Google Calendar - project management
Gantt charts?
To schedule business projects people often have the option to use Gantt charts ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gantt_chart ). These charts consist of a number of rows which each represent a specific task within a project. The horizontal axis shows the time which is required (or available) for the project, while separate timelines indicate how much time can or should be spent on each task. Such a visual Gantt chart gives you a perfect view of the utilisation (or underutilisation) of resources such as staff, machinery, buildings, etc.
Tip. You can find an overview of all the benefits of Gantt charts with TeamGantt ( https://goo.gl/h8W6aS) and Teamweek (https://goo.gl/59TwVB).
Various tools
There are lots of webtools which help you to represent the current state of your projects by means of Gantt charts. We previously tested services such as Ganttic ( http://www.ganttic.com ) and 5pm ( http://www.5pmweb.com ). They are handy tools as long as you enter all the project details manually or import them from other sources. Do you use the handy Google Calendar ( http://calendar.google.com ) for your professional activities? Then you should certainly give Ganttify ( http://www.gantt-chart.com ) a try. After you’ve connected this tool with your Google account, all the project details will be imported automatically. Even better, this service is completely free.
How does it work?
On the Ganttify homepage you will see a Connect with Google Calendar button. After clicking it you will be asked to confirm the connection with your Google Calendar. Next, you should choose a password for your Ganttify account. All your Google calendars will immediately be displayed in a list. Click on Open Gantt Chart to open a new window containing the Gantt chart which has been distilled from this information.
What do you see? The different calendar items are displayed chronologically according to their start time. The time division on the horizontal axis is by default set to “day” , but the menu at the top lets you can change this (from “5 minutes” to “month” ). This menu contains buttons for making a printout, having the chart updated with new data from Google Calendar, scrolling to “today” and (not) showing the weekend.
Tip. Via the Settings icon, you can customise the timeline even further (e.g. setting the start and end time of your working day). The toolbar offers a filtering option too.
Note. In principle, it should be possible to modify the start and end times of the scheduled tasks and to add deadlines by right-clicking, but in our tests this didn’t work. According to the developers of Ganttify, this issue will be dealt with.
Final verdict
Ganttify is a no-nonsense cloud tool, it doesn’t come with many options, but they will do for most purposes.
Tip. You can also connect this webtool with the popular project schedulers Basecamp ( http://www.basecamp.com ) and Trello ( http://www.trello.com ). This is free for Basecamp; for Trello, the fee is $6.99 or £5.25 per month.
Create your profile to unlock this advice and many more.