Create Jira Gantt Charts Without a Plugin

Jira has a Timeline roadmap available in free Jira plans. However, there are limitations. For one, you can’t bring in more than one Jira project into your Timeline Gantt / roadmap; you also cannot visualize subtasks. However, you can do both of these with Jira’s Advanced Roadmaps. Both Jira Timeline and Advanced Roadmap are best for sharing your project plans with people also using Jira in your Jira instance. For an alternative way to make a Jira Gantt chart that bypasses the limitations of Jira’s free Timeline offering AND can be shared with anyone, check out Visor.

You can also see us unpack the difference between Jira’s Gantt / roadmap options here:

Jira offers two roadmaps, which we compare in our Jira Timeline vs. Advanced Roadmaps article. In this article, we also go into how Gantts are more detailed project plans, while roadmaps are often more forward-looking strategy documents that go over big picture. However, both look very similar. So, a Roadmap could be a Gantt chart if it offers more granularity.

In our Ultimate Guide to Confluence Gantt Charts, we go over how easy it is to create Jira Gantt charts in Visor that you can embed into Confluence. We also go over other Atlassian options for creating Confluence Gantt Charts.

While Atlassian doesn’t offer a milestones feature in their built-in roadmap / Gantt chart options, Visor does allow you to create a colorful Gantt chart with milestones using your Jira data.

To add Jira milestones in roadmaps, you just have to create a free Visor account. Below, you’ll seen an example of a Jira roadmap with milestones (the blue diamonds).

Free Jira Gantt chart with Milestones made in Visor:

Visor has a 14-day free trial. You can import up to 1,000 records from Jira and transform your data into a Gantt that you can share with anyone. You can add milestones, format / color-code your data, add filters so that you’re showing the right level of detail, and more.

If, after your trial you decide to stay on the Free plan, the main limits to Visor are how many workbooks and views you can have, along with the access you can give to others after you make your Jira Gantt chart. But if you want to just create one Jira Gantt chart, then the only limit you’ll encounter is the 1,000 record limit and an export limitation.

If you want to see how to create a Jira Gantt chart in Visor, watch the tutorial below:

A Jira Gantt chart plugin is a tool that you purchase which is then accessed directly through the Jira app. It is like an extension of functionality within Jira, rather than an integrated or connected app.

No, Visor is not a plugin. Rather, you connect Jira data with a Visor workspace. From there, you can create Gantt charts, Timeline charts for capacity planning, a Board view, dashboards and more.

Because Visor is not a plug-in, it’s more cost effective and you can share your Gantt charts and other visualizations easily, even if your stakeholders don’t have access to your Jira instance.

Visor is better than Jira Gantt plug-ins because like a plugin it enables you to visualize, work with, and update live Jira data, but unlike a plug-in it sits outside Jira itself. This has two key benefits.

1. You can share your Gantt charts with stakeholders that don’t have access to Jira
2. It’s more cost effective: You only pay for users that actually create Jira Gantt charts in Visor. Whereas Jira Gantt plugins charge you a license for every Jira user you already have, and add in the future.

Visor also has a range of additional features and functionality that is missing from Jira Gantt chart plugins.

If you or your organization also uses apps like Asana, Salesforce, or Hubspot, you can create Gantt charts and other visualizations that combine data from all these apps.

Visor is a modern app for creating beautiful, crystal clear Jira Gantt charts, and other visualizations too. You can even import multiple Jira projects to create portfolio Gantt charts with your Jira data in Visor.

Yes, you can use Visor’s JQL importer to bring in more than one Jira project into your Visor Gantt chart. If you have more basic needs for your Jira Gantt, then Visor’s basic importer will work just fine for you.

Yes, in addition to creating Gantt charts in Visor you can also create timelines, Kanban boards, dashboards, and spreadsheet views, all using real-time Jira data, from a single project, multiple projects, and portfolios of projects.

You can create Jira Gantt charts using Visor’s Starter, Team, and Business plan. You can also create Jira Gantt charts using the no-commitment free trial of the Visor team plan – Try it now.

Yes, you can add Visor custom fields to supplement and augment your Jira data. These Visor fields do not sync back into Jira, so they’re perfect for adding additional context for stakeholders or information that is specific to a single project or task or for project portfolio management purposes, which you don’t want to include (or that won’t fit) into your Jira instance itself.

Yes, when you import data from Jira into Visor, your existing hierarchies and relationships (for example, the nesting of epics, issues, and subtasks) are maintained. Visor keeps your project data perfectly organized and in sync with Jira, so you can easily create high-fidelity Jira Gantt charts without any extra work to reconstruct and properly nest your data.

You can also import data and decide to ignore Jira nesting, for those rare scenarios where you need to create a visualization without Jira’s restrictions on task hierarchies.

If you have any more questions, they may be answered in our Knowledge Base. Otherwise feel free to reach out to us. Our email is support@visor.us. We’d love to hear from you!