Confluence Gantt Chart: Your How To Guide
Confluence and Gantt Charts, they seem like natural partners but you may have noticed they’re not always the easiest to put together.
If you’re using Confluence and trying to add a Gantt Chart, this post will show you how.
Atlassian’s Confluence gives users a way to organize information in one central location, making it a key tool for fostering team collaboration. Visuals are an important element in that, which is why many project managers often seek a Confluence Gantt chart solution to visualize project plans.
In this post, we go over various ways you can add a Gantt chart to Confluence — even showing you a free solution that stays in sync with Jira.
By the end of this post, you’ll know the basics of Confluence Gantt charts, including:
- Why it makes sense to add Gantt charts to Confluence
- The limitations of Confluence’s Gantt chart abilities
- How to add a Gantt chart or roadmap to Confluence
Why Share Gantt Charts in Confluence?
Atlassian’s Confluence is basically a knowledge base that allows your team to collaborate on different pages called “spaces”. Each space can represent a different kind of wiki, offering details about different projects or teams within your company.
Confluence offers an easy-to-understand way of sharing information, which makes it a natural location for a Gantt chart. Gantt charts show projects on a timeline, allowing you to see when different aspects of a project begin, end, and overlap.
Below you can see an example of a Gantt chart created in Visor using Jira data.
A Gantt chart can highlight key milestones, track parent-child relationships between tasks, and display information in a view that’s customized to meet the needs of specific groups of stakeholders. For instance, in Visor you can filter a Gantt chart so that it only shows tasks relevant to marketing or the C-Suite.
In a Confluence space, Gantt charts offer a highly visual way to keep stakeholders updated about ongoing projects.
Can You Create a Gantt Chart in Confluence?
There is no direct way to create a Gantt chart in Confluence, though because Confluence allows embed codes, you can always add Gantts that you make elsewhere.
A lot of Confluence users are also Jira users (since they’re in the same Atlassian family), so we’ll show you how you can share a Jira Gantt chart in Confluence. Visor’s Gantt chart option stays in sync with Jira project data and offers an embed code, making it an ideal option for Confluence Gantt charts.
What Are the Limitations of Confluence for Gantt Charts?
Confluence is an excellent tool for making and maintaining a wiki, but it has a few limitations, especially if you want to add Gantt charts to your Confluence spaces.
There is a very basic Roadmap Planner tool in Confluence, but you’ll have to enter the data on your own, which isn’t practical if you’ve already got a sizable amount of data to share (or expect your data to grow in complexity in the future).
As we mentioned, there’s no built-in Gantt chart tool in Confluence, so if you want to add a genuine Gantt chart, you’ll need to use the Jira Gantt chart solution, the Timeline, or use an outside tool, like Visor.
Tools like Visor offer you multiple ways to view data, including Gantt Chart of course, but also Timeline, and Table Views. It can connect to your Jira data and embed it in Confluence, giving you a smooth workaround for the no-Gantt-in-Confluence problem.
How to Create a Gantt Chart in Confluence
As I’ve explained above, Gantt Charts do not come as an built-in tool. So the best way to add a Gantt chart to Confluence, especially if your goal is to share data with stakeholders, is to embed it from an app that supports full Gantt functionality. Otherwise you may end up tangled and tied down manually entering all your data.
There are a few different solutions out there that you can use which offer this functionality. I can’t attest to the suitability of all of them for Confluence Gantt Charts, but I’ve tried and tested Visor personally, and can guarantee it has a true Gantt chart functionality, and it stays in sync with your Jira project plans, ensuring your team always has the latest data, even if they’re not Jira users.
And it doesn’t take long to add your Visor Gantt chart to a space in Confluence, either. Here’s how to do it:
Step 1: Create a free Jira Gantt chart in Visor
Visor makes it easy to sync your Jira data into a spreadsheet-inspired workspace. From there, you can visualize your data into a Gantt chart, roadmap, and more.
Below is a short video that shows you how to create a free Gantt chart in Visor:
Step 2: Get your embed link from Visor
Open the Visor Workbook you want to embed in Confluence. Select File on the top right. Select Export View and then Embed.
This will take you to your embed options. Just click the copy icon under Embed link to save the URL.
Step 3: Open an iFrame in Confluence
Go to Confluence and open the space you want to add your Gantt chart to. Type /iframe in the space you would like the Gantt chart to go. You’ll see an option to insert an Iframe element on the space.
For best results, set your Iframe to full width.
Step 4: Embed your Gantt chart in Confluence
Select the pencil icon to edit your settings. Enter your embed link under URL. Then set height to 1280 and width to 685.
Your Gantt Chart will appear on your Confluence space. If you update your data in Visor later on, the changes will be reflected in the embed in Confluence.
Bonus: Adding Milestones to Gantt charts in Confluence
While there are several other ways to share roadmaps in Confluence (we’ll get to them in a minute), most don’t offer Milestones. (For example, you can’t create Jira Milestones natively in Jira.)
A Milestone is a visible checkpoint on a Gantt chart that indicates an important, hard date. Visor allows you to indicate those important moments using our Milestone feature.
You can import Jira data into Visor and add key Milestones to them using Visor’s Gantt charts. You can then embed your Gantt charts in Confluence so that important Milestones are visible to stakeholders.
Take a look at our post on Milestones to find out how to add them to your Visor Gantt charts.
Bonus: Color-coding your Gantt charts
If you want to make your Gantt chart look more attractive for the stakeholders viewing it in Confluence, you can do that in Visor, too. Visor allows you to set conditional formatting, so that you can assign colors based on criteria you choose. For instance, you could indicate a project’s status was done with a green color.
If you’d like to learn how you can make your project plans easier to read, check out our post on how to color code your Gantt chart.
How to Insert a Simple Roadmap in Confluence
While it doesn’t offer a Gantt chart, you can find a simple Roadmap Planner in Confluence. It’s a very DIY system – you’ll have to add in all your data manually, so it’s not the best choice for extensive data sets. However, if you want a quick, easy way to share a basic roadmap, this might be for you.
Here’s how to add it to your Confluence spaces:
Step 1: Insert your Roadmap
To add a roadmap in Confluence, simply type /Roadmap Planner. You’ll see the Roadmap Planner element appear.
Click on it and the Insert Roadmap Planner popup will appear.
Step 2: Customize your roadmap
While you’re in the Insert Roadmap Planner screen, you can change parts of your roadmap by clicking on different areas.
For instance, you can click on a lane to see editing features that would apply to the whole lane, like colors and the lane’s title.
Selecting a bar will give you options for editing just that bar. You can add a different title, link to a space in Confluence, or add a description.
Once you’re happy with your roadmap, click Insert, and the roadmap will be added to your Confluence space. If you want to edit it later, you can click on the roadmap and select the pencil icon to get back to the edit screen.
Adding a Jira Timeline to Confluence
Jira Timelines are Atlassian’s own solution for users looking for a Gantt chart. We’ll show you how to add them in Confluence in just a moment, but before we do, let’s talk about when you should go with a Jira Timeline and when a true Gantt chart is more appropriate.
The difference between Jira Timeline and a Gantt chart
While Jira does not have an official Gantt chart, its Timeline view is similar. However, if you’re looking for a chart that’ll get into more detail and explore how your project will come to life, you probably want a Gantt chart rather than a Jira Timeline.
We dissect Jira Timelines vs. Advanced Roadmaps for more detail.
If you’re just looking for a basic roadmapping tool to share high-level Jira data in Confluence, then Jira Timeline will work just fine.
How to Connect to a Jira Timeline
Adding a Jira Timeline to Confluence is pretty simple. Just open the space you want to add a Timeline to and type in /jira timeline. The Jira Timeline element will appear.
Select Jira Timeline and a popup will appear. Enter your Jira instance URL, the Project you want, and the Board you want to display.
Your Jira Timeline will appear in Confluence. As you update your data in Jira, the changes will be reflected in the embed in Confluence.
Confluence Gantt Chart – In summary
Gantt Charts in Confluence are not built-in, despite the desire of so many Confluence users to represent and share their data in Gantt Charts. While Confluence is an excellent collaborative knowledge-sharing platform, its lack of native Gantt chart functionality poses a serious limitation for many users.
There are a few different solutions out there, like Visor, which allow you to create proper Gantt charts which you can then easily embed into Confluence.
Taking this approach, using solutions like Visor, gives you the benefits of full spec, easy to use Gantt Chart software, but within Confluence, enabling you to overcome the limitation of a lack of an in-built Gantt Chart tool in Confluence.
If the solution you use has the same bi-directional integration that Visor does, it also means your data stays in sync, in tact, and you don’t need to worry about manually entering or updating anything.
Visor’s robust features, including milestone tracking and customizable color-coding, enhance project visualization and stakeholder engagement within the Confluence environment. In short, leveraging Visor lets you enrich Confluence’s capabilities, enabling teams to effectively communicate project progress and milestones.