Promo Gantt changelog

v2.2.0: Dependencies, critical path and period navigation

October 2026

Project scheduling comes to the Promo Gantt: dependency arrows straight from a Microsoft Project export, a critical path with near-critical tasks and slack bars, plus a period filter and a jump-to-today button. Safe drop-in upgrade: everything is additive and default-off; existing reports look and behave exactly as before until you switch a feature on.

Dependencies (Pro)

• Dependency arrows between bars from a Predecessors field in Microsoft Project notation (12, 12FS+2d; 15SS), also the Dutch, German, French and Spanish codes, so a localized Project export works as is. Optional Dependency Type / Dependency Lag fields for one-row-per-link data.
• All four types, Finish-to-Start, Start-to-Start, Finish-to-Finish and Start-to-Finish, each with its own toggle, plus lag and lead (days, weeks, hours, %).
• Conflicts (dates that break a link, lag included) are drawn in the conflict colour (orange by default); hover an arrow for predecessor > successor, type, lag and how many days it is off.
• Hover a task to highlight its whole chain upstream and downstream; the rest fades.
• Color by Type gives every type its own colour; Show in Legend adds a legend row for the arrow colours. Lines run behind the bars, arrowheads always on top, even where bars touch.
• Works in the expandable hierarchy: links into a collapsed parent attach to its roll-up bar as dashed arrows. The info (i) button counts links, conflicts, cycles and unknown IDs.

Critical path (Pro)

• A Critical path ▾ menu next to Zoom switches on the critical path (red), near-critical tasks (light pink) and slack bars (how far a task can slip); the menu stays open while you switch.
• Calculated the Microsoft Project way on your own dates: each linked network against its own finish, all four link types and lags, in working days (Mon-Fri) or all days. Thresholds and colours are configurable.
• The bar tooltip shows total slack and free slack. Display only: bars are never moved.
• Works with Microsoft Project date/times (08:00-17:00 days, zero-length milestones): checked against a real Project plan, the critical tasks and every slack value match Project exactly.

Project-plan view

• One Row per Task (Pro, Row Axis): inside the expandable hierarchy, every task gets its own row under its phase and sub-phase, the Microsoft Project layout. Sub-phases collapse too, tasks directly under a phase show once, and a task label click selects the task.
• Milestones as Diamonds: zero-length tasks (like Project milestones) draw as a diamond, red when critical.
• Summary Bar Colors: a fixed colour for phase and sub-phase summary bars, so they never look like a task.

Microsoft Project XML

• A Power Query recipe turns a Project XML file into one table (phase, sub-phase, Unique ID, dates, % complete and a ready Predecessors text). The Dependency Type field also accepts Project’s XML type codes (0-3).

Navigation & timeline

• Today button (Free) next to Zoom jumps to today, centred; optional own colour.
• Period Filter (Pro): pick a from/to period in a strip under the scrollbar. The timeline narrows to the bars in that period (bars that overlap show in full; milestones follow) and it can cross-filter other visuals.
• Total zoom: new Hide Months When Too Narrow toggle; month labels that don’t fit are no longer drawn.

Row columns & polish

• Horizontal alignment per row column (Row Column 1-3).
• A collapsed parent’s row column shows the most frequent value of its children instead of going blank.
• Tiers made consistent: conditional formatting (fx) and numeric heat-map colours are Free; the extra row columns (Row Column 1-3) are Pro and switch off when a trial ends.
• Tooltip > Name Label: rename the "Promo" line in the bar tooltip, e.g. to Task for project plans.
• The legend reserves enough height for every row it draws.

v2.1.1: Major feature release + large-dataset performance

September 2026

A flagship update that turns Promo Gantt into a full planning and project-portfolio Gantt, with a major performance pass for large datasets. Safe drop-in upgrade: every new capability is additive and off by default, so existing reports look and behave exactly as before until you switch a feature on.

Performance & responsiveness (10,000+ rows)

• Switching Group By, Color By and Zoom is now near-instant at 10k rows (previously several seconds); vertical and horizontal scrolling stay smooth.
• About 2.3x faster first load of large "exploded" datasets, and a "Loading... rows" screen now covers the initial draw when you switch onto the page.
• Unified cross-filtering: bar clicks, the Group By 1 / 2 row labels, the legend, and the search box all filter the rest of the report page consistently, and clear correctly when you uncheck a value or return to the page.

Hierarchy & navigation

• Expandable hierarchy (tree): show Group By 1 as collapsible parent rows, each with a roll-up bar (earliest start -> latest end of its children); click a parent (chevron or label) to expand its Group By 2 children. A one-click expand/collapse-all button sits top-left.
• Search box: filter rows across all bound text fields (name, categories, row columns, colour fields, tooltips) over all loaded rows, with an optional toggle to cross-highlight the matching data in other visuals on the page.
• Total (multi-year) zoom for a whole-portfolio overview, with month/quarter headers that collapse consistently as space tightens.
• Fetch More Data: load past the 5,000-row limit in segments, with a configurable Max Rows cap.

Bars, markers & labels

• Milestones: add typed milestone markers (Deadline, Gate, Go-Live, ...) from a Milestones table, each with its own colour and shape (diamond/circle/square/triangle/flag), optionally shown in the legend.
• Planned vs Actual: an optional baseline bar (from Planned Start/End dates) drawn as a thin lane below each actual bar, with its own on-canvas show/hide toggle.
• % progress fill + label per task, and a duration-in-days label (e.g. on roll-up bars).
• Row columns: up to three extra text columns after the row labels (e.g. Budget, Priority, Owner), with optional column headers.
• Dynamic format strings: tooltips and on-bar labels honour the measure's format (currency, %, thousands, K/M scaling).

Formatting & data

• Conditional formatting (fx) on bar colours; numeric colour fields colour the Gantt by a measure as a heat-map (auto-gradient, you pick the colours).
• Bookmarks capture the in-chart filters (Group By / legend / indicator).
• Self-documenting Format Pane: every setting now has a hover explainer.
• Configurable legend "All items" label (for non-promo data).

Accessibility & fixes

• Bars are keyboard-focusable (Tab to a bar, Enter/Space to select, Escape to clear), with a visible focus ring.
• Fixes: overlap stacking for touching promos, Format Pane opening on high-cardinality data, L2-filter scroll-to-top, currency symbols in tooltips.

Free vs Pro

• Pro unlocks: 2-3 grouping levels and hierarchy (including the new expandable tree), Milestones, Search, Planned vs Actual, Week & Total zoom, Working Days, Ghost (year-over-year), the ATL campaign track, event weeks, the O/M/D detection markers, and legend click-filtering.
• Free stays a genuinely useful single-level Gantt, including colour-blind pattern fills (accessibility), wrap / auto-height row labels, in-bar dates, and basic bar-click cross-filtering.

Refinements

• Time of day is preserved for promos that span only part of a day (week-zoom business hours), they're no longer merged with other same-day activity.
• The "ATL:" axis label now hides together with the other Quarter / Month / Week labels.
• More robust licensing: a transient license check can no longer show a paying or trial user as Free; it retries automatically.

v1.0.60: Week zoom, working days & per-level sorting

2026-08-17

• Week zoom level (Pro): one-week window with optional hour buckets for day- and hour-level planning; Start/End wells now accept date-time values.
• Working Days: hide individual weekdays (e.g. weekends) at Month and Week zoom.
• Per-level sorting: sort Group By 1 and Group By 2 independently (Source order / Alphabetical / By start date).
• Chart readability lines: optional row-group and level-2 separator lines in the chart area.
• Fixes: zoom-window geometry, date-time end values, scrollbar drag behaviour, year-over-year ghost bar length.

v1.0.59: Row-label wrap, time-axis toggles & sort by start date

2026-07-02

• Flat row labels now respect the Row Axis Width and Wrap Text settings, with a hover tooltip showing the full name (no more hardcoded truncation in single-level mode).
• New time-axis Show Week and Show Dates toggles, plus a week-start "date" row; Day Indicator Mode at Month zoom (weekday letters or day-of-month).
• Sort by start date added to the Row Axis sort options, chronological ordering that holds regardless of the colour-field binding.

v1.0.54: Colour persistence, cross-filtering & tooltip formats

2026-05-14

Consolidates the improvements delivered since the first paying-customer release (v1.0.43):

• Robust custom-colour persistence: Format Pane colours and patterns now survive slicer/cross-filter DataView changes, page navigation, and PBIX save/reload.
• Row-label cross-filtering: clicking a Group By 1 (customer) or Group By 2 (brand) label filters the rest of the report page; Ctrl-click to multi-select.
• Legend click is a true filter: hides non-matching rows and propagates to the page, instead of dimming.
• Tooltip Date Format setting (Auto / regional formats), replacing the previously fixed format.
• Sort Order (Source order / Alphabetical) for the row axis and legend.
• Support guidance for filtering UNION tables by date (a combined COALESCE date column) so ATL campaigns and events don't disappear under a page-level date filter.

v1.0.x: Microsoft AppSource certified

AppSource certification

• Microsoft AppSource certified. Core Gantt: fiscal calendars (4-4-5 / 4-5-4 / 5-4-4), hierarchy (up to 3 levels), Ghost Mode (year-over-year overlay), ATL campaign track, event weeks, overlap/multi-brand/duplicate indicators, today line, legend filtering, high-contrast, keyboard focus.