Purpose

Using Gantt Charts in Aspire is a great way to manage your Construction or Design/Build projects. They keep everything organized, on schedule, and within budget.

Think of the Gantt Chart as a visual timeline for reviewing all of your work order’s projects, including tasks, deadlines, and dependencies. Viewing your work like this helps you understand the multiple moving parts of a single project, which are displayed in Aspire as work tickets or additional tasks.

For example, if you had a Work Order Opportunity with multiple phases, using the information on the Gantt Chart would help you decide when to schedule the next phase of the project. You would not need to rely only on work ticket completion dates to make the decision.

Ultimately, the Gantt Chart can help you ensure your team has enough time or resources to complete the work needed to meet deadlines and avoid delays caused by these factors.

Here’s an example of a Gantt Chart in action:

✅ To view Gantt Charts in Aspire, you need to have the View Opportunities permission added to your user role.

✅ If you only need to view the Gantt Chart for Work Tickets, or the Work Tickets themselves, you’ll need Read Only Access to the Schedule Board added to your user role.

✅To edit the information displayed within a Gantt Chart, you’ll need to be able to edit the fields on the Opportunity Details Screen. This requires you to add either Edit Opportunities or Edit My Opportunities permission to your user role.

✅ To schedule or edit Work Tickets that are reflected within the Gantt Chart, you’ll need Full Access to the Schedule Board added to your user role.

In Aspire, you can use Gantt Charts for your Work Order Opportunities. Fixed Price Open Billing Work Orders and Gantt Charts work seamlessly together, to provide you with flexible billing as you monitor the scope of your work!

Before you can use your Gantt Chart, the opportunity you use has to be in a Status of Won so your work tickets can be generated.

💡Here’s an example!

Looks like there is a project that’s been won for a Spring Build and Landscape Work at Alora’s Place:

This project has different phases, including services for Site Prep, Paver Installation, Landscape Site Work, and Post Job Clean up.

If we look at the top of the screen, we can see the Gantt Chart tab:

If you click on it, you will see the Gantt Chart details screen.

Looking at the example below, there are line items for the Opportunity as a whole and then for each Work Ticket:

📌Note: Work Tickets don’t have to be Scheduled to appear on the Gantt Chart list, but they will be marked with an Open Status. Here’s what that looks like:

You will see the Gantt Chart start to change when Work Tickets are scheduled on the Schedule Board, and when Activities are added and tied to the Opportunity.

🧠 Did you know? If you create a Milestone, Issue, or Task and tie it to the Opportunity or Work Ticket, it will also appear on this list:

You can also use the New Button to add Activities to the Gantt Chart easily!

Appointments create physical meetings on your calendar. Tasks are internal and do not notify customers. They impact the project to make sure they are completed on time.

Issues will help you understand if any roadblocks affect progress.

Milestones do not notify customers, but serve as a benchmark, help track delivery dates, or give your internal team information on when to mark things as purchased if you are waiting on materials for a job.

The other buttons on the Gantt Chart screen allow you to view it either by month or week, giving you more details to view the timeline and progress of your project.

You can use the Month or Week View to review the Gantt Chart with more or less detail.

You can also Export or Print your Gantt Chart on this screen!

Printing or exporting your Gantt Chart is handy when you need to show visual project progress to your customers or organizational stakeholders!

When your Opportunity has its Work Tickets scheduled and Activities added, the Gantt Chart will change, as in the example below.

All of the Work Tickets have been scheduled, and a Task and Milestone have been added to the project at Alora’s Place.

Next, we will see what happens when the project is underway, and how that will affect the Gantt Chart!

Now that you have learned about the navigation for this screen, it’s important to understand what will be displayed on your Gantt Chart as your project gets underway, and what each color means!

The yellow lines displayed in the Gantt Chart explain the planned Start and End Dates of the Opportunity and its’ Work Tickets, Tasks, or Appointments. This means you will see multiple yellow lines on this chart since you have Opportunity dates, Work Ticket dates and Activity dates!

💡Remember: If the work tickets are not yet scheduled, they will default to the start date of the Work Order Opportunity until they are in Scheduled Status.

There are Work Order Opportunity-specific lines on this chart, and they are represented by the colors light grey and dark grey.

Let’s learn more about them!

The light grey line displays the Work Order Opportunity’s Start and End Dates and is located at the top of the Gantt Chart. This is helpful to quickly understand the general timeline you’ve promised the work to be completed within!

The dark grey line is housed inside of the light grey line and it displays the Work Order Opportunity’s Work in Progress and the Estimated Hours.

Next, let’s review the Work Ticket-specific lines on the chart!

The next group of lines will be displayed for each Work Ticket estimated for the opportunity.

The light green lines displayed on this chart display the Estimated Start and End Dates for each Work Ticket.

The dark green lines are housed inside the light green lines and display the Work In Progress and Estimated Hours for each Work Ticket.

Finally, the last section of lines and icons represents the Activities tied to either the opportunity itself, or to a specific work ticket. Let’s take a look!

Activities on the Gantt Chart represent Appointments, Tasks, Milestones, or Issues that have been added to the opportunity or an individual work ticket!

This blue line with the yellow bar under it displays an Appointment’s Scheduled Start and End Date.

Tasks tied to the opportunity or its work tickets are represented with blue lines on the Gantt Chart!

The light blue and yellow bars display a Task’s Estimated Start and End Dates.

The dark blue line with the yellow line under it displays a Task’s Actual Start and End Dates also known as the Completion Date for the Activity.

This replaces the light blue line above when the Task is marked as Complete.

The yellow line holds the original estimated Start and End Dates from the Activity details screen.

Because Milestones and Issues don’t have standard Start and End Dates, they are displayed differently on the Gantt Chart by using diamonds instead of lines.

📌Note: If the Milestone or Issue has not been completed, the two colors of diamonds will be displayed over each other.

The yellow diamond is displayed for Due Dates that are tied to Milestones or Issues.

The grey diamond is displayed for Completed Dates of Milestones or Issues.

📑If you need to reference these explanations quickly, click here to review our helpful chart at the bottom of this article!

If you want to see the Gantt Chart for a specific work ticket, Aspire also allows you to review the Work Ticket Gantt chart inside the Work Ticket’s detail screen.

If your internal teams involved in scheduling wanted to track the progress of the week’s job, they could. This would help them understand if the work is in progress, and see if there are any scheduling issues.!

Another reason to use an individual Work Ticket Gantt Chart is if you want to export and send the information to your customer without including the rest of the Gantt Chart details.

Finally, you could also use the individual Work Ticket Gantt Chart if a specific service requires permitting, engineering, or any external coordination, you might want to review it in greater detail instead of looking at the whole project details.

🧠Let’s look at our example for the first service of the project at Alora’s Place.

📌Note: You can also review the Work Ticket details screen from the Work Tickets module.

The individual Work Ticket Gantt Chart information will appear! This removes all other Work Ticket Gantt Chart information and the Opportunity Gantt Chart information.

If there were any Activities tied to this Work Ticket, they would also appear here.

Looks like this job is making great progress and should be done by the End Date!

Use this table below to quickly reference the Gantt Chart colors and what they mean!