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Displaying a series of events in chronological order, a timeline is one of best ways to highlight critical milestones and show the progress of a project plan. Given their visual power, timelines play a major role in project management. Learn from our blog post how to make a timeline quickly and effectively.

Jira can automatically generate a timeline based on your issues’ start and end dates. Once you’ve filled those out, simply move to your project’s Timeline view to see your visual. While Jira’s timelines can certainly help you visualize your projects, stakeholders who are not Jira uses might find them difficult to follow. If you need a high-level visual for executive meetings, try Office Timeline Online, a free tool that can import one or more Jira projects and align them on a neatly-structured timeline that’s easy to share and present.

To create a timeline in Project, all you need to do is tick the “Timeline” checkbox from the View tab to activate it, and then right-click your tasks to add them to your visual. However, the resulting graphic may become a little too complex when managing large projects, so you will need to use a few tricks to make it more palatable. Learn all about it in our tutorial on how to make a timeline in Microsoft Project.

You can manually create a timeline in Microsoft Excel using the spreadsheet platform’s Scatter chart option. If your timeline needs to be regularly updated for recurring high-level communications, it’s easier to build it in PowerPoint. However, if you opt for using Excel, follow our step-by-step tutorial on how to make a timeline in Excel.

As long as you have at least two date columns in your sheet, Smartsheet will automatically generate your project’s timeline, which you can see just by switching to Gantt View. If you need to present your plan to audiences that don’t have access to Smartsheet, you can also try the free web app Office Timeline Online. It pulls your Smartsheet data and turns it into a stylish timeline that you can safely share with anyone or download as a slide to include in presentations.

To present a project plan in Google Docs, you can use the online word processor’s Bubble chart feature and a bit of formatting to create a basic timeline. Read our step-by-step tutorial to learn how to make a timeline from a Google document or use the dedicated timeline maker Office Timeline Online.

Making a timeline in PowerPoint is one of the easiest ways to showcase project plans because the result is presentation-ready. You can build a PowerPoint timeline either manually, using the Basic Timeline option from SmartArt, or automatically, with a timeline generator like the Office Timeline add-in. Find out more in our tutorial on how to make a timeline in PowerPoint.

There is a variety of tools that you can use to create timelines, including both multi-functional project management applications and dedicated ones. Opting for a purpose-built timeline maker, however, yields the best results. To make an informed decision on which solution is the right fit for you, read our timeline maker software review.