Gantt chart using Microsoft Excel, PowerBI and Tableau
Gantt chart is very popular visualization to track progress of any project. It is a type of bar chart illustrating project schedule putting the task/activity list in vertical column and duration of each task/activity in the horizontal column. There are different types of this chart; I am not going through the details on gantt chart in this article (check wiki for more details on this).
Excel
Gantt chart in excel is very straight forward. We just have to go to the File>New> write ‘gantt chart’ in search bar, we will see bunch of gantt chart templates. We can choose any templates that matches with our need most and it will be created in a separate sheet.
Here is the one (below image) I use very often. Now, we can edit activities, start date, end date and duration according to our project.
Power BI
Power BI is another Microsoft product for business analytics service. It is mainly used for visualizations and business intelligence through reports and dashboards. Let’s see how we can create gantt chart in Power BI.
Power BI has some built in templates for visualizations located in the upper right corner (Red circled area in the below image) but we won’t find gantt chart here. There is a ‘Get more visuals’ button right next to the powerapps button in the visualization block (yellow highlighted in the below image); we will import gantt chart template from there.
So, let’s click the ‘Get more visuals’ button>Get more visuals (yellow highlighted in below image), then Power BI visuals window will pop up.
Now we have to search for gantt chart template in the search bar just like Microsoft excel. The search result will show us different templates of gantt chart. Most of them are free but some of them might require additional purchase to use those templates (like the green highlighted one in below image). Again, we can choose one according to our need and project by clicking the yellow ‘Add’ button next to the selected app.
This selected template will show up just below the visualization pane. I have added two (Gantt Chart by MAQ software and Gantt) of these marked as two red circles in the below image.
Now we have to load our data to see the actual chart. I have created a demo table (like below image) just for demonstrating purpose and used ‘Gantt’ app from the visualization pane.
Power BI is very handy for its drag ‘n drop feature. You just have to select the visuals and drag ‘n drop your activities, start date and other fields in the visualization pane like the below image.
My final gantt chart looks like this (below image). Again, we can modify it according to our project and need.
Tableau
Tableau is another great tool for data visualization. Similar to Power BI, Tableau is also popular for its drag n drop feature. We will use its built-in gantt type visual to get the gantt chart. Let’s start with that.
In tableau, first we need to import the data. Here, I have created a demo project timeline in excel like below. To import the the data, I just copy the data from excel and paste it in Tableau.
By default, Tableau has created this below table.
To get the initial visualization, we need duration of each activity. Here, we need to create a calculated field, Duration. To create a calculated field we have to do the followings.
- Go Analysis>Create calculated field
- A new dialogue box will open; write Duration in the Calculation1 and write [Due date]-[Start date] in the formula box
- Click OK
Now we have our duration for each activity. Let’s do the following for the gantt chart.
- Put Start date in the Columns and Activities and/or Supervisors in Rows
- Right click Start date, select Exact date
- Drag Duration to Size; Tableau will automatically select the gantt view from the ‘Show me’ pane in the right.
We have now our basic gantt chart in Tableau too. Again, we can definitely modify the visualization according to our need and project.
Thank you for your reading. Hope this article will help you in scheduling your next project. Happy gantt charting!!!
