Creating a Timeline

Enable editing in Timeline to build out your project plan. Import a schedule from a third party or build it out manually. 

Add Activities and Milestones to map out your execution plan. Use parent Phases and simple scheduling logic, such as predecessors and successors, to structure your project.

Creating Activities

To create a new activity (Phases, Tasks, and Events) on your project, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the Timeline page and select Enable editing
2. Click the + New Activity button
   1. A new row is added at the bottom of your workspace view
3. Rename the New Activity
4. Fill out the following fields to schedule your activity:
   1. Duration - # of days (in workdays)
   2. Predecessor - Select an activity that must finish before this activity can start
   3. Successor - Select an activity that can’t start until this activity finishes
   4. Start Date - Start date of the activity (or rely on predecessor to schedule)
   5. End Date - End date of the activity (or rely on duration to schedule)

Creating Milestones 

To create a new milestone on your project from the Timeline, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the Timeline page and select Enable editing
2. Click the + New Milestone button
3. Fill out all of the required fields below:
   1. Milestone Name 
   2. Milestone Start Date
   3. Milestone Design Phase - Select the corresponding design phase for the Milestone
4. Click the Create and Publish button

Creating Parent Phases

Group a set of activities under a shared heading or parent phase. This can be done in two ways:

Option 1 - Nesting & Unnesting

• Right-click on an activity to open the menu
• Select Nest or Unnest to create and remove parent phases

Option 2 - Drag & Drop Activities

• Select an activity or group of activities and drag/drop them to a new location.

• Or, drop the selected activities onto another activity to nest them as children. 

Scheduling Activities and Defining Dependencies

Schedule Activities or Milestones just like a traditional project plan by establishing dependencies between them. Dependencies control how one activity’s timing affects another, and our platform supports all four standard relationship types:

• FS (Finish-to-Start) - Default / Most common
• FF (Finish-to-Finish) - Aligned completions
• SS (Start-to-Start) - Aligned starts
• SF (Start-to-Finish) - Least common

You can define relationships in two ways:

Option 1 - Table View (Predecessor & Successor Columns)

• Select an activity from the dropdown
• Or, type the line number + relationship code (e.g., L02SS). Defaults to FS if unspecified.

Option 2 - Gantt Chart (Drag & Connect)

• Hover over an activity bar to reveal connection points.
• Drag from one end to another activity to create a relationship (e.g., Finish-to-Start)..

Manually Scheduled Activities

Manually Scheduled Activities are not affected by the automatic scheduling engine. Their start and end dates remain fixed unless you intentionally change them — they do not shift based on nested activities, dependencies, or scheduling logic.

This gives you full control over when certain work shouldn’t follow traditional scheduling rules. 

Scheduling Cycles

Scheduling cycles can be created if invalid dependencies are defined within Timeline. To resolve the cycle, select a path that best suits your intended action.

Importing Schedules

Join supports importing schedules created in other tools, such as Oracle Primavera P6, Microsoft Project, Planera, and Phoenix. Learn more.