On the left side of the Gantt Chart view, you will see all of the tasks associated with the project listed in a grid. These tasks can be organized by summary tasks- tasks that have subtasks and their summaries. The information from the subtasks is used automatically for the summaries of the summary tasks by Project 2007. Tasks can be linked together to determine dependency of the start and finish dates. The task list portion of the Gantt Chart view shows the dependency of each task.
There are four different types of dependencies (FS—Finish-to-start, SS—Start-to-start, FF—Finish-to-finish, SF—Start-to-Finish). This is good to know and be able to view them, in order to help with resource management. If you know that you have a project that is about to end while one is starting, you can better decide which resources will be available.
The actual chart may be of more interest to you. It is a graphical representation of the tasks. Gantt bars (bars that represents a task’s duration) are present and gives a better view of tasks that are overlapping or dependent. The chart part looks like a time line with a Gantt bar for each task. Link lines are used if the tasks are linked together.
There are certain things you can do to customize the chart area of the Gantt Chart view. Zooming in and out is a way to get a better look at the items on the chart. This comes in handy when you have
many tasks that you want to look at all at once; the default view is two timeline units at a time. Zooming out allows you to get an overall view of tasks for a certain time period, no matter if it is months and years on out.
At the top of the chart, you will see the timeline units. To zoom out, change the time unites to Years and Months to get a broader view. To zoom in, change it to Weeks and Days.
From the Format menu, many different customizations can be done to the chart and the Gantt bars. You can
change the color, shape, pattern or add text to the bar types or individuals bars. New bar types can also be created if you need to. You can also choose to display the names of the tasks on the bars. Follow the steps below to change certain settings of the chart.