In our company, I was working on a project tracking dashboard, and I got a requirement to display the timelines of different tasks. The sales team wanted to see when each task starts and ends so that they can track their progress.
For such data visualizations in Tableau, it is better to use the Tableau Gannt chart. It helps visualize tasks with their start and end dates along a timeline. By plotting tasks as bars that extend from their start dates to their end dates, we can see the project schedule and overall progress in a single chart.
In this Tableau tutorial, I will explain how to create a Tableau Gantt chart with start date and end date to view the duration of tasks.
Create a Tableau Gantt Chart With Start and End Date
To create a Tableau Gantt bar chart with start and end dates, I will use two datasets for different examples. In the first data set, we have the task name, start date, and end date. In the second example, we will use the Tableau superstore dataset to show the start and end dates in a Gantt chart.
Gantt Chart With Custom Task Data to Show Start Date & End Date)
In this dataset, we have three header columns: task, start date, and end date, as shown in the image below.
You can also use the same sample data to create a Gantt chart with start and end dates. After creating the XLSX file, connect it to Tableau and follow the steps below to create the Gantt chart.
- First, create a calculation field to get the duration of days between the start time and end time. Enter the calculated field label as “duration” and use the formula below.
DATEDIFF('day', [Start Date], [End Date])- Now, drag Task to Rows, and Start Date to Columns.
- By default, the start date field will display the date in the Year format. Click on the Start date in the Columns and select Exact date.
- In the Marks section, select the change the type from Automatic to Gantt chart.