How to Create a Gantt Chart in Power BI (Fast and Easy)

A Gantt chart is a type of chart that’s popularly used in project management.

It only serves one purpose:

To graphically display project timelines.

It’s a great way to show information about the estimated time commitments on a project and what’s suppose to happen in a certain period.

The concepts that Gantt chart excellently represents are scheduling and task assignments.

There’s just one problem if you’re thinking of using the Gantt chart in Power BI — no built-in Gantt chart visual.

Power BI may have lots of built-in charts. However, it doesn’t have every chart in the world.

That’s where Microsoft’s AppSource comes into play. Here, Power BI users can download custom made visuals and use them for their own reports.

Also, you don’t have to go to the AppSource’s page using your browser. You can access the marketplace straight from Power BI itself.

Here’s how:

Click the ellipsis icon (…) on the visualizations pane.

Then, click ‘Import from marketplace’:

That will open the marketplace within Power BI where you can search for custom visuals.

Search for “Gantt”.

Select the one at the top with the verified (checkmark) mark and click ‘Add’:

Before you start:

Throughout this guide, you need a data set to practice.

I’ve included one for you (for free).

Download it right below!

For this tutorial, we’ll be using the Power BI Desktop as well as the same dataset as our Excel Gantt Chart tutorial.

If you would like to use the same, kindly download the workbook using the link from the previous section.

To start, click the down arrow on the ‘Get Data’ icon found on the ribbon.

Then, select ‘Excel’:

On the Navigator window, select the ‘Schedule’ table only.

Then, click ‘Load’:

To start, click the Gantt chart icon on the visualizations pane:

After that, an empty Gantt chart will appear on the canvas.

Looking at the visualizations pane, you’ll see a lot of information you can feed into the chart like:

• Legend
• Task
• Parent
• Start Date
• End Date
• Duration
• % Completion
• Resource
• Tooltips
• Milestones

Like in any Power BI visual, all you have to do is drag the appropriate fields from the Fields pane to the buckets on the visualizations pane.

For example:

• Column1, which contains the tasks, should go to the ‘Task’ bucket.
• Duration to the ‘Duration’ bucket.
• Start Date to the ‘Start Date’ bucket.

After that, you would immediately see your Gantt chart filled up with information.

Fast and easy! 👍

It’s true that Power BI doesn’t have a built-in Gantt chart. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to make one! As you can see, it doesn’t even take 3 minutes to create one especially if you got your data prepared and ready.