Meet Notion’s Timeline View

Notion’s Timeline format allows you to view database items along a linear timeline, like a Gantt chart. It displays the sequence aesthetically and comprehensibly while exposing any potential capacity issues. This makes it useful for presenting a project’s tasks or a series of events.

This guide offers the fundamentals of Timelines, then details those two examples: tasks and events. For your reference as you practice with Timelines, you can duplicate the examples to your own workspace via the template on Notion Market.

Quick Context

What are databases?

In Notion, a database is a collection of items with common properties. For example, a database of cars might have the properties Make, Model and Year.

Visualize a database as a table, where each item occupies a row, and each property is a column.

What are database views?

For any database, you can create multiple views with preconfigured options, such as filters, sorting rules and hidden properties. Each view is also assigned a format, such as a Table, List, Calendar, Gallery of cards or Kanban-style Board. The best format for a view depends on the type of content and how users will interact with it.

The Timeline option is the latest addition to Notion’s database formats.

Timeline Fundamentals

• Timelines are best suited for databases where the items form a sequence, each with a start and end specified in one or two Date properties.
• If your database contains multiple Date properties, you can specify the one for your Timeline from the ••• menu at the top-right. You’ll have the option to use a single Date property for the start and end, or two different Date properties.
• Within the “bars” that represent the items in the Timeline, you can display and hide properties by choosing Properties under the ••• menu.
• Within Properties, you’ll find the option to display a table alongside the Timeline. As with the Timeline bars, you can choose which properties to display within the table.
• Be sure to establish one or more sorting rules. Sorting by the starting Date property will nicely display items chronologically. In some cases, however, it may be helpful to “group” items by sorting by another property, such as the Owner of tasks.
• At the top-right a Timeline, viewers can select a zoom level, from Hours to Years.
• Within the timeline, you can move and extend an item’s bar. This will update the value of its associated Date properties.
• When creating a new item, you’ll click within the Timeline to place its bar, then adjust the bar to its proper duration. However, I recommend retaining a Table view for easy editing.

Timeline Example: Tasks

Available for duplication on Notion Market.

A simplified database of a project’s tasks contains four properties:

1. Task (Title)
2. Timespan (Date with End date)
3. Owner (Person)
4. Complete (Checkbox)

You can easily comprehend those properties with a look at the Table view:

Here are some additional characteristics of the sample Tasks database:

• The Timeline by option is set to the Timespan property.
• The item “bars” display the Task, Owner and Complete properties.
• The table displays the Task and Owner properties.
• The Timeline is sorted by the Timespan property.
• The scale is set to Quarters in the above screenshot.

Timeline Example: Events

Available for duplication on Notion Market.

The second example shows all tournaments from the 1019–20 PGA season. It contains five properties:

1. Tournament (Title)
2. Start Date (Date)
3. End Date (Date)
4. Location (Text)
5. Winner (Relation)

Here’s a portion of the Table view for a sense of its format:

A few notes:

• Unlike the Tasks database, this database contains independent Date properties for the start and end dates.
• The item “bars” display the Title and Winner properties.
• The Winner property relates to a Winners database, where each player’s icon is his country flag.
• The side table is collapsed.
• The screenshot displays the Timeline at the Years level.

Questions? Tweet @WilliamNutt