A timeline is the critical path an article runs on for a season: an ordered set of gates — design freeze, proto sample, fit approval, ex-factory and the like — each owned by a role, each a number of days before the season's drop date. Build the timeline once in Admin, anchor it to a season, and the system turns the distances into dates, matches the right articles to it, and tracks where every article stands on the product's Timeline tab, in the products table and on the article itself.
💡 Timelines follow the active season. The Timeline tab, the Timeline layout on the products page and the timeline columns all read the season selected in the top bar. Pick the season first — with another season active, the tab reports that no article on the product is on that season.
Building a timeline in Admin
Timelines live in Admin under Timelines. Click New timeline, name it, and build it in three parts: the gates, the seasons it runs in, and where it applies. The page saves as you go — there is no Save button. At the top of the page you also set What you call this date: the label the system uses for the anchor date everywhere (Drop date by default).
Gates
Each gate is a row in the table — or a bar in the Gantt, switched with the Table/Gantt toggle — with:
Gate — its name.
Days before drop date — how far ahead of the anchor it falls. This is what the system turns into a real date per season.
Lead time (days) — how long the step takes; drawn as the length of the bar.
Responsible — the role that owns the gate, from your brand's roles.
Waiting on — who the ball is with: Brand or Supplier.
Add rows with Add gate and remove them with Remove. The table works like the other tables in the system — select a range, type, paste from Excel, undo with Ctrl/⌘ Z — and in the Gantt you drag a bar to move it, drag its edge to change the lead time, and drag a box to select several. Both views are the same data, so a drag in the Gantt shows up in the table and undo covers both.
Seasons and the drop date
A timeline does nothing until it has a season. Under Seasons, click + Add season, pick one, and set its drop date; the system counts every gate back from it and lists the resulting dates. Those dates are the season's own: move a single gate around a factory holiday and the tuning stays put, and changing the drop date afterwards slides the whole plan — moved gates included. A season that lands in several drops can carry a plan per drop (+ Add drop), each starting from the season's dates and slid to that drop.
Where it applies
Under Where it applies, add the hierarchy categories the timeline covers and, optionally, the tags an article must carry. An article-season gets the timeline when its season is listed, its product sits at or beneath one of the categories, and — if tags are listed — it carries one of them. When several timelines match, the deepest category wins, then the one that names tags, then the order on the Timelines page.
Clone copies a timeline and lets you choose which seasons move to the copy and which stay behind — ticked gates and notes move with them. Delete, and removing a season from a timeline, first confirm how many article-seasons and ticked gates are affected.
⚠️ Removing a season's plan removes the articles' progress on it. An article can only be on a timeline that plans its season, so taking a season away also takes the article-seasons running on it — ticks included — behind a confirmation that states both counts.
Which articles are on a timeline
Matching is automatic and re-runs whenever something it depends on changes — a tag, a category, a new season anchor. One safeguard: an article-season that already carries a tick or a note is never moved to another timeline by a rule change, so nobody loses recorded work to an edit made elsewhere. You can also pick a timeline by hand: the products table has a Timeline column that opens a picker of the timelines eligible for that article, and it works over a selection — the picker states how many of the selected articles it can reach (12 of 20) before it applies. Switching timeline by hand clears the ticks and notes recorded on the old one.
The Timeline tab on a product
The product's Timeline tab shows the whole product for the active season — set the season in the top bar first. The header names the timeline, the season, how many articles are on it and the drop date, with a health summary on the right: on track, at risk or late. Everything on the tab saves as you do it.
Two modes cover the same data:
Gates — every gate in order and, under each, the articles that stand in exactly the same place grouped into one row. The hollow bar is the timeline's plan for the gate; the group's own bar sits beneath it, so drift is a distance you can see. Tick the row's checkbox to record the gate as done for the whole group in one go; tick it again to reopen.
Articles — one row per article on a shared axis, each with its next gate, owner and health, for seeing which colourways are behind. Click a gate to work it; click the article to open its fly-in.
Clicking a group or a gate opens the detail panel. It shows the gate's role and who it is waiting on, the articles in the group, and its dates: Planned (with the days before the drop date), Estimated, Actual and Done on, plus a Note. Set an estimate when a step is going to land later than planned — the system flags how many days past the planned date it is and the health turns to at risk. Recording a gate as done means naming the day it happened; a day still to come can't be picked. Choose at the top of the panel splits the group, so a date or note lands on some of its articles and not the rest.
The search box matches articles and gates alike, and the funnel beside it holds the season, status, tag and owner filters.
Timelines on the products page
The products page has a third layout beside Board and Table: Timeline, every article of the active season on one axis, one row each with its next gate, owner and health. The chips in the header — on track, at risk, late, without timeline — double as filters. A row that is late or at risk gets a Nudge button: it raises a task in Chat & Tasks for the gate's owners — the people assigned on the product, or everyone in the role when nobody is named.
In the table, five columns carry the same information: Timeline, Health, Next gate, Next gate due and Timeline progress. They sort and filter like any other column, and Timeline is editable over a selection.
The article's own plan
On the article fly-in, the plan is a Timeline tile: the article's bars on a date axis, its health, the next gate with its owner and how many days remain, and a tick to record that gate done. If the tile isn't on your board, add it like any other tile — see Create a product, articles, and SKUs.
