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Plan a release on a Confluence page

Keep a release schedule and its milestones on the planning page, where the team updates dates in seconds.

Problem: Release dates move every week. A screenshot of a planning tool on the page is out of date the day after it's pasted.

Solution: Draw the schedule as a Gantt chart and the milestones as a timeline in Mermaid Diagram macros. Moving a date means changing it in the code.

A Confluence page with a Gantt chart of a release and a timeline of its milestones

What you'll need​

  • Mermaid Diagrams Macro for Confluence, installed on your site. See Get started.
  • Permission to edit the page.

Set it up​

1. Add the schedule​

  1. Open the page, select Edit, type /mermaid under a "Schedule" heading, and select Mermaid Diagram.

  2. Select Create diagram > Start from a snippet > Gantt Diagram: Release Plan > Insert.

  3. Change the tasks and dates. Each task has a name, optional tags, an ID, a start and a duration:

    gantt
        title Release 4.2
        dateFormat YYYY-MM-DD
        axisFormat %d %b
        section Build
        Checkout redesign      :done,   a1, 2026-11-02, 10d
        Saved cards            :active, a2, after a1, 8d
        section Test
        Regression testing     :        b1, after a2, 5d
        section Launch
        Release to all         :milestone, m1, after b1, 0d

    after a1 starts a task when another ends, so later tasks move with it when you change a date. done, active and milestone change how a task is drawn.

  4. Select Save and close.

2. Add the milestones​

  1. Add a second macro under a "Milestones" heading.

  2. Insert the Timeline Diagram snippet and replace the entries with your milestones, one per line:

    timeline
        title Release 4.2 milestones
        November 2 : Development starts
        November 20 : Feature freeze
        December 4 : General availability

  3. Under Display size, select Small, select Save and close, and publish the page.

Check that it works​

  1. When a date changes, hover over the Gantt chart and select Edit diagram. Change the date and select Save and close. You don't need to put the page in edit mode.
  2. Export the page to PDF from Confluence. The PDF shows the first diagram of each macro as an image.
note

Always set dateFormat in a Gantt chart. The chart renders without it, but Mermaid may read your dates differently than you mean.