Office Timeline: The Indezine Review

Introduction
Using Office Timeline
Pricing and Support
Conclusion

Introduction

Office Timeline is an add-in for PowerPoint that helps you create a project timeline or Gantt chart, or any other timeline graphic. These timeline graphics provide an easy way to present your project plans to team members, management, and clients. The Office Timeline wizard lets you pick the type of timeline you want to create. Pick from 10 Timeline templates, enter the data, personalize the Timelines to suit your project needs, and finally click Finish. You can even copy and paste data from Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Project to quickly create timelines.

Office Timeline comes in two editions. The Free Edition lets you to do basic timelines. You can also add more features by upgrading to their Plus Edition. This review is about the Plus edition. You can learn more about the differences between the two editions here.

The add-in is from Office Timeline, a company of the same name based in Washington, USA. You can learn more about the Office Timeline from their site. My contact at Office Timeline for this review was Tim Stumbles -- thank you, Tim.

Using Office Timeline

Download the installer from the link given above, and run the setup routine. Even if you do not download and install Office Timeline, you can follow this walkthrough to understand this product better:

1. Launch PowerPoint. Within the PowerPoint interface, you'll find the new Office Timeline tab on the Ribbon, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 1.
   
   
2. 
   Figure 1: Office Timeline tab on the Ribbon
2. Within the Office Timeline tab, click the New button (highlighted in blue within Figure 1, above).
3. This brings up the Office Timeline wizard, as shown in Figure 2, below. Here you can select a timeline type based on your requirement and click the Next button (highlighted in red within Figure 2).
   
   
4. 
   Figure 2: Timeline type templates
4. This opens the next window of the wizard, as shown in Figure 3. Here you can enter the milestones and also select their properties. Once done, click the Next button (highlighted in red within Figure 3).
   
   
5. 
   Figure 3: Enter milestones
5. The next window of the wizard enables you to enter tasks and select task properties. When done, click the Next button, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 4.
   
   
6. 
   Figure 4: Enter tasks
6. In the final wizard window, you can set the style options for the timeline. You can customize colors, fonts, and various other options to get the look you want. When done click the Finish button, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 5.
   
   
7. 
   Figure 5: Set style options
7. This will create the timeline on a new slide based on the options you have selected, as shown in Figure 6.
   
   
   Figure 6: Timeline created
8. You can further edit the timeline using the options within the Office Timeline tab (highlighted in red within Figure 6, above) and also within the Office Timeline Task Pane (highlighted in blue within Figure 6, above).
9. Make the changes as required and make sure to save the presentation often.

Pricing and Support

Office Timeline's basic version is free. The Plus Edition costs $39 a year for a Private license and $49 annually for a Business license

Support is through e-mail, FAQ, and Telephone.

Conclusion

Office Timeline is an amazing product that lets you create cool timelines right within PowerPoint. Even more importantly, this feels like you are working inside PowerPoint because Office Timeline integrates seamlessly. The interface matches and also Office Timeline respects PowerPoint's Theme Colors.