Anatomy of a task card
A card on the timeline packs a work item into the width of its schedule. Reading it from left to right:
The card’s height is set by the Card Height parameter, 50 pixels by default.
Raise it when your titles or effort figures need more room — see Widget Parameters.
With Plans Type set to Remaining Estimate + Time Spent, the fields line shows the remaining estimate followed by the combined figure in parentheses.
If neither a remaining estimate nor time spent is recorded, it falls back to the initial estimate.
The hover handles
Hovering a card on the timeline reveals two handles:
A hovered card: the Add Link chain and Unplan item calendar-with-a-cross handles top right, and the hover tooltip underneath with the title, the date range, and the configured Tooltip Fields.
Which colour wins
Several states can apply to the same task at once, so Scheduler resolves them in a fixed order. The first match decides the card’s colour:1
Overloaded -- red
The task asks for more hours than its swimlane can absorb over the days the bar spans.
This wins over everything else, including a resolution: an overloaded card is red even if it is finished.
2
Resolved -- grey, read-only
The work item has a resolution set.
Grey also means the card is read-only: it cannot be dragged, and it offers no Unplan item handle.
3
Overdue -- red
Today is past the work item’s due date.
An overdue task also adds a red Overdue line, with the due date, at the bottom of its hover tooltip.
4
Otherwise -- the work item's status colour
With none of the above applying, the card takes the colour configured for its status in the project’s work-item status enumeration.
This is the normal case, and it is why a healthy board reads like your Polarion statuses rather than like a traffic light.
Three of the four outcomes on one board: an overloaded card in red at the top, status-coloured cards in the middle, and a resolved card in grey with a struck-through ID at the bottom.
Because overload is evaluated per day and re-evaluated whenever the board redraws, a card can change colour without the work item changing.
Dragging a neighbouring task off a busy day, or shortening it, is enough to take a red card back to its status colour.
The four load bands
In the timeline view, every day cell of a swimlane’s summary row carries a load marker: the hours scheduled into that day for that swimlane, over the swimlane’s capacity for the day — for example15.3 / 8.
The marker’s background is one of four bands:
Markers in the High band: 15.3 / 8, 13.3 / 8 and 10.8 / 8 are all past an eight-hour day, so every cell is salmon red — the rows with nothing scheduled print no figures at all.
How a task contributes to a day
A task’s effort — the figure chosen by Plans Type — is spread across the working days its bar covers, and each of those days receives its share. Two consequences worth knowing:- A long bar is a light bar. The same effort stretched over more days lands less load on each of them, which is often the quickest way to clear a red day.
- Over 100% is normal to see, not a data error. A high marker simply means the hours booked into that day exceed the capacity of the row. It is the signal to reschedule, not a fault.
See Also
- Capacity and Load — where capacity comes from and how load is built up
- Dates, Duration and Effort — the fields behind a bar’s extent and its effort figure
- Schedule and Reschedule Tasks — moving work to clear an overloaded day
- Dependencies — what the Add Link handle creates
- Widget Parameters — Card Height, Plans Type and Tooltip Fields