) answer.
Today, we have timelines to save us from embarrassing ourselves and damaging both our projects and our careers. They let us display milestones and events in sequential order so that project data is easier to track, summarize and report. This visual strategy allows us to detect patterns and measure progress in a matter of seconds.
Conveying information visually is a trend that’s here to stay, so here are some timeline maker tools that can make your project monitoring and reporting more effective.
1. Toggl Plan
The Toggl Plan website describes its product as “Project planning and task management made easy.” That sums it up perfectly. The team timelines feature is a Gantt chart alternative that enables you to organize both the project and the team while the project scheduling module makes it a breeze to create visual roadmaps and share them with all internal and external stakeholders. Adding a task is a simple matter of clicking on the project timeline, dragging it to the required length, assigning it to a user, and specifying both the start / end times and duration.
Mac for word textbook align tool template. Supported by custom colors and imagery and ‘drag and drop’ update capability, Toggl Plan timelines let you see task dependencies, determine how individual team members are performing against the deadlines and manage resources in the most efficient manner possible.
2. Lucidchart
Lucidchart is an online diagram application that gives your data and reports more impact. You can create and distribute professional-quality flowcharts and timelines, all of them with shapes that can be collapsed to create a simple overview or expanded to present more detailed information. One especially useful feature is the ability to add links within the timeline so that viewers can jump from one reference point to another.
In addition to providing customizable diagrams that make project mapping and timeline creation easier, Lucidchart has an online collaboration tool supports administrator accounts, data security, sharing permissions and more, dispensing with the need for multiple emails and check-ins. Its SaaS foundation ensures that your team can work efficiently using any web browser.
3. Smart Draw
Smart Draw’s versatile timeline category lets you present events in chronological order, using high-quality timelines, diagrams and charts. Unlike some timeline makers it doesn’t deliver in-depth information about deadlines or milestones but you can link to important project data. There are over 70 template designs to choose from, all of which can be sent to a Microsoft Office product like Excel, PowerPoint or Word to make report and presentation generation as simple as a single click of your mouse.
4. Office Timeline
If you’re in a hurry and don’t have time to master a new timeline maker software, Office Timeline could be the solution for you. It is a Microsoft PowerPoint plugin capable of producing appealing and effective Gantt charts and timelines, all of which can be exported into an office document to create visual reports.
When you use Office Timeline you have the option of going with a premade template or customizing an entirely new one to meet the needs of your project. It’s easy to manage milestones, which is a big plus if your project is fast-paced.
5. RWT Timeline
RWT (Read Write Think) Timeline lets you create timelines and events that include descriptions and images, making them information-dense and visually appealing. Once everything is assembled, you can email the data to chosen recipients or convert the timeline into a PDF and turn it into a report. Like most timeline maker software, RWT Timeline allows you to update your charts as needed, making current data always available to team members and stakeholders.
6. Timeglider
Timeglider is all have enough room for your Gantt chart.
Go to Insert → Chart and select 2D Bubble from the menu that pops up. Pages will automatically generate a bubble chart that looks like the one in the image below:
2. Add your project data to the bubble chart
Click on the chart area and then on the Edit Chart Data button that appears.
In the Chart Data table that pops up, add your project data as follows:
i.List your project’s key events (milestones) in the first row, the one populated by default with the month name. Keep the milestone descriptions as short as possible as these will be later displayed on the graphic and you want them to be fully visible.
ii.Use the X column to enter the due dates for each milestone, as shown in the image below.
iii.In the Y column of each milestone, on the same row of the milestone's due date, add a digit such as 1, 2, 3, or 4. These numbers will act as plotting elements that set the milestone bubbles' vertical positioning on the chart. Bubbles that have smaller plotting numbers will be shown closer to the X axis, while those with bigger digits will be placed higher up on the chart.
iv.Lastly, in each milestone's Size column, enter a number like 10, 20, 30 to set the size of the corresponding bubble on the timeline. In my case, I used the value 20 for all my milestones.
After adding all the project data, the resulting chart looks will look this:
3. Format the graphic to optimize relevance and include key details
As you may have noticed, Pages has automatically added hours to the time series on the timeline’s horizontal axis. If you want to remove the hours for a cleaner look, select the chart area and then go to Axis → Value (X) in the Format pane on the right. Here, choose None from the Time dropdown menu under Value Labels.
Although the legend situated above the graphic gives information about the chart milestones, it may be hard to follow for the viewer. A more efficient way to communicate your milestones' details is to have them displayed directly on their corresponding bubbles. If you want to go with this suggestion, then you need to:
i.Remove the legend: Go to the Chart tab and unselect the box for Legend under Chart Options.
ii.Add bubble labels displaying the milestones’ descriptions and due dates: From the Series tab, tick the boxes for Show Series Name and Values, making sure to select X from the dropdown menu, as shown in the picture below:
Within the same tab, you can change the labels' position using the Location feature, or their date & time format from the Value Data Format section. In my example, I kept the centered placement of the label, but selected None from the Time dropdown menu.
Next, you will need to make the label text more visible by adjusting its size and color. Select all the milestone labels (Shift + Click) and use the Font options within the Bubble Labels tab on the right. I chose to change the font from Regular Helvetica Neue to Bold Helvetica and decrease it from 12 to 10 points.
Seeing that the numerical values from the vertical axis overlap some of the milestone titles and don’t add much to the overall meaning of the chart, I decided to remove them. To do the same, go to Axis → Value (Y) and select None from the dropdown menu under Value Labels.
You may also want to remove the horizontal lines from the graphic as they aren't really relevant to the timeline. To do this, from the Value (Y) tab, go to Major Gridlines and select None from the dropdown menu.
Adding vertical lines to the chart will help you highlight the relative distance between milestones. This is done from the Value (X) tab and requires you to:
i.Choose the type of gridlines you prefer from the dropdown menus under the Major and Minor Gridlines sections. I opted for straight gray lines of 0.5 points for both of them.
ii.Insert more intermediary vertical lines from the Axis Scale section, increasing the number of Minor Steps.
Given that the uppermost milestone of my timeline was not fully included in my gridline area, I corrected that by returning to the Value (Y) tab and setting the Max Scale value under Axis Scale to 5.
Once all the steps above have been carried out, the resulting timeline looks like the one below:
4. Customize your Pages timeline
At this point, your timeline could use a few customizations to look more unique. Here are a few suggestions:
Timeline Creation Tool For Mac Free
Change the default colors of the chart bubbles - select the milestone you want to recolor, go to the Style tab and use the color indicator next to Fill. Here is how I set the chromatics for my graphic.
Add effects - from the same Style section, you can choose to apply a series of effects such as shadows and strokes. Make sure to select all the chart bubbles (Shift + Click) before making the styling change. Since I didn’t want to burden my graphic too much, I only added a simple black outline using the Stroke feature.
Add a title to your timeline - select the chart area, go to the Chart tab and tick the box for Title under Chart Options. If you want to change the font, size, alignment and color of the title text, double-click on it and use the options from the small pane on the right.
After following the steps above and adjusting sizes a bit more, my final timeline in Pages looks like this:
How to make a timeline online automatically
Timeline Creator App For Mac
Professionals can illustrate simple plans with timelines built in Pages, but they may encounter limitations in terms of customization and flexibility when dealing with more complex project data.
Creating professional visuals that can be easily updated becomes easier with Office Timeline Online . Allowing you to automatically generate an eye-catching graphic from any browser, the tool also offers a variety of features to help you quickly customize and update your timelines, which can then be downloaded and shared as a .pptx file or .png image. To get started, access the free online timeline maker here and follow the steps below.
1. Add your project's data in Office Timeline Online
Select Timeline from scratch from the New tab in the web app to start building your timeline. You also have the option to choose one of the pre-designed templates provided or to import a schedule from an existing Excel file. In my example, I chose to make a new timeline from scratch.
After selecting Timeline from scratch, you'll be taken to the tool's Data View, where you can enter and edit your project's details.
Enter your milestones and their due dates in the Data View section to generate your timeline in real time, the live preview of which can be seen on the right. Using the Data tab, you can also make a few preliminary styling choices, such as selecting the shape and color for each milestone. Once done, you can access your graphic in full size and personalize it further by clicking either on the preview image to the right or on the Timeline tab on the ribbon.
2. Quickly customize and update your timeline
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Now that your timeline has been created, you can easily customize and update it as often as necessary. Use the Timeline View to quickly set different colors, shapes, and sizes for your milestones, move them above or below the timeband, or add extras such as Time Elapsed and Today Marker. As you can see in the image below, my final timeline includes milestones and texts of different colors and sizes, which helps me draw attention to key details of my plan.
If you have a free Office Timeline Online account, you can automatically save your timelines in the cloud, access them at any time, and instantly update them when necessary. Add and edit data in the Data tab or adjust due dates directly on the timeline, simply by dragging your milestones left or right. Once ready, your timeline can be downloaded as an editable PowerPoint slide that you can share with colleagues or present in meetings.