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A Gantt chart includes a list of tasks on the left and horizontal bars on the right showing when the tasks begin and end. In the Gantt chart below, the task "Do Initial Design" begins January 2nd and ends January 6th. In this Gantt chart, the smallest increment is one day. You can also draw charts with one hour, week, or month being the smallest incremental value.

1. Run RFGantt
In RFFlow click Tools, Auto Charts, and Enter Gantt Chart Data. The RFGantt program will run. This feature is included in both the free trial version of RFFlow and the full version. You need to have RFFlow 5.02 or higher.

2. Selecting Days, Hours, Weeks, or Months
Gantt charts usually show the number of days it takes to complete a task. However, you can also draw Gantt charts which show the starting hour, week, or month and number of hours, weeks, or months it takes to complete a task. The default is to use days, so if your tasks are measured in days, you don't have to change any settings.

To switch from days to hours, weeks, or months, click Tools in the main menu of RFGantt and Options. Go to the Duration tab and make your selection.

Hours are used in making a work schedule chart. Instead of having a list of tasks on the left, you have a list of workers. The bars show when a worker begins and ends their shift. Weeks or months are used if you have tasks that last a long time. You could use days as the time increment, but that would result in a chart of several pages or a one page chart with a very small font.

3. Skipping Certain Days
You may want to skip and not count days such as Saturday, Sunday, and holidays. For example, if your business does not work on the weekends, then a task that starts on Friday and takes 2 days will end on Monday. The two working days are Friday and Monday, while Saturday and Sunday are skipped and not counted.

Click Tools, Options, and click the Days to Skip tab. Place check marks on the days when no work will be done. These days will not be counted in calculating the end date of a task. There is also a section where you can set up a custom list of days to skip or to add holidays that are not listed. A Gantt chart using weeks or months ignores the skip days and does not skip any days. 

4. Adding a Task
To add a task, click the button on the main screen of RFGantt.



The Add a Task dialog box will appear as shown above. 

First, select the duration of the task. This will be in days, hours, weeks, or months.  If you need to change the duration units, click the Cancel button and click Tools, Options, Duration. The duration is how long the task takes to complete.

In the Task group box, enter your task. For example, type "Do Initial Design." You do not need to number the tasks. This will be taken care of automatically.

Select the starting date for the task. This includes the year, month, and day the task begins.  To change the year, click on the year and then click the small triangle pointing up or down to increase or decrease the year. To change the month, click on the triangles pointing left or right to select earlier or later months. To select the day, click on the day. The current day will be circled.

If you have selected hours in Tools, Options, Duration, then fill in the beginning hour of the task.

Click the OK button and your task will be listed.

Right-click on a task in the main screen of RFGantt if you want to delete it, move it up or down in the list, or edit it.

5. Adding A Title
You can add a title to your chart by clicking Tools in the main menu of RFGantt, Options, and the Add Title tab. The title will be added to the chart when it is drawn in RFFlow.

6. Saving Your Data
After entering all the tasks, you need to save this data to a file on your hard drive. Click File in the main menu of RFGantt and Save in the drop-down menu. The Save As dialog box will appear.



You need to save your data so you can import it into RFFlow to create a Gantt chart. You may also want to edit the data later adding tasks or changing dates.

The folder where your data will be saved is shown to the right of the words Save in:.

To save in a different folder, click on the triangle pointing down to the right of the words Save in: and select a different folder. You can move up a folder by clicking . Remember where you saved the file so you can find it again in step 8 below.

Type the name of the file into the box near the words File name:. Just type the file name. The extension .txt will automatically be added. The files used by RFGantt are text files like those created with Microsoft Notepad.

7. Drawing the Chart in RFFlow
After saving the data in a text file, you then import the file into RFFlow. RFFlow creates the Gantt chart. In RFFlow, click Tools, Auto Charts, and Draw Gantt Chart. 

8. Opening the Text File
The Gantt chart data was saved in a .txt file. You have to be able to browse to the folder where you saved your file in step 6 and open it. The Open dialog box will appear.



The folder whose contents are displayed is listed to the right of the words Look in:. To change folders, click on the triangle pointing down and choose a new folder. You can move up one level in the hierarchy of folders by clicking .

Once you are displaying the correct folder, simply click on the file and click the Open button.

9. Selecting Columns
All Gantt charts must have a list of tasks on the left, but the other columns are optional. You can show or not show the ID number for each task, starting date of each task, ending date of each task, or duration of each task. A check mark means that the column will be shown. The advantage of not showing all this information is that you can make the Gantt chart smaller so it is more likely to fit on one page.

10. Selecting the Colors
The next dialog box lets you specify the colors of different components of your Gantt chart. By looking at the finished Gantt chart shown below, you can see where the Title box, Task box, and Task bar are located. You can also specify a gradient background color by placing a check mark in the appropriate item. This will use the Title box color and make a gradient with the Title box color at the top and white at the bottom. With a gradient, the Task box color is not used at all. The work schedule chart is an example of a chart with a gradient background. You can also choose a different color scheme if you want to select matching colors.
 

11. Selecting the number of pages
Next you can select to have the chart fit on one page or multiple pages. This option is available only for charts using days or hours as the measure of time.  First try one page.  If the font is too small in the final chart, try selecting multiple pages.

Your Gantt chart will automatically be generated.

12. Editing your Chart
There are two ways to edit your Gantt chart.

1. You can open the Gantt chart data file (.txt) and make changes to the data. Then you have to generate the chart again in RFFlow. To do this, run RFFlow and click on Tools, Auto Charts, and Enter Gantt Chart Data. The RFGantt program will run. In RFGantt, click on File, Open, or click on File and click on the name of the file you want to open. The last 9 files you opened are listed at the bottom of the File menu. Then go to step 7 above.
   
   
2. You can also make edits to your Gantt chart in RFFlow after it is generated. You can then edit it using all the editing features of RFFlow. It is just like any other chart that you draw in RFFlow. You can edit the text, add more text, delete shapes, move shapes, add lines and change colors as usual. RFFlow is unique in that the finished chart can be fully edited. You may want to use white task bars to place over the colored ones. The white task bars are located in the Gantt Charts stencil. Click , Gantt Charts, and the Add Stencil button.
   
   The colored area shows how much of the task is completed.

13. Finished
At the end of this process, you will end up with two files. One is the text file (.txt) where you saved the data. That file was generated by RFGantt. The other file is the RFFlow file (.flo) which contains the actual Gantt chart. Both should be saved as you may want to edit the RFGantt chart data and generate another slightly different chart.

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