Getting started
The Ganttry manual
What Ganttry is, three ways to start, a five-minute tour of the app, where each role begins, and how to get help.
Ganttry is a construction scheduler for small teams. You build a project's schedule in a spreadsheet-style grid beside a Gantt chart, link the tasks, and Ganttry works out the dates. From the same project your crews get their plan on a phone, your office gets reports, and your owner gets a PDF, an Excel file or an MS Project file.
This manual has three kinds of page. Getting started is where you are now. Workflows walk you through one piece of work from start to finish. Features explain one part of the app in full. The glossary defines the words, and every column in the grid.
Three ways in
- Try the demo. The demo runs the whole editor in your browser with a sample project. It resets every time the page loads, file exports ask you to start a trial, and adding, pasting or importing tasks stops once a project has 60. It has no company account, so the pages that need one are missing: Home, People, Roster & equipment, Company, Draft and Publish, the master plan, the Day plan, crew and itinerary links with their printed sheets, project templates, calendar standards and company columns.
- Start a trial. The pricing page takes you through checkout and sets up your company with a 14-day trial. Your invitation as its admin arrives by email.
- Sign in to your company's account. Your company lives at app.ganttry.app. If someone sent you an invitation, Your account walks you through your first sign-in.
A five-minute tour
Home
When you sign in from the office you land on Home: your projects in one table, favorites first, then the ones you opened most recently, then the rest. + New project sits at the top. The Inbox on the right holds your notifications and the cheat sheet. Field accounts land on My tasks instead (see Work, My tasks and Calendar), and partner staff who belong to no company land on their partner dashboard.
The sidebar
The ☰ button at the left of the top row shows or hides the sidebar, the app's map. It lists only the places your account can open, under four headings:
| Heading | Pages |
|---|---|
| Planning | Home, My tasks, Projects, Master plan, Calendar |
| Resources | Roster & equipment, Crew planning, People: set up the list, plan the counts, book the names |
| Insights | Reports |
| Administration | Company |
Under them, Recent lists the five projects you opened last, then All projects.
The editor
Open a project and you are in the editor: the grid on the left, the Gantt chart on the right. It has two rows at the top.
- The top row names the project (click the name for its settings) and carries its tabs: Schedule, Work, Dashboard (see the project Dashboard) and Crew planning. On the right are the save chip, the bell, the ? button and your avatar.
- The bottom row starts with four menus, File ▾, Export ▾, Tools ▾ and Format ▾, then the buttons you use all day: undo, insert and delete a task, indent, link, zoom, Critical, Baseline, Crew and Views.
The editor's toolbar lists every button and menu item.
Find your role
Start from the work you do; each tile lists the pages for it. Who can see and do what explains the roles — Admin, Editor and Field — and partner staff.
I plan schedules
Build the schedule, keep it current and publish it.
I run crews in the field
The day's work on paper or on a phone.
I run the company
People, licenses, standards and your other tools.
I'm a partner
Your clients' companies, looked after.
Finding help
- The ? button. The ? at the right of the top row opens Help & support. The same dialog opens from Tools ▾ → Help & support…, from Help & support… in your avatar menu, and from Help & support at the foot of the sidebar.
- Call or email us. The dialog gives our support line, 888-508-5777, and our address, [email protected]. We reply within one business day.
- Send a message. Under Send us a message, pick a Topic (Support, Feature request or Question), type your message and press Send message. If the message can't go through the app, Ganttry opens a draft in your own email program instead. You can also write to us from the contact page.
- Keyboard shortcuts. Keyboard shortcuts… (in the help dialog, the avatar menu and Tools ▾) lists every shortcut. At its foot, Print… opens the two-page cheat sheet, ready for the trailer wall, and In the manual opens the shortcuts page in a new tab; it has the same list.
- The cheat sheet. Home's Inbox keeps the cheat sheet at the bottom, with Open on ganttry.app, Full manual and 🖨 Print / PDF. It is also on the cheat sheet page.
- Find in a project. Ctrl+F searches the open project's task names, notes, quantities, Activity IDs and your own columns. Jumping to a match opens any phase that was folded away.
- The column guide. Column guide… in the help dialog explains every column in the grid. Column glossary in the manual, at the guide's foot, opens the glossary in a new tab; it has the same entries.
- This manual. Manual…, after Column guide… in the help dialog, opens this manual in a new tab and leaves the dialog open. The printed cheat sheet gives its address, ganttry.app/docs, at the top of its first page.
Everything in this manual
Getting started
- Who can see and do whatThe three roles, Admin, Editor and Field, what each can see and change, who can publish, partner staff, crews with only a link, and who needs a license.
- Your account: sign in, profile and passwordYour first sign-in from an invitation, what you see first, your photo, name and email, how long you stay signed in, and what to do about a forgotten password.
Workflows
Plan and schedule 9
- Create a project and build its scheduleStart a new project from a template or a blank page, add tasks, durations and links, and watch the Gantt chart and the critical path build.
- Bring in a schedule from MS Project, P6 or ExcelBring a schedule into Ganttry from Microsoft Project, Primavera P6 or a spreadsheet, and update a project in place when a newer file arrives.
- Publish the plan crews seePut a project into Draft so crews keep a checked plan while you work, then publish it to them, alone or several projects at once from the master plan.
- Update progress and the data dateSave a baseline, then at each update set the data date, record actual dates and percent complete, log weather days, and read planned against reported progress.
- Check the schedule before you submit itRun the schedule quality checks, work through each failing check, re-run until the score is where you want it, then send the report with your submittal.
- Print the 3-week lookahead and other paperFilter the schedule to the next three weeks, print it as a one-page lookahead, save the view and the print settings, and export to Excel, CSV or MS Project.
- Find and restore an earlier versionSave a version of a project by name, find it or an automatic save in History, look at it, compare it with today's plan and restore it, and copy, archive or bring back whole projects.
- Write the monthly schedule updateProduce the monthly schedule update narrative from the changes since the last update, edit it, and send it as a PDF or as the body of an email.
- Report on progress, crews and equipmentPick the report that answers your question, choose its projects and weeks, drill into the numbers, and print or export them, from one project up to fifteen.
Crews and equipment 3
- Plan crews and equipment for the weeks aheadPut crew and equipment on your tasks, mark what you still need, name the people and machines, and read the weeks ahead trade by trade on Crew planning.
- Send crews their links and itinerariesMake a crew link for a project or an itinerary link for one person, check what the crew will see, send it, and turn it off when it is no longer needed.
- Book people day by dayBook people onto tasks a day at a time, book a saved crew in one move, keep a foreman on a project between tasks, clear double bookings and publish.
In the field 2
- Run the day from the handout or the Day planStart each day from the Day plan on a tablet or phone, or from the printed crew handout, and print your own week or the master sheet.
- Report progress from a phone or tabletFrom a phone or tablet, find your tasks in My tasks, then record status, percent complete, remaining days, checklist ticks and links from the site.
Run your company 4
- Set up your companyA new company admin's first hour, in order: groups, the logo and default colors, calendar standards, project types and templates, and company columns.
- Invite people, set roles and manage licensesInvite people, set their roles and groups, grant master planning, help with passwords, correct names and emails, disable or remove accounts, and buy licenses.
- Run a training courseTurn training on, build a course from a template project, give each student a copy, follow their work and check it against an answer key, then reset, archive or delete it.
- Connect other tools with webhooks and the APIFor your company's developer, set up the webhook that tells another system when a project changes, check each delivery's signature, and make read-only API tokens.
Partners 1
Features
Your company 11
- Companies, groups and rolesHow a company, its groups and each person's role decide which projects everyone sees, edits and can delete.
- The Company pageThe Company page, where a company admin runs the company, one section at a time, from users and standards to billing and training.
- Company calendar standardsCalendar standards are the company's own work calendars, which new projects copy and existing projects can adopt.
- Project types and templatesProject templates capture a finished project's structure so new projects start from it, and project types sort the templates.
- The Roster & equipment pageThe Roster & equipment page is the company's roster of people and fleet of machines, with its saved crews and the trade and machine type catalogs behind them.
- Integrations: webhooks and the read-only APIFor your developer, Ganttry's outbound webhook and read-only API tokens, with events, envelope, signature, endpoints, limits and how to keep them secure.
- Licenses and billingWho uses a license, how a company buys and manages licenses through Stripe, trials, a late payment, and what happens after a cancellation.
- The partner programThe partner program lets a reseller run client companies on Ganttry, with partner staff, a partner dashboard and monthly invoiced billing.
- Invitations and password resetsHow a company admin invites people with a link instead of a password, and how invite and reset links, forgotten passwords and admin resets work.
- Security and sign-inWhat protects your account and your company in Ganttry, from wrong-password lockouts and sign-in lifetimes to the activity feed and disabling a user.
- TrainingTraining runs instructor-led courses, where each student practices in their own copy of a template project and the trainer follows every copy.
Projects and the editor 9
- HomeHome is your starting page — your projects grouped by favorites and recent use, your notifications, and the cheat sheet.
- Getting around: the sidebar, pages and page addressesHow Ganttry's frame fits together — the top row, the sidebar, Go to, page heads, the Back button, page addresses you can share, and presenting to a room.
- The editor's toolbarThe editor's two toolbar rows — the project's name and chips on top, the File, Export, Tools and Format menus and the everyday buttons below.
- Creating a projectStart a project blank or from your company's project templates, set its details before anything is saved, or copy one you already have.
- On phones and tabletsWhat changes when you open Ganttry on a phone or a tablet, and which work each size of screen suits.
- AccessibilityWhat Ganttry's frame and its two grids guarantee for keyboard and screen-reader users, how each promise is checked, and what no test covers.
- Editing in the gridHow the editor's grid works — selecting and editing cells, moving and indenting rows, header and blank rows, columns, and what undo covers.
- Company columnsColumns your company defines once — a name, a type and its choices — that planners add to any project, and that crews see in the field.
- Copy, paste and fillCopy and paste tasks with their links, paste a block from Excel, paste it as new tasks, and fill a series down with the fill handle.
Scheduling 9
- Scheduling: durations, links, dates and floatHow Ganttry works out your dates — durations, links and lag, constraints and deadlines, work calendars, float and the critical path.
- Baselines and varianceSave up to five named baselines, choose the active one, and see how far each task has slipped against it in the grid, on the Gantt and in exports.
- Cost loading and cash flowPut a budget on each task with the Cost column, and Ganttry spreads it over the work to draw your planned, earned and baseline cash-flow curves.
- Colors and textStyle rows with bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, text color and size, and tint tasks with named color tags that carry into the Gantt, PDFs and Excel.
- The Gantt chartThe Gantt chart beside the grid — dragging bars, zooming, reading the tooltip, splitting a task, work patterns, the crew histogram and baseline bars.
- Filters, saved views and the 3-week lookaheadNarrow the grid and Gantt to the work you care about — the one-click 3-week lookahead, combined filters, and saved views — and print or export just that.
- Saving, history and opening projectsGanttry saves as you work, keeps named versions and automatic saves you can look at, compare and restore, holds every project in one library, and never overwrites a teammate's save silently.
- Print and exportPrint the schedule as a PDF on the paper size you need with saved settings, and export it to Excel, CSV or MS Project XML — and what each format keeps.
- Importing a projectBring in a schedule from MS Project XML, Primavera P6 XER, Excel or CSV — and update a project in place when the next month's file arrives.
Crews, equipment and reports 7
- Crew planning and the crew you still needThe Crew planning page lays out one project's crew and equipment demand day by day or week by week, and shows the crew you still need to find.
- Equipment on tasksA task can carry the machine types it needs, with a quantity, the specific machines and people assigned to fill them, and the tools its crew should bring.
- PeoplePeople books your company's roster day by day across every project, and shows who works where, which tasks are still short, and who is free.
- ReportsThe Reports page gathers every report in one library, across projects or for one project, and says which plan of each project it reads.
- Crew and equipment reportsThree reports read crew and equipment across your projects, what the plans call for, who and what is booked where, and the three-week sheet for the site.
- Shared coverageA coverage set joins tasks in one project that share the same crew or machines, so the people and machines they share are counted once.
- The project DashboardThe Dashboard is a one-page readout of one project's progress and schedule checks, computed live from the schedule.
Plans and publishing 6
- Draft and Publish: the plan crews seePut a project into Draft to keep editing while crews keep seeing the plan you last published, then publish when it is ready.
- The master planThe master plan lays several projects on one date axis, so you can plan them together, see who is double-booked, and publish them to crews at once.
- Progress tracking and the Projects pageRecord progress with a data date and actuals, then compare planned and reported progress across every project on the Projects page.
- The schedule update narrativeThe schedule update narrative drafts the written part of a monthly update, from what changed since the previous progress update.
- Contract days and weather daysThe contract-day ledger counts the working days charged against a contract, records weather and other excepted days, and forecasts where the project will land.
- Schedule quality checksSchedule quality checks run 16 checks adapted from the DCMA 14-point assessment and give the schedule a score before you submit it.
In the field 4
- Work, My tasks and CalendarWork, My tasks and Calendar are where crews run the plan, on a phone, a tablet or a desktop, and report progress without touching the schedule.
- Crew links and itinerariesA crew link shows a project's day plan on a phone without signing in, and an itinerary link shows one person's plan across every project they are on.
- The Day planThe Day plan shows your own work day by day across every project you are on, the same view a crew link gives, for anyone signed in.
- Crew paper: the handout, the itinerary and the master sheetCrew paper is the printed backup for the field, the crew handout, the itinerary, My week and the master week and day sheets.
Reference
- GlossaryPlain definitions of Ganttry's terms, then of every column in the grid.
- Keyboard shortcutsThe keyboard shortcuts the app lists, then the keys each page shows along its foot.
- Questions and answersShort answers to the questions people ask most about Ganttry, each with a link to the page that explains more.
Describes Ganttry 1.15.0. Something wrong or missing? Tell us.