Timeline Planning
Visualize and manage your long-term projects with a gantt-style view that connects strategic planning to daily execution.
Timeline provides a comprehensive gantt-style view of your long-term projects, working together with the Goals & Planning Panel to show how high-level initiatives break down into manageable work. This gives you both strategic oversight and detailed progress tracking in a unified interface.
The Goals & Planning Panel
The Goals & Planning Panel is the strategic planning hub that drives Timeline's visualization. This hierarchical tree view shows your work organized across 3 configurable levels by default.
Level 1 — Initiatives are strategic objectives spanning multiple quarters or years that represent major business goals driving product direction.
Level 2 — Projects are large bodies of work contributing to initiatives, with defined timelines typically spanning several months.
Level 3 — Epics are themes of work grouping related issues around specific features or capabilities that development teams can execute.
TIP: Level 4 issues (Stories, Tasks, Bugs) can be made visible in the Goals & Planning Panel by enabling the Level 4 toggle in the Edit issue types and hierarchy menu, accessed through the three-dot menu at the top of the panel.
Organizing and filtering
Use the Filters menu to narrow down what appears in both the Goals & Planning Panel and Timeline. You can search by name, filter by issue type (Initiative, Project, Epic), or filter by status to show only open or closed items. Use the Sort menu to organize hierarchical items, or drag using the six-dot grip handle to reorder manually.
Accessing Timeline
Click Timeline in the left sidebar to access the gantt-style visualization. Timeline is workspace-specific, showing only the projects and hierarchical work items from your current workspace. To see organization-wide projects, use the Company wide tab at the top of the Goals & Planning Panel.
NOTE: Timeline automatically migrated all existing Roadmap data, so your previous Projects and Epics are preserved in the new hierarchical structure accessible through both the Goals & Planning Panel and Timeline view.
Creating and organizing work
Create new items at any hierarchy level using the + button in the Goals & Planning Panel. Click the issue icon in the create menu to switch between GitHub issue create and Zenhub issue create depending on whether you need technical items or strategic items for non-technical stakeholders.
Add child items to any parent by selecting the + icon next to that parent item. You can add existing items from your workspace or create new ones directly within the parent context. Set start and end dates either by dragging directly on the Timeline view or using the calendar interface.
Tracking progress and dependencies
Timeline provides real-time progress tracking based on actual GitHub activity. As your team closes issues and merges pull requests, Timeline automatically updates completion percentages. Hover over any completion percentage to see detailed breakdowns including date ranges, sub-issue counts, story point totals, and progress across different workflow states.
Dependencies appear visually on Timeline with directional lines showing which epics or projects are blocking others. Add dependencies by navigating to the specific epic or project and using the dependencies interface.
Dependency chains can become complex in large projects. Regularly review dependency relationships to ensure they still reflect actual work constraints, and remove dependencies that are no longer relevant.
Customizing the Timeline view
Timeline's View options menu provides toggles for key dates, dependencies, sprints, and predicted end dates. You can also choose how progress is calculated — by percentage of story points, percentage of issues, count of issues, or count of story points — and switch between color coding schemes including Project status (green/yellow/red based on schedule) and Zenhub theme.
Switch between weeks, months, quarters, and years to focus on different planning horizons. Weekly views work well for sprint alignment, while quarterly or yearly views are better for executive communication.
Key dates and forecasting
Add key dates by dropping pins on specific dates or epics to mark important deadlines, release targets, or external commitments. Timeline uses your team's historical velocity data to provide predicted end dates that update automatically as scope changes or velocity shifts.
Exporting and sharing
Use the Share & Export menu to copy a direct link to the Timeline (requires a Zenhub account to view), export as PNG or SVG for presentations, or export as CSV for external analysis. You can filter by date range, projects, or epics to create focused exports for different audiences.
FAQ
Q: Can I see projects from multiple workspaces in a single Timeline view?
A: Yes. Use the Company wide tab to see all projects and epics across every workspace in your GitHub organization.
Q: How are predicted end dates calculated?
A: Timeline uses your team's historical velocity data from completed sprints and issues to forecast when remaining work will be completed, updating automatically as scope or velocity changes.
Q: Can I customize the hierarchy levels to match our terminology?
A: Yes. Each level can be customized with your preferred terminology through the Edit issue types and hierarchy menu, accessed via the three-dot menu at the top of the Goals & Planning Panel.
Q: What's the difference between Timeline and the Goals & Planning Panel?
A: Timeline provides the gantt-style visual view, while the Goals & Planning Panel shows the hierarchical tree structure. They work together as integrated views of the same project data.
Q: How do dependencies work across hierarchy levels?
A: Dependencies can be set between any items at the same or different hierarchy levels. Timeline displays these visually with directional lines showing blocking relationships.