Projects: how to plan your project
Plan your project with a clear structure, defined responsibilities and a realistic timeline. With Projects, you can organize work using different item types, connect tasks with dependencies and visualize everything in the Gantt view.
Once your project is set up, you can convert it into a project template to reuse the same structure and save time on future projects.
Understand project-related work items
Inside a project, your work is organized using the following item types:
| Item | What it’s for | Best used when | Key characteristics |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tasks | To-do items or deliverables | You need to track work to be completed | Flexible, no owner, start or due date required |
| Subtasks | Smaller steps within a task | A task has multiple steps | Created within tasks and always linked to a parent task |
| Milestones | Key achievements | You want to highlight important progress points | Track progress, not work |
| Activities | Scheduled events (calls, meetings) | You need to plan time-based interactions | Requires date, time and owner. Can sync to your external calendar. |
A simple way to think about it:
- Use tasks and subtasks for work that needs to be done
- Use milestones to mark important progress points
- Use activities for time-based events
What details can you add to each item
Each item type includes different fields to help you plan and track your project.
| Item | Key details you can add | Key differences |
|---|---|---|
| Tasks, subtasks and milestones | Subject, multiple assignees, priority, start and due date, project, phase, group, description | Tasks can include subtasks. Subtasks are created within tasks and can’t include other subtasks. Milestones don’t include subtasks. |
| Activities | Subject, activity type, date and time, priority, guests, location, video call, notes, links to project, contact and organization, phase and group | Assigned to one user and can be synced to your external calendar |
Plan your project
You can plan your project in the project detail view, using both the plan and Gantt views.
- The plan view helps you structure and organize work
- The Gantt view helps you visualize timelines and dependencies
Add project work items
To start planning, add tasks, activities or milestones to your project. You can either:
- Add items with full details using “+ Task” or the dropdown next to it to select “+ Activity” or “+ Milestone”
- Add item placeholders directly in a phase and fill in details later
Edit and update items
When you open any work item, its detail view becomes the central place to refine your project plan.
Here, you can update fields such as assignee, priority, dates and description, as well as add notes to provide additional context for your team.
For tasks, you can also break down more complex work into smaller steps by adding subtasks. This helps you manage detailed work without losing the project’s overall structure.
You can also define dependencies to connect tasks and milestones, ensuring work happens in the right order.
Open a task or milestone, go to the dependencies tab, click “Add dependency”, then select a task and define the relationship.
A work item can either block another task or wait for one to be completed.
Use the Gantt view for timeline planning
The Gantt view gives you a visual overview of your entire project timeline, helping you understand how tasks, subtasks, activities and milestones connect over time.
Click “Expand view” to get a broader perspective of your project.
You can also adjust how time is displayed by switching between day, week, month, quarter or year.
Dependencies appear as arrows between tasks and milestones, making it easy to see how work is connected and which items rely on each other. You can also adjust these dependencies directly in the timeline to quickly update task relationships.
When planning or updating your project, you can interact with the timeline directly. Drag a work item to reschedule it or adjust its duration by dragging its edges.
These changes are reflected across your project, so you can quickly respond to updates without manually editing each item.
Reuse your plan setup with templates
Once your project plan is complete, you can turn it into a project template and reuse the same structure in future projects.
To do this, open your project, click “…” and select “Convert to template”.
Over time, maintaining templates based on real project plans helps your team work more efficiently and reduces the need to rebuild processes from scratch.
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