Knowledge Base

A plain-language guide to Preplanning Gantt (PreGantt). No jargon — just how to get things done.

New here? PreGantt lets you sketch a project on a timeline inside Jira before you create any real Jira issues. Move things around, try ideas, get the plan right — and only then turn it into actual work. Think of it as a whiteboard for your schedule that lives right next to your project.

Getting started

You can open PreGantt in two places:

• Inside a project — look for the PreGantt tab in your Jira project. This shows the plans for that project.
• From the Apps menu — the global PreGantt page shows all your plans, grouped by project.

Make your first plan:

1. Open the PreGantt tab and click + New plan.
2. Give it a name (and a short description if you like).
3. The plan opens. Add your first task and start dragging things on the timeline.

Don't worry about getting it perfect — a plan is a draft you can change any time, and it creates zero Jira issues until you decide to.

Can't see the PreGantt tab in a project? An admin may have hidden it. They can turn it back on in the app settings.

Working with plans

A plan is one timeline — usually one project, release, or initiative. You can have as many as you want.

• Open a plan — click its card. The last plan you opened comes back automatically next time.
• Rename or edit description — click the ⋯ menu on the plan card → Rename (owner only).
• Delete a plan — ⋯ → Delete. You'll get a warning showing how many tasks it holds.
• Star a favorite — click the star (☆) on a card to pin it under the Starred tab.
• Recent plans — the global page keeps a row of plans you opened lately.
• Back to the list — click ← All plans in the top-left while editing.

Adding & organizing tasks

Tasks are the rows in your plan. Each row becomes a bar on the timeline.

• Add a task — click + Add task under the list, or hover a row and click + to add a task underneath it (a child).
• Add on the timeline — click an empty area in a row's date lane and a new task appears with those dates.
• Make a checklist / hierarchy — tasks can have sub-tasks. A task with children becomes a summary row that groups them.
• Indent / outdent — select a task and press Tab to tuck it under the row above, or Shift+Tab to move it back out.
• Reorder — switch sorting to Manual, then drag rows up and down.
• Milestones — mark a task as a milestone (a single important date, shown as a diamond ◆) in its details panel.
• Collapse / expand — click the ▼ next to a summary row, or use the ▲/▼ button to fold everything at once.

The timeline

The right side is the calendar view. Bars show when each task happens.

• Move a task — drag the middle of its bar left or right.
• Change how long it takes — drag the left or right edge of the bar.
• Zoom in or out — use Zoom for Day, Week, Month, and Quarter. Hour appears only when Hourly mode is on.
• Jump to today — click Today. A vertical line marks the current day.
• Cancel a drag — press Esc while dragging to undo it instantly.
• Weekends & holidays — non-working days are shaded grey, and you can hide them completely (see Calendars below).

Made a mistake? Use Undo (↶) and Redo (↷) at the top, or press Ctrl/⌘+Z.

Hourly mode (time precision)

By default, tasks use dates only — “starts Monday, ends Friday.” Turn on Time precision / Hours mode in Settings → Display when you need more detail: “starts Monday at 9:00, ends Wednesday at 17:30.”

• Turn it on — Settings → Display → check Time precision / Hours mode.
• Hour zoom — once enabled, the Hour option appears in Zoom. Dragging bars snaps to hours.
• Day zoom still works — at Day view you still see and keep specific times when you move tasks.
• Task details — start and end fields show date and time pickers instead of date-only.

Hourly mode is great for same-day handoffs, shift work, or anything shorter than a full day. If you only plan in whole days, leave it off — it's simpler.

Linking tasks (dependencies)

A dependency is a rule that says “this task depends on that one.” For example: you can't paint the wall until the wall is built.

To create a link: switch the mode to Dependencies, hover a bar until small anchor dots appear, then drag from one bar to another.

There are four kinds of links. In plain words:

• Finish → Start (FS) — the most common. B starts after A finishes. (“Build, then paint.”)
• Start → Start (SS) — B starts when A starts. (“Both begin together.”)
• Finish → Finish (FF) — B finishes when A finishes. (“Both wrap up together.”)
• Start → Finish (SF) — rare. B can't finish until A starts.

You can also add lag — a gap in days, like “start 2 days after the other finishes.” To change or remove a link, click its arrow and press Delete, or open the task's details panel and edit its Predecessors / Successors.

Auto-scheduling

PreGantt can move linked tasks for you when you drag things around, so your plan stays consistent. You choose how aggressive this is in Settings → Planning:

• Off — links are just drawn as arrows; nothing moves automatically.
• Forward — if you push a task later and it would overlap something that depends on it, that follower moves later too. (It never pulls things earlier.)
• Strict — linked tasks stay tightly connected with no gaps.
• Group — move one task and everything linked to it shifts by the same amount, like moving a train of cars.

Two more helpful options:

• Parent dates — let a summary row automatically stretch to cover its children.
• Move children with parent — drag a summary row and all its sub-tasks come along.

Calendars & working days

PreGantt understands that people don't work on weekends and holidays, so durations match real life.

• Working days of the week — in Settings → Planning, turn Mon–Sun on or off.
• Plan holidays — add days off just for this plan.
• Project holidays — set days off for all plans in a project, from Project holidays… on the plan list.
• Show only working days — hides weekend and holiday columns so the timeline is tighter.

Baselines (before & after)

A baseline is a saved snapshot of your plan — like taking a photo of the schedule today so you can see later how much things shifted.

• Save one — open the Baseline ▾ menu → Set baseline from current schedule. You can keep up to three.
• Compare — turn Baseline on to see faint “how it was” bars behind the current ones.
• See the slip — a task's details show how many days it moved (for example “+3d” means three days late).
• Rename or delete — use the pencil and trash icons in the baseline menu.

Working with Jira

This is where a plan connects to real work. Three things you can do:

Bring existing issues in (Import)

Already have issues in Jira? Pull them into your plan to schedule them on the timeline. Go to Settings → Data → Import from Jira, search with a filter, preview, and add them.

Turn your plan into real issues (Send to Jira)

When the plan looks good, click Send to Jira. Pick the project and issue types, choose which rows to create, and PreGantt makes real Jira issues — keeping them linked to your plan. You can send everything, or just a few selected rows.

Keep them in sync

Once a task is linked to a Jira issue, they can stay up to date with each other:

• Sync on save — your edits in the plan can flow into Jira when you save.
• Pull from Jira — grab the latest from Jira if someone changed the issue there.
• Needs attention — if some tasks drifted, a ↻ Sync button appears to update them.
• Conflict? — if the same thing changed in both places, PreGantt asks which version to keep.
• Disconnect — unlink a row from its Jira issue; the row stays in your plan as a draft.

Using Hourly mode? See the Hourly mode section — start/end times only sync reliably when your Jira admin has set up datetime custom fields and they are mapped in Settings → Jira → Configure Jira fields….

You can also decide what happens when someone deletes the Jira issue: unlink the row, show a warning, or remove the row too.

Task details & columns

Click a task to open its details panel on the right. There you can set:

• Name, description, start and end dates
• Assignee, labels, components, priority, status
• Estimate (how much work it is)
• Progress — a 0–100% slider that fills the bar
• Milestone on/off, and a custom bar color
• Its dependencies (predecessors and successors)

Save with the Save button or Ctrl/⌘+Enter; close with Esc.

In the task list you can also show extra columns (assignee, dates, status, priority, and more). Click the + in the column header to pick which ones appear, and drag the column border to resize.

Who's busy (People panel)

The strip below the timeline is a workload heatmap. It shows, day by day, how much each person has on their plate — so you can spot who's overloaded.

• Switch between number of tasks and hours per day.
• Darker cells mean more work.
• Click a cell to quickly filter to that person's tasks on that day.

Finding tasks (search & filters)

• Search by name — open Filter and type part of a task name.
• Filter by field — narrow down by assignee, status, priority, type, labels, dates, and more.
• Filter with JQL — if you know Jira's query language, you can use it here too.
• Sort — order rows manually, or by start or end date.

Colors & the way things look

In Settings → Display you can make the chart easier to read:

• Color bars by assignee, issue type, status, hierarchy level, or your own custom colors.
• Critical path — highlight the tasks that decide your finish date; everything else dims.
• PreGantt follows Jira's light or dark theme automatically.

Sharing & who can see

New plans are private by default — only you and people you invite can see them.

• Owner — the person who made the plan; full control, including sharing and deleting.
• Editor — can change the plan's tasks and settings.
• Viewer — can look but not change (they'll see a View only badge).

To share, open the plan card's ⋯ → Share and add people, groups, or project roles as View only or Can edit.

Note: to Send to Jira, a person needs permission to create issues in that Jira project. Planning itself needs no such permission.

Doing many things at once

Need to change lots of tasks together? Click Bulk to turn on checkboxes.

• Select rows (Shift+click for a range, Ctrl/⌘+click one at a time).
• Edit — change dates, assignee, status, priority, labels for all of them at once.
• Delete — remove several tasks together.
• Disconnect from Jira — unlink many rows without deleting them.

Import, export & templates

• Import / export files — bring tasks in from a spreadsheet (CSV/XLSX) or export your plan out, in Settings → Data.
• Templates — save common task setups so new tasks start pre-filled. Templates can be shared with the team or kept personal.
• Virtual people & statuses — assign work to people or use statuses that don't exist in Jira yet; handy while planning. They stay out of Jira until you decide otherwise.
• Audit log — see who changed what and when.

Keyboard shortcuts

• Undo / Redo — Ctrl/⌘+Z, Ctrl/⌘+Shift+Z
• Indent / Outdent — Tab / Shift+Tab
• Delete a dependency — select its arrow, press Delete
• Cancel a drag or link — Esc
• Save the details panel — Ctrl/⌘+Enter
• See all shortcuts — click the ? button

(Shortcuts pause while you're typing in a text box.)

Common questions

Do I have to create Jira issues?

No. You can plan forever and never send anything to Jira. Creating issues is always your choice.

Will planning mess up my Jira backlog?

No. Nothing appears in Jira until you use Send to Jira. Draft plans stay separate.

Do I need anything special in Jira for Hourly mode?

Yes, if you want times to sync with Jira. Your admin must create Date and time custom fields (not date-only) and map them in Configure Jira fields…. See Hourly mode for the full checklist.

Who can see my plan?

Only you, unless you share it. New plans are private by default.

Does it work on Jira Data Center / Server?

No — PreGantt is for Jira Cloud only.

Where is my data stored?

Inside your own Atlassian Cloud site, using Atlassian's secure app storage. See the Privacy Policy.

If something goes wrong

• Try refreshing the page, or opening it in a private/incognito window to rule out browser extensions.
• Check that the plan is really connected to Jira (look for the Jira badge on the task).
• If a task shows a sync warning, use Pull from Jira or the ↻ Sync button.
• Still stuck, or found a real bug? Head to the Support page.

For billing, licenses, or Jira account issues, contact Atlassian Support — those aren't handled by this app.