Every project is really a sequence: the foundation before the framing, the framing before the drywall, the drywall before the paint. Your project’s Schedule tab has a Gantt view built for exactly that — a horizontal timeline where every task is a bar, and you can see the whole run of the job at a glance, wire tasks together in the right order, and slide things around when plans change.
This article covers what makes the Gantt view worth living in: seeing the whole job at once, adding tasks as fast as you can type them, giving undated tasks their dates right on the timeline, linking tasks into a dependency chain, moving a task and letting everything downstream follow, and color-coding your bars so a busy schedule is easy to read.
Getting to the Gantt View
Open a project and go to its Schedule tab. In the top corner you’ll see a Calendar / Gantt toggle — switch it to Gantt and your tasks lay out as bars along a timeline.
Across the top you’ve got your controls:
Today jumps back to now.
Zoom to fit lays the whole schedule across the width of the chart. More on that just below.
A Day / Week / Month dropdown sets how tightly the timeline is zoomed, and the magnifying-glass buttons zoom in and out a notch at a time.
All Events narrows down what’s shown on the chart.
AI opens your AI actions: Color Code Tasks recolors every task by your coloring rules (see Automatic Task Coloring), and Generate Tasks and Schedule builds a task list from your scope (see Generating Tasks and a Schedule from Your Scope).
Add Task opens the full task form. To add a run of tasks quickly, type them straight into the + Add task line at the bottom of the task list (more below).
Tasks that don’t have dates yet still get a row. It’s just empty, waiting for you to fill it in, and you can do that right on the timeline.
Seeing the Whole Job with Zoom to Fit
The Gantt view opens zoomed to fit. Eano picks the scale that stretches your schedule, from the first task to the last, across the full width of the chart, so the whole job is in view without any scrolling. A two-week punch list gets a day-by-day spread, and a six-month remodel gets weeks or months. While you’re zoomed to fit, the dropdown reads Fit.
To get up close to one stretch of the job, pick Day, Week, or Month from the dropdown, then fine-tune with the magnifying-glass buttons. (Those are greyed out while you’re in Fit.) Whenever you want the big picture back, click Zoom to fit.
On a long schedule, a one-day task can shrink to a sliver. When a bar gets that small, its name is hidden and it’s too small to drag or stretch. Pick Day to zoom in and it’s back to normal.
The fit is worked out when the Gantt opens. If you add tasks, change dates, or resize your window, click Zoom to fit again to re-fit everything.
Adding and Renaming Tasks Right in the Gantt
When you already know the steps of a job, you shouldn’t have to open a form for every one of them. The task list on the left of the Gantt ends in a + Add task line. Think of it as a notepad pinned to the bottom of your schedule: click once, then just keep typing.
Click + Add task at the bottom of the task list.
Type the task’s name, like “Clear the site,” and press Enter (Return on a Mac).
The task is saved and you’re straight back on a fresh + Add task line. Type the next one, “Get dumpster scheduled,” press Enter again, and keep going for as long as you like.
You don’t have to wait between tasks. While they save, a small Saving… note under the line counts how many are still on their way. This works on a brand-new project with no tasks at all, too.
Each new task starts with just a name: no dates, no one assigned, no description. It shows up as an empty row just above + Add task, ready for you to give it dates right on the timeline (see the next section) or to open and fill in the rest. When you want to set everything at once, the Add Task button at the top still opens the full form.
To rename a task, click its name in the task list. The name turns into a text box. Make your change, then press Enter or click anywhere else to save it. Press Esc to back out without changing anything. If you clear the name out completely, the task keeps its old name.
Clicking elsewhere on a row, away from the name, still scrolls the timeline to that task, and clicking its bar still opens the full task details.
A few details:
Only tasks. Milestone names can’t be edited here, since they come from your payment schedule.
Assignees hear about a rename. Anyone assigned to the task gets a note that its name changed. New tasks have no one assigned yet, so adding them doesn’t notify anybody.
The usual permission rules apply. Unless you’re an Owner or Admin, you can only rename tasks you created or are assigned to.
If a save fails, say your connection drops, the line tells you. For a new task it reads Failed: followed by the task’s name, and pressing Enter tries again without losing anything you’ve started typing. For a rename it reads Save failed, and editing the name tries again.
Don’t see the task list? If it’s been tucked away with Hide Table, click the small arrow at the top-left of the chart (Show Table) to bring it back.
It works on a project’s own schedule. The + Add task line is on the project’s Schedule tab, not the company-wide Schedule page.
Not while you’re linking. In connector mode, the task names aren’t editable. Finish or cancel the link first.
Scheduling an Undated Task on the Timeline
Tasks without dates sit at the bottom of the Gantt as empty rows. To give one its dates, go to its row on the timeline and:
Click a day to schedule it for just that day, or
Click and drag across the days it should run. A preview bar follows your mouse, so you can see the range before you commit, and you can drag in either direction.
Let go and it’s saved. The task slides into place among your dated tasks, and the chart scrolls to it. Changed your mind partway through a drag? Press Esc before you let go, and nothing is saved.
A few details:
Whole days only. Clicking and dragging books full days. If a task needs specific times, like 1 to 3 PM, open it and set them there.
It only touches that task. Even with Cascade dependencies on, scheduling an undated task doesn’t move anything else.
Skip weekends applies. Whenever there’s an undated task on the chart, the Skip weekends checkbox shows, even with Cascade off. With it ticked, a range that starts on a weekend begins the following Monday, and one that ends on a weekend finishes the Friday before. Only Saturdays and Sundays are skipped here, not holidays. Untick it to schedule weekend work.
Assignees hear about it. Just like moving a single task, its assignees get a note about the new dates.
It works on a project’s own schedule. Do this from the project’s Schedule tab, not the company-wide Schedule page.
Starting from scratch? If none of the project’s tasks have dates yet, or there aren’t any tasks at all, the Gantt shows the next few weeks a day at a time, starting this week, so you have somewhere to draw. Today jumps you to today’s date.
Linking Tasks with Dependencies
A dependency says “this can’t start until that’s done” — you can’t paint before the drywall’s up. Linking your tasks this way keeps the running order honest, and it’s what powers the cascade you’ll read about below.
Hover over any task bar and you’ll notice a small dot appear at each end. That dot is where a connection starts. There are two ways to draw one, and you can use whichever feels natural:
Click and drag. Press on the dot, drag over to the task you want to connect, and let go. Quick when the two tasks are sitting near each other.
Click, then click. Give the dot a single click and let go. The view drops into connector mode — a banner appears reading “Click another task to connect with” the task you started from, the other controls step aside, and now you just click the second task to make the link. This is the easy way to connect two tasks that are far apart on the timeline, where dragging across the screen is fiddly.
Once linked, an arrow runs from the first task to the second, and the second now depends on the first.
To back out of connector mode without linking anything, click Cancel in the banner, press Esc, or just click somewhere outside the schedule. Nothing changes until you actually click a second task.
To remove a dependency, double-click the arrow between two tasks.
A couple of things the schedule won’t let you do, on purpose: a task can’t depend on itself, you can’t add the same link twice, milestone bars don’t take part in dependencies (those are driven by your payment schedule, not by task sequencing), and neither do recurring tasks. Try to link a task that repeats and the schedule says Repeating tasks cannot have dependencies. See Setting Up Recurring Tasks.
Seeing “Permission denied”? Unless you’re an Owner or Admin, you can only drag, stretch, schedule, rename, or link the tasks you created or are assigned to, and for a link, what counts is the task that’s doing the waiting. The task list shows who made each task. More in Who Can Change a Task.
Move Mode vs. Cascade Mode
Here’s the part that saves real time. When a date slips — the concrete sub can’t pour on time, a key material is stuck in shipping, the client needs a week to sort out financing — it’s rarely just one task that moves. If the foundation slides three days, everything waiting on the foundation slides three days too. Rearranging all of that by hand, one bar at a time, is exactly the tedious afternoon nobody wants.
So the Gantt view gives you two modes, and a Cascade dependencies toggle at the top-left to switch between them:
Move mode (the default) is the classic behavior. Drag a task and only that task moves. Its dependencies stay exactly where they are. This is the right mode when you’re fixing a single date in isolation and don’t want any ripple.
Cascade mode is the time-saver. Turn the toggle on, and when you drag a task, everything downstream of it moves by the same amount, automatically:
Drag a task later and every task that depends on it — and everything that depends on those — shifts later by the same number of days.
Drag a task earlier and the whole downstream chain shifts earlier by that same amount.
The cascade only ever affects tasks downstream of the one you moved. Anything upstream, or off on an unrelated branch, stays put. If you have A → B → C → D and you move C, only D follows.
The spacing between tasks is preserved. If you push a task out five days, everything after it moves five days too — the gaps you built into the schedule stay intact instead of getting swallowed up.
Resizing works the same way. Drag a task’s end date and the downstream chain shifts to match. Dragging a task’s start date only — making it begin earlier or later without changing when it ends — doesn’t cascade, since nothing after it needs to move.
While a cascade is running, the schedule locks for a moment and shows “Updating schedule…” — that’s it saving all the moved tasks together. If something goes wrong, the whole move is undone and you’ll get an error asking you to try again, so you never end up with a half-shifted schedule.
The toggle remembers your choice for each project, right in your browser. Set a project to Cascade and it’ll still be in Cascade next time you open its schedule on the same computer. Switch to a different browser or computer and it starts fresh in Move mode.
One helpful touch: hover any task bar and the tooltip tells you which mode you’re in and what a drag will do — “You’re in cascade mode. Changing the timeline on this item will automatically move downstream dependencies forward” versus “You’re in move mode… Dependencies are unaffected.” When you’re not sure, hover before you drag.
Keeping a Cascade Off the Weekend
Most crews don’t work Saturdays, and a cascade that lands the tile work on a Sunday isn’t much help. So the moment you turn Cascade dependencies on, a Skip weekends checkbox appears next to it, already ticked.
With it on, a cascade shifts tasks by a number of working days instead of calendar days. Push a Friday task forward one day and it lands on Monday. Push a Wednesday-to-Friday task forward one day and it comes out Thursday-to-Monday — still three working days, just stretched across the weekend. Major US holidays count as days off too.
It shapes a cascade, and it shapes giving an undated task its dates (see above). Dragging a task in Move mode puts it exactly where you drop it, weekend or not, so when Cascade is off and every task already has dates, the checkbox isn’t there. And like the Cascade toggle beside it, your choice is remembered per project in your browser.
There’s a separate setting for how weekend work is drawn on your calendar, plus the full holiday list and the exceptions, in Keeping Weekends and Holidays Off Your Schedule.
Color-Coding Your Tasks
When a schedule gets deep, a wall of same-colored bars is hard to scan. Color-coding fixes that — tint plumbing blue, electrical yellow, general labor orange, and you can read the shape of the job in a glance.
You set a task’s color when you create or edit it. In the task form, look for the color swatch next to the title, click it, and pick from the palette (the same set of colors you use for tags). The default is a plain white swatch, which means “no color set.” A little preview shows how the task name will look in the color you’ve picked.
That color then follows the task everywhere it matters:
On the Gantt view, the task’s bar takes its color.
On the project’s Calendar view (Month, Week, or Day), the task’s tile takes its color.
In the task list, the color rides along too.
If you leave a task’s color unset, it isn’t drab gray — it falls back to your project’s own color, so it still reads as part of that job. That means you can color just the handful of tasks you want to make pop and let everything else sit in the project color.
One scope note: this is per-project color-coding. On the project’s own schedule, your task colors show. On the global Schedule page — where you’re looking across every project at once — Eano keeps things colored by project so you can still tell one job from another at a glance.
A Few Things Worth Knowing
Cascade moves don’t notify anyone. Dragging a single task in Move mode sends its assignees a note about the new dates. A cascade stays silent — deliberately, so one delay doesn’t fire off a message for every task in the chain — and that silence covers even the bar you dragged. After a big cascade, give the people affected a heads-up yourself. More on task notifications in Organizing Work with the Tasks Tab.
Cascade is a mode, not a one-time action. Nothing shifts until you actually drag a task while the toggle is on. Turning the toggle on by itself changes nothing.
Move mode is always there when you want it. Some changes really are just one task. Flip Cascade off and drag a single bar with zero side effects.
The cascade follows dependencies, so build them first. Downstream tasks only move if they’re actually linked. If a task doesn’t shift when you expected it to, check that the dependency arrow is really there.
Milestones sit this one out. Milestone bars are driven by your payment schedule, so they don’t participate in task dependencies or cascade moves.
Colors are optional. Set them on the tasks where a visual cue helps; leave the rest to inherit the project color.
The Gantt opens zoomed to fit every time. Picking Day, Week, or Month changes this visit only.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where’s the Gantt view? Open a project, go to the Schedule tab, and switch the Calendar / Gantt toggle to Gantt.
How do I see my whole schedule at once? Click Zoom to fit. The Gantt view also opens that way. To get up close to one stretch, pick Day, Week, or Month from the dropdown.
Why is my Gantt zoomed out to years? One of your tasks probably has a date far away from the rest, often a typo like 2062 instead of 2026. Zoom to fit always takes in every dated task, which makes it a handy way to catch one. Look for the bar sitting way off on its own (or scan the Due Date column), fix the date, then click Zoom to fit again.
Why are the zoom buttons greyed out? You’re zoomed to fit. Pick Day, Week, or Month from the dropdown and they come back.
How do I add a lot of tasks quickly? Click + Add task at the bottom of the Gantt’s task list, type a name, and press Enter. You’re dropped onto a fresh line for the next one, so you can type out a whole job without touching the mouse. Each task starts with just a name; give it dates on the timeline or open it to add the rest.
How do I rename a task without opening it? Click its name in the Gantt’s task list, type the new name, and press Enter or click away. Esc cancels.
How do I give an undated task dates from the Gantt? Find its empty row at the bottom, then click a single day or click and drag across the days it should run. Let go to save, or press Esc first to cancel.
Why can’t I drag one of my bars? If it’s a thin sliver with no name showing, it’s too small at this zoom level. Pick Day to zoom in. If it says “Permission denied,” it’s someone else’s task (more on that below).
What’s the difference between Move and Cascade mode? In Move mode, dragging a task moves only that task. In Cascade mode, dragging a task also shifts everything downstream of it by the same amount, so a single delay ripples through the whole chain automatically. Use the Cascade dependencies toggle at the top-left to switch.
Does cascade move things both forward and backward? Yes. Drag a task later and its downstream tasks move later; drag it earlier and they move earlier — always by the same offset, and always preserving the spacing between tasks.
I moved a task in Cascade mode but nothing downstream shifted. Why? Cascade follows dependency links. If the tasks you expected to move aren’t actually linked to the one you dragged, they won’t move. Add the dependency, then try again.
How do I link two tasks? Hover a task to reveal the dots at its ends. Either drag from a dot to the other task, or single-click the dot to enter connector mode and then click the second task. To remove a link, double-click the arrow between the tasks.
Why does dragging, renaming, or linking a task say “Permission denied”? It’s someone else’s task. Unless you’re an Owner or Admin, you can only change the tasks you created or are assigned to. Being on the project isn’t enough. Ask the person who made it (the task list shows who) or an Admin.
How do I get out of connector mode without linking anything? Click Cancel in the banner, press Esc, or click anywhere outside the schedule.
How do I color a task? Open the task and click the color swatch next to its title, then pick a color. It shows up on the Gantt bar, the calendar tile, and the task list. Leaving it unset uses your project’s color.
Will my color choices show on the global Schedule page? On the global Schedule, tasks stay colored by project so you can tell jobs apart. Your per-task colors show on that project’s own schedule.
Does my mode choice stick? The Cascade toggle is remembered per project in your browser. It’ll persist on the same computer and browser, and reset to Move mode if you switch to a different one.
If I cascade a change, does my team get notified? No. Cascade moves are silent on purpose — shifting a long chain would otherwise send a notification for every task in it. Moving a single task with Cascade off does notify whoever is assigned to it. See Organizing Work with the Tasks Tab for what triggers a task notification and what doesn’t.
Related Articles
Generating Tasks and a Schedule from Your Scope — seed your schedule directly from your scope of work before you fine-tune the dependencies and dates here.
Printing Your Schedule: Exporting the Calendar to PDF — get a one-page printable PDF of the month from the full Schedule page’s Calendar view.