How do I plan and track long-term projects with Timeline?

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 integrated approach gives you both strategic oversight and detailed progress tracking in a unified interface.

Understanding the Goals & Planning Panel foundation

The Goals & Planning Panel is the strategic planning hub that drives Timeline's visualization. This hierarchical tree view shows your work organized from high-level Initiatives, Projects, Epics and provides real-time progress down to the tasks and sub-tasks your teams are completing.

The panel organizes work the top three configurable levels. You can customize the terminology and default issue types for each level to match your organization's planning vocabulary through the "Edit issue types and hierarchy" option in the panel's menu.

Default hierarchy levels displayed

Level 1: Initiatives - Strategic objectives spanning multiple quarters or years that represent major business goals driving product direction.

Level 2: Projects - Large bodies of work contributing to initiatives, with defined timelines typically spanning several months.

Level 3: Epics - Themes of work grouping related issues around specific features or capabilities that development teams can execute.

Organizing and filtering your work

The Goals & Planning Panel provides filtering and sorting options to help you focus on specific aspects of your strategic plan.

Filtering options

Use the Filters menu to narrow down what appears in both the Goals & Planning Panel and Timeline:

• Search - Enter text to find specific initiatives, projects, or epics by name
• Issue type - Filter by specific hierarchy levels (Initiative, Objective, Project, Epic, etc.)
• Status - Show only Open items, Closed (top-level), or Closed (sub-issues) to focus on active or completed work

Sorting and manual organization

The Sort menu provides options for organizing your hierarchical items. You can also manually reorder items by dragging using the six-dot grip handle that appears when hovering over any item in the panel.

When hovering over items, a three-dot menu appears providing additional options like "Add key date" and "Scroll into view" for quick navigation and milestone management.

Accessing Timeline view

Click "Timeline" in the left sidebar to access the gantt-style timeline visualization of your Goals & Planning Panel data. 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.

Understanding Timeline vs Roadmap

Timeline is Zenhub's enhanced replacement for the previous Roadmap feature, designed to handle more complex project hierarchies and provide better real-time tracking. The Timeline view displays your Goals & Planning Panel data in a gantt-style format with improved performance and enhanced drag-and-drop functionality.

Creating and organizing hierarchical 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 want technical items that integrate with your development workflow or strategic items for non-technical stakeholders.

The right panel provides quick creation buttons for each hierarchy level (Initiative, Project, Epic) allowing you to create items at the appropriate organizational level. Zenhub automatically maintains proper parent-child relationships as you build your hierarchy.

Creating at any hierarchy level

Add child items to any parent by selecting the "+" icon next to that parent item. You can either add existing items from your workspace or create new ones directly within the parent context. This works consistently whether you're adding Projects to Initiatives, Epics to Projects, or Issues to Epics.

Setting timelines and dates

When creating items with timeline significance (typically Initiatives, Projects, and Epics), set start and end dates either by dragging directly on the Timeline view or using the calendar interface. Parent items act as containers for their children and provide the timeline structure for your planning.

You can modify dates as scope and requirements evolve, and Timeline will reflect these changes across your hierarchical structure. This flexibility allows you to organize work both top-down (strategic planning) and bottom-up (emergent requirements).

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, showing accurate progress without manual updates or status reporting meetings.

Hover over any completion percentage to see detailed breakdowns including date ranges, sub-issue counts, story point totals, and progress across different workflow states (To-do, In progress, Completed). This detailed view helps you understand not just overall progress, but the distribution of work and current team focus areas.

The progress breakdown also shows sub-issues outside the current workspace, providing visibility into cross-team dependencies and work that contributes to your projects but happens in other organizational contexts.

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 to link related work items. These visual indicators help identify potential bottlenecks and coordination needs across your roadmap.

Customizing Timeline views

Timeline offers extensive viewing options accessible through the "View options" menu to match different planning needs and stakeholder requirements:

View toggles

Enable or disable specific elements to focus on relevant information:

• Key dates - Show or hide milestone pins and important deadlines
• Dependencies - Display dependency lines between connected items
• Sprints - Show sprint timelines at the top of the Timeline view
• Predicted end dates - Display forecasted completion dates based on team velocity

Progress tracking options

Choose how Timeline calculates and displays completion progress:

• % of story points completed - Progress based on estimated story point completion
• % of issues completed - Progress based on percentage of individual issues closed
• # of issues completed - Raw count of completed issues
• # of story points completed - Raw count of completed story points

Color coding schemes

Timeline provides multiple color coding options to visualize project status:

• Project status - Green (on track), yellow (at-risk), red (behind schedule) based on progress and deadlines
• Zenhub theme - Consistent color palette matching your Zenhub workspace theme
• Custom project status - Customizable status indicators for different project states

Timescale options

Switch between weeks, months, quarters, and years to focus on different planning horizons. Use weekly views for detailed sprint alignment, monthly views for tactical planning, and quarterly or yearly views for strategic communication with executives.

Key dates and milestones

Add key dates to Timeline by dropping pins on specific dates or epics. Key dates help mark important deadlines, release targets, or external commitments that influence your project scheduling. These dates remain visible as you adjust project timelines, providing anchor points for planning decisions.

Edit key dates by clicking on existing pins or accessing them through the epic management interface. Key dates can include titles and descriptions to provide context about their significance to project stakeholders.

Predicted end dates and forecasting

Timeline uses your team's historical velocity data to provide predicted end dates for epics and projects. These predictions help answer the common stakeholder question "when will this be done?" with data-driven estimates rather than guesswork.

Predicted end dates update automatically as scope changes or team velocity shifts, providing early warning when projects risk missing their deadlines. Use these predictions to proactively discuss scope adjustments or resource allocation before delays become critical.

Export and sharing capabilities

Timeline provides comprehensive sharing options through the "Share & Export" menu:

Link sharing

• Copy link to timeline - Generate direct links that allow stakeholders to view live Timeline data. A Zenhub account is required.

Image exports

• Export image (PNG) - Create high-resolution timeline images for presentations and documentation
• Export image (SVG) - Generate scalable vector graphics for professional reports and large displays

Data export

• Export spreadsheet (CSV) - Export timeline data for external analysis, reporting, or integration with other planning tools

Choose specific date ranges and filter by projects or epics to create focused exports for different audiences. Exported timelines maintain color coding and visual formatting for consistent communication across stakeholder groups.

Timeline best practices

Structure your hierarchy consistently across projects to make Timeline views predictable and easy to navigate. Establish clear criteria for what constitutes an Initiative versus a Project versus an Epic to maintain meaningful organization as your roadmap grows.

Regularly review and clean up completed items to keep Timeline focused on active and upcoming work. Archive or remove outdated projects and dependencies to prevent visual clutter and confusion about current priorities.

Use Timeline for both planning and communication by tailoring views to your audience. Show detailed execution timelines to development teams while providing high-level quarterly views to executives and stakeholders.

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, providing a company-wide perspective.

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 five hierarchy levels to match our terminology?
A: Yes, each level can be customized with your preferred terminology and default issue types to match your organization's planning vocabulary through the "Edit issue types and hierarchy" menu.

Q: How do dependencies work across different hierarchy levels?
A: Dependencies can be set between any items at the same or different hierarchy levels. Timeline visually displays these relationships with directional lines showing blocking relationships.

Q: What's the difference between Timeline and the Goals & Planning Panel?
A: Timeline provides the gantt-style visual timeline view, while Goals & Planning Panel shows the hierarchical tree structure. They work together as integrated views of the same project data.