Milestones

Milestones are single-day tasks that are used to signify major events, goals, or key deliverables within a project. They play a big role in reporting and help measure project performance by providing insight into whether the project is on track or falling behind schedule based on milestone completion. Milestones are represented with diamond icons throughout the TaskRay app for quick visual reference. 

Milestone Creation

From the technical standpoint, a TaskRay Task can be turned into a milestone by setting the Milestone checkbox on the record to true (checked). Milestones can be created on an ad-hoc basis, such as when building custom project plans or adjusting existing projects. For repeatable business processes that leverage templates for project creation, milestones can be created directly on templates.

Create a Milestone

Task Details

Follow the steps below to create a milestone through Task Details:

1. Locate or create the task that you want to be a milestone and open its Task Details.
2. Locate the Milestone checkbox field and click on the pencil icon to edit it. Update the field to true (checked).
   
3. Click Save or Save & Close.

Plan View

In Plan View, you can add columns to the board to display and manage field-level task information.

1. In Plan View, click on the Cog icon in the Projects & Tasks sidebar header.
   
2. This will open the Configure Columns modal. Locate the Milestone field in the Available Fields section and use the arrow to move it to the Selected Fields section.
3. Close the modal.
4. The Milestone column will appear, which will display Yes and No values to indicate whether tasks are milestones. Locate or create the task that you want to be a milestone, hover over its Milestone cell, and click on the Pencil icon. This will allow you to edit the value in the cell.
   
5. Update the checkbox in the cell to true (checked). The will display Yes to indicate that the task is a milestone.

Lock Dates on Milestones

A common requirement for milestones is that they need to be tied to a specific date, such as to signify a key event or to designate an important deadline that must be met on the project. For this purpose, it is possible to lock dates on milestones. Milestones with locked dates cannot be rescheduled and their dates will remain unchanged when any dependent predecessor task schedules are adjusted.

From the technical standpoint, a milestone can be configured to have locked dates by updating the Lock Dates checkbox on the record to true (checked). For more information, refer to the article on locking dates.