Milestones Pro

A milestone marks a checkpoint in a project, such as a beta release or security review. Link the work that needs to finish by its target date, then track completion.

Turn on milestones

Milestones are off by default in every project. Project admins, and workspace owners and admins, can turn them on.

1. Open your project's menu and select Settings.
2. Under Features, select Milestones.
3. Turn on Enable milestones.

A Milestones tab appears next to Overview at the top of the project's Overview page. If Milestones does not appear under Features, ask a project admin to turn it on.

Turning milestones off keeps your milestones and their linked work items. The Milestones tab, the Milestone property, and the milestone column, filter, and grouping options disappear from the project until you turn milestones back on.

You can also turn on milestones when you create a project. After the project is created, the feature step lists Enable milestones with the other project features. The option is hidden if your plan does not include milestones, and the step is skipped when you create the project from a template. In a project template, turn on Milestones under Features.

Create a milestone

Project admins and contributors can create and manage milestones by default. See Who can do what.

1. Open the project's Overview and select Milestones.
2. Click Add milestone.
3. In the Create milestone dialog, enter a Title, for example "Q4 launch" or "MVP release".
4. Add a description and a Target date if you have them.
5. Click Create.

Titles are required, up to 255 characters, and must be unique within the project. If you leave the title empty, the dialog shows "Title is required". If the title is taken, Plane shows "A milestone with this title already exists in the project." Uniqueness is case-sensitive, so "Beta" and "beta" can both exist. The description can hold formatting, mentions, images, and files. The target date is optional.

Plane shows "Milestone created successfully." Then add work items to the milestone.

To edit a milestone, open its menu on the Milestones tab and select Edit. In the Update milestone dialog, change the title, description, or target date, then click Update. Click Discard to close the dialog without saving. Plane shows "Milestone updated successfully." To change or clear only the target date, click the date in the milestone's row.

Add work items

A milestone can contain only work items from its own project. Each work item belongs to one milestone at a time. Link sub-work items separately if they need to count toward the milestone.

1. On the Milestones tab, click the milestone to open it.
2. Click Link work items.
3. In the Add existing work item dialog, search for and select the work items to add.
4. Click Add selected work items.

The picker searches the current project by name or ID and shows up to 20 results. It only lists work items that are not already assigned to a milestone. Draft and archived work items, and intake work items that have not been accepted, do not appear. To move a work item that already belongs to another milestone, change its Milestone property instead.

You can also open a work item and choose Milestone under Project structure in its side panel. Selecting a different milestone moves the work item out of its previous milestone. Select No milestone to remove the link. The milestone's own page has no remove button, so this is how you take a work item out of a milestone.

To set the milestone on many work items at once, select them in a project layout and use bulk operations.

Linking, moving, and unlinking work items needs permission to edit milestones.

Activity and notifications

Adding a work item to a milestone, moving it to another milestone, or removing it shows up in the work item's activity:

• "added this work item to the milestone {name}."
• "changed the milestone to {name}."
• "removed the work item from the milestone {name}."

Plane notifies the work item's subscribers of each change. Changes made through the API are not recorded in activity and do not send notifications.

Track progress

A milestone's progress is the share of its linked work items that are in a Completed state, out of all its work items except the cancelled ones. Plane rounds it to a whole percentage and updates it as work items change state. A milestone with no work items, or only cancelled work items, shows 0%.

For example, a milestone with 10 work items, of which 6 are done, 1 is cancelled, and 3 are still open, shows 67% progress: 6 completed out of 9 that still count. Cancel another one and the same 6 completed items make it 75%.

The milestone's icon shows where it stands:

• Grey, at 0% progress.
• Amber, while progress is above 0% and below 100%.
• Green with a check, at 100% progress.

Plane does not mark a milestone as overdue when its target date passes. Watch the target date and progress together.

Open a milestone to see its work items on a timeline. If the milestone has a target date, the timeline opens at that date. Use the filter icon to narrow the work items, or click a work item to open its details. If you can edit work items, drag a work item's bar to change its dates or resize it, and add timeline dependencies. Before you link anything, the timeline reads "No work items linked" and "Link work items to this milestone to view them on the timeline."

Check dates against the target

Changing a milestone's target date does not reschedule its work items. If a work item's due date is after the milestone's target date, a warning icon appears next to the due date in the work item's details. Hover over the icon to see "End date is after the milestone target. You can update to stay on track." Change the work item's due date or the milestone's target date to clear the warning. The warning appears only in work item details, not in list, board, table, or timeline layouts.

View and find milestones

Open the project's Overview and select Milestones to see titles, progress, and target dates. The list is ordered by target date, earliest first, with milestones that have no target date last. Click the search icon to find a milestone by name. Before the project has any milestones, the tab reads "Create your first milestone" and "Track important project checkpoints and their target dates."

When a milestone is open, click its name in the breadcrumb to switch to another milestone.

Show milestones on the project timeline

Milestones with target dates appear as dashed vertical markers in the project's timeline layout. Milestones without a target date do not appear. When a marker holds one milestone, its color matches that milestone's progress. A marker that holds several milestones is always amber. Use the markers to see whether work is scheduled to finish before each milestone.

Hover over a marker to see the milestone's name, progress, and work item count. The work item count includes cancelled work items. Milestones that share a target date use one marker, with each milestone listed in the popover. On hover, the marker stacks up to four milestone icons, with a count for the rest.

Group and filter work items

• Group by Milestones in list and board layouts. Groups are ordered by target date, with work items that have no milestone last, in a group called None. Creating a work item inside a milestone's group assigns it to that milestone. You cannot drag work items while they are grouped by milestone. To move a work item, change Milestone in its side panel or in the Milestones column in table layout.
• Filter by Milestone to show work items in selected milestones, or use is empty to show work items without one. See work item filters.
• Add the Milestones column in table layout to view or change each work item's milestone. Work item cards in list and board layouts do not show the milestone.
• Use the milestone field in Plane Query Language.

Move work items between projects

When you transfer work items to another project, the transfer dialog has a Milestones section. For each Current milestone, pick a Destination milestone in the other project, or leave the field empty to remove the milestone. If milestones are off in the destination project, the dialog says the milestone data will be removed and suggests enabling milestones there first. The moved work items lose their milestone.

Automate milestone changes Business

Use the Change property action in custom automations to assign a milestone, move work items to another milestone, or remove their milestone. Automations can only use milestones from the same project, and changes they make appear in activity like manual changes.

Webhooks and API

Webhooks can send events when a milestone is created, updated, or deleted. Archiving and restoring a milestone with its project are sent as updates. Adding, moving, or removing a work item is sent to workitem.updated subscribers. See Webhooks.

You can also create and manage milestones and their work items with the Plane API.

Delete a milestone

Milestones are archived and restored with their project. You cannot archive a milestone on its own.

WARNING

Deleting a milestone cannot be undone. Its work items remain in the project without a link to the deleted milestone, and each work item's activity records the removal.

1. Open the milestone's menu on the Milestones tab.
2. Select Delete.
3. In the Delete milestone dialog, click Delete.

The dialog warns that deleting the milestone "is permanent, and any work items linked to it will lose the milestone." Plane shows "Milestone deleted successfully".

Who can do what

These are the default permissions for each project role.

Action	Project Admin	Contributor	Commenter	Guest
View milestones	✓	✓	✓	—
Create, edit, and delete milestones	✓	✓	—	—
Link and unlink work items	✓	✓	—	—
Turn milestones on or off for the project	✓	—	—	—

Contributors can edit and delete any milestone in the project, not only the ones they created. Workspace owners and admins can do everything. With custom roles, grant View Milestones, Create Milestones, Edit Milestones, and Delete Milestones under Project Configuration. For every permission in Plane, see the permissions matrix.

See also

• Project Overview
• Project settings