Timeline - change colours of bars

How can we color code our jobs?

It will be cool to change colour of bars, only few simple colours. Or if you mark task as important it will be in another colour

Hi, thanks for your questions!

@Chanel When you select a color for you Project, it is displayed in 3 places: 1) as a bar to the left of the Project’s name in the Folder tree; 2) as a background color of the Project tag in the Task and List View; 3) as a color of a Folder icon that appears to the left of the Project permalink. It has no effect on how tasks look like on the Timeline.

@Igor Tasks colors on the Timeline are defined by their statuses, for example, if a task’s status is “Completed” it has a green color on the Timeline.

It’s a Business/Enterprise feature, but I still want to mention Custom Statuses here. With this feature, you can create your own statuses and assign them the colors of your choice.

@Jamie You can color code tasks in the List View with help of Folder tags: create a dedicated set of color coded Folders to tag your tasks with, and any time you need to color code a task, include a task into a Folder with the needed color code. This way, a Folder tag will appear in the List View to the right of a task title to indicate that its color.

Let me know if you have any additional questions, I'll be happy to help!

Anna G Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Infórmate sobre las funciones y prácticas recomendadas de Wrike

Anna G Wrike Team member Infórmate sobre las funciones y prácticas recomendadas de Wrike

Is there a way to show percent of task completed using colors, i.e. if the task is 75% complete it will be 75% green and 25% red? Need a way to quickly show in graphical view the status of each task within the project.

Hi Kirsten, thanks for reaching out here! It sounds like setting up a Custom Workflow could help you achieve this goal. You can add as many statuses as needed and break them up by percentage blocks, and then color code them:

Happy to hear what you think about this, as well as answer any additional questions!

Are there any plans to add more colours to the custom workflows? I find that they are quite limited and lots of shades of green, blue etc! It would be more beneficial to have a bigger spread of colours as they're very similar in the Workload view and some colours we have to use for multiple purposes (as there aren't enough!) which is confusing.

Hi Helen, thanks for your comment here! This isn't something we're working on now, but it's interesting hearing about your use case and why this functionality would be important for your team. Do you think you could add this info as a separate request in the Product Feedback section, so that other users could find and vote for it easily? I'd also love to hear more about the statuses you use, as well as how many you typically have. Curious to learn as much as possible, because this is a request I haven't heard about before. Looking forward to seeing your new post on the Community! :)

Hi, for some reason when you go to print a timeline the colours revert to the standard blue/green etc all custome colours created in a new workflow are lost, is this something that can be fixed in an update?

Hi David, thank you for reaching out! Custom Workflows aren't currently supported in Timeline Snapshots, but we have an existing post on the Community with this feature request, and it would be fantastic if you could add your vote there: Reflect Workflow in Timeline Snapshot. Looking forward to seeing your vote there! :)

It would be good if we can change the color of a task bar (Timeline view).
I understand this can be set as per custom statuses as well, but it would be good to have the capability to overwrite this with any color I want.

For example, to illustrate RAG situations.

Of course, I'd expect this to come with the base app (Professional license) :-)

Hi Paulo, thanks for your post and your suggestion. Color coding is definitely helpful to identify a task's current status. You're right if you're looking to have customized colors in the TImeline View, then Custom Statuses would be your best option.

Would be most helpful to have the project/folder color applied to the bar in timeline so that upon duplicating a folder or project, the colors are not lost when status is reset. 

Hi Amelia! I just want to make sure I understand, if you color-code a Folder (using the color-code option in the Folder panel), you would like that color to show up in the Timeline View?

Hey Stephanie - Yes,  I guess this is more applicable to a project which actually shows up in the timeline view as oppose to a folder (so ignore the folder component to this 🙂). Right now as I understand it, color coding for a project is only applied in timeline (color of the bracket which groups the tasks of the project) when the status of a project is assigned a color. Upon duplicating a project, the status is reset to Green. I would 1) like to have the option of keeping a status setting upon duplication - for example, occasions where I have a template subproject and want to duplicate it with the same status/same color applied in the timeline. 2) ultimately would like to be able to apply colors to tasks so that the bars in the Gantt chart are colored; in keeping with request #1, would like to have the option of keeping task color assignments upon duplication. 

Hope this helps!! Thanks, Stephanie. 

Hey Amelia, that helps to clarify! I completely understand. I'm just curious about keeping the status color when you're duplicating. I think the current reasoning is that the new Project has a green status because it's a new and (ideally) not yet falling behind. Do you use the status settings more to color-code on the timeline vs. indicating how the Project is going?

In terms of task color on the Gantt chart: the task bar color actually comes from status color. Just in case you're interested, Business and Enterprise accounts actually have Custom Workflows and you can assign a wider range of colors to tasks. 

I know this question has been asked before, but currently we have a number of projects within a folder that have all been colour coded. Is there any way to have the gantt chart be able to reflect the timeline so that it aligns with the project colour? I appreciate that the Gantt chart is to be able to look at the status, but we also would like to have an overview of time frames for each project within that folder. Is this possible?

Hi Amber! This isn't possible right now on the Gantt Chart. Any chance Calendars might work for your team? Calendars give you more options in terms of colors (which is personally something I really appreciate about them). If you want to upvote Amy's request for more color options on the Gantt Chart, that would also be fantastic. 🙏

As a project manager, I'd like to be able to color code my Gantt Chart based on the bucket of tasks vs. the status of each individual task, so that if it's a massive project, I can visually see how many tasks related to one bucket I have, and where on the timeline those tasks are. When do you anticipate having more functionality related to customizing the Gantt Chart? Thanks!

@Emilie Hey, thank for bringing that up 🙂 For now I don't have an update on our Product team's plans on Gantt Chart customization, but it would be great if you could add your +1 to Amy's post. 

Lisa Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Lisa Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover