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Phase Gate Timelines from Smartsheet

Build a phase gate timeline from your Smartsheet projects using OnePager

If you are a Smartsheet user and need to track key milestones or phase gates across multiple projects, OnePager gives you a way to present them in a simple, data-driven timeline. OnePager imports the key milestones directly from Smartsheet and builds a phase gate timeline in just a few minutes.

Multi-Project phase timeline created using projects from Smartsheet.

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OnePager integrates with Smartsheet to create eye-catching, data-driven timelines in flash. Once you have imported your Smartsheet plan into OnePager, you can adjust shapes, colors, swimlanes, layouts, and more. Don't have OnePager yet? Download a 15-day trial and follow along with the instructions below to get started:

  1. Begin by opening your first Smartsheet plan. This example shows several phases, each with a phase gate milestone that we want to display on our timeline. You can filter your Smartsheet project so that only selected tasks and milestones appear in your timeline. To do this, we've added a OnePager checkbox field to Smartsheet, checked the boxes next to each phase gate milestone, and saved the Smartsheet project:

    Smartsheet project with phase gates

    To add a checkbox column to Smartsheet, right-click on the Task Name column, choose Insert Column Left, and create a Checkbox column named OnePager.

  2. If you plan to build your phase gate timeline from multiple Smartsheet projects, repeat the previous step so that all of the Smartsheet projects feeding the timeline have their phase gates checked for import into OnePager.

  3. Now, go to your desktop or Windows Start menu, and launch OnePager:

    Launch OnePager from your desktop.

  4. When the OnePager start screen appears, click on New to start building a new timeline from Smartsheet:

    OnePager start screen.

  5. On the import wizard, choose Select > BROWSE Smartsheet:

    Browse Smartsheet projects from OnePager.

  6. If you've never logged into Smartsheet from OnePager before, Smartsheet will ask you for your username and password:

    Log into Smartsheet from OnePager.

    After logging in, Smartsheet will ask you whether you want to Allow OnePager to access your Smartsheet data. Once you click Allow, OnePager should be able to log into Smartsheet automatically going forward so that you don't have to keep entering your username and password each time.

  7. Now, select the project(s) that you want to import from Smartsheet. If you want to import more than one project, you can hold down the Ctrl key to select multiple Smartsheet projects at once:

    Import multiple Smartsheet projects into a single timeline.

  8. With your Smartsheet projects selected, give your timeline a name, and click Next:

    Name the timeline that you're about to create from Smartsheet.

  9. Double-check that the Smartsheet columns OnePager has selected are the ones that you want to use, then click Create new chart:

    Chose which columns from Smartsheet you want to use in your timeline.

  10. OnePager will import the selected milestones from your different Smartsheet projects, and create a chart that initiallly looks like this. In the following steps, we'll show you how to customize colors and layouts.

    Initial Gantt chart created in OnePager from multiple Smartsheet projects.

Customizing Colors and Layouts

The initial chart that we created from Smartsheet is good, but we might want to add some color and adjust the layout so that it is in more of a timeline format instead of a Gantt chart. The instructions in this section will show you how.

  1. We want our chart to have a single row for each Smartsheet project, with all milestones for a given project lined up in sequence. To do this, go to Home > Chart Properties > Rows/Swimlanes and change the Task Layout to a Timeline based on the Project Name:

    Switch from a Gantt chart layout to a timeline layout, where all of the milestones for each Smartsheet project are lined up in a single row.

  2. Click OK and the timeline will now look like this, with all of the milestones in a single row for each Smartsheet project:

    Timeline layout, with all milestones in a single row for each Smartsheet project.

  3. Next, we'll use conditional formatting to assign a unique shape and color to each phase gate, so that it will be easy to identify the same milestones across multiple Smartsheet projects. Go to Home > Chart Properties > Milestones and click the Manage Rules button. Once the conditional formatting editor appears, we'll set up a color and symbol rule based on the task name in Smartsheet:

    Conditional formatting assigns a color and milestone shape for each type of task in Smartsheet.

  4. Click OK twice, and OnePager will apply the conditional formatting rules to your Smartsheet data so that each milestone automatically takes on a new color and symbol:

    Timeline with milestone colors and shapes assigned based on the type of Smartsheet milestone

  5. Now that we have milestones that clearly define each phase gate, we don't need the name of the milestone in the chart anymore. Instead, we can replace it with the finish date for each phase gate. To do this, go to Home > Chart Properties > Milestones. Turn off the Milestone Labels, and turn on the Date Labels instead, and then click OK:

    Show milestone dates instead of milestone names on a Smartsheet timeline.

  6. Click OK one final time, and OnePager will replace your milestone names with milestone dates, straight from Smartsheet::

    Smartsheet timeline with milestones and dates.

That's it! OnePager makes it easy to generate great-looking, data-driven project timelines directly from Smartsheet.

Get started today by downloading a free trial.

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