The Wrike Gantt Chart is a timeline view inside Wrike that places tasks, dependencies, and milestones against dates so a project schedule can be planned and tracked in one place.
Wrike's own help documentation describes the Gantt Chart view as available to all user types on paid accounts, and it pairs a timeline on the right with a table on the left. That pairing matters. the timeline shows when work happens, while the table carries the task detail behind each bar. Teams that only look at the bars miss the columns, filters, and dependency settings that decide what the bars actually mean.
Wrike Gantt Chart. what the timeline view shows
The view is built from two connected halves. The table portion lists items as rows with columns for dates, assignees, status, and custom fields. The timeline portion draws those same items as horizontal bars positioned along a date axis. Because both halves read from the same task data, editing a date in the table moves the bar, and dragging a bar changes the underlying schedule.
Several display elements sit on top of that base structure:
- Task bars show duration, with start and end dates driving the width.
- Dependencies appear as connectors between bars, so a predecessor and successor relationship is visible rather than implied.
- Milestones mark single-date points rather than spans of work.
- Project brackets group the tasks belonging to one project, with the bracket spanning from the earliest to the latest scheduled task.
- Status colours and overdue warnings flag items that need attention.
- Critical path highlighting identifies the chain of dependent tasks that governs the finish date.
Wrike documentation notes that a project needs at least one task with dates before it can appear meaningfully on the timeline. A project with no scheduled tasks has nothing for the bracket to span.
How to create a Wrike Gantt Chart view
Creating the view follows the same pattern as other Wrike views, with the Gantt Chart selected as the view type. The sequence below reflects the steps described in Wrike's help documentation.
- Open the project, folder, or space that holds the work to be scheduled.
- Use the add-view control to create a new view on that item.
- Select Gantt Chart as the view type.
- Name the view and confirm creation.
- Set the date range so the timeline covers the period being planned.
- Add or remove table columns to surface the fields needed for scheduling decisions.
- Apply filters if only part of the work should appear on the timeline.
Wrike has documented both a newer Gantt Chart and a classic version, and the help centre describes a control for trying the new Gantt Chart. Interface details of this kind change, so the in-product labels are the reliable reference at the moment of use.
Date range and calendar settings
The date range controls how much of the schedule is visible at once. A range that is too narrow hides downstream work; a range that is too wide compresses bars until dependencies are hard to read. Wrike also documents a choice between calendar year and fiscal year date modes, which affects how the axis is labelled rather than how tasks are scheduled.
Weekend handling is a separate setting. By default Wrike schedules tasks on working days only. To include weekends in a task's duration, the task's date settings include a working-days option that can be cleared. Non-working days and vacation periods feed into the same calculation, so a task that spans a public holiday can end later than a simple day count suggests.
Reading tasks, dependencies, and progress on the timeline
Dependencies are the part of the view that carries the most planning value and the most risk of misreading. A connector between two bars means the second task's timing is tied to the first. Wrike documents dependency display options, which control how much of that relationship is drawn on the timeline, and lead and lag time, which shifts a successor earlier or later relative to its predecessor.
Three practical consequences follow from that:
- Moving a predecessor can shift a chain of successors, so a single drag is rarely a single change.
- Lead and lag values are easy to set and easy to forget, which makes a schedule look wrong for reasons that are not visible on the bars.
- Critical path highlighting only helps if the dependencies are accurate. An unlinked task sits outside the chain and will not be flagged.
Progress shows up through status colouring and completion state rather than through the bar geometry alone. A bar that spans a month does not indicate how much of that month's work is done. Reading progress therefore means reading the table columns alongside the timeline, not the timeline by itself.
Projects, folders, and spaces on the timeline
The view can be opened at project, folder, or space level. At space level, multiple projects appear together, which is useful for spotting collisions between teams competing for the same week. Wrike documents options for hiding or showing empty folders, and for expanding or collapsing items, both of which matter once a space holds more projects than fit comfortably on screen.
Wrike Gantt Chart compared with table and calendar views
Each view answers a different question about the same underlying tasks. Choosing between them is a question of what the reader needs to see, not which view is better.
| View | Shows best | Weaker at |
|---|---|---|
| Gantt Chart | Duration, sequence, dependencies, and how a delay propagates through a schedule | Detailed field-by-field review of many tasks at once |
| Table view | Columns, custom fields, sorting, grouping, and bulk editing of task data | Seeing how tasks overlap in time |
| Calendar view | What falls on a given day or week, including deadlines and milestones | Long dependency chains and multi-week durations |
The Gantt Chart view includes a table portion, so it is not a choice between the two. The distinction is that the table inside the Gantt view exists to support the timeline, while a standalone table view is optimised for data work. Teams that spend most of their time editing fields often keep a table view open and use the Gantt Chart for review and communication.
What to check before relying on the timeline
Several conditions determine whether the timeline can be trusted as a planning artefact.
- Every task has dates. Unscheduled tasks do not appear meaningfully, so the timeline can look complete while work is missing from it.
- Dependencies are actually linked. A schedule built on dates alone will not shift correctly when something slips.
- Working days match reality. If the team works weekends or observes different holidays, the default working-day calculation will misstate durations.
- The date range covers the decision. A range that ends before the project does hides the finish date.
- Filters are intentional. A filter left on from an earlier review can silently remove tasks from the timeline.
- Account access is confirmed. Wrike's help documentation states the Gantt Chart view is available on paid accounts, so plan availability should be checked before standardising on it.
Wrike also documents Gantt Chart snapshots and baseline tracking, which allow a saved version of the schedule to be compared against the current one. That comparison is the practical way to answer whether a project is drifting, since the live timeline only shows the present state.
questions readers ask before starting
Is the Wrike Gantt Chart available on free accounts? Wrike's help documentation describes the Gantt Chart view as available to all user types on paid accounts. Plan names and feature gating have changed over time, so the current pricing page is the correct place to confirm what a specific plan includes.
Can the timeline show more than one project at once? Yes. Opening the view at space level brings multiple projects onto the same timeline, which is how cross-project scheduling conflicts become visible.
What happens when a task slips? If the task has dependents, moving it shifts the connected chain according to the dependency type and any lead or lag values. Tasks without dependencies stay where they are.
Can the schedule be shared or printed? Wrike documents downloading and printing the Gantt Chart, along with public links and keyboard shortcuts for navigation.
Does the view replace a project plan? No. It visualises the plan held in the task data. If the underlying tasks, dates, and dependencies are wrong, the timeline will present those errors clearly and confidently.
For teams already working inside Wrike, the Gantt Chart view is the natural place to review sequence and slippage, provided the task data underneath it is maintained. For teams evaluating project tooling more broadly, the useful test is whether the schedule depends on real dependency links or on dates typed in by hand — the first survives a delay, the second does not.