Make a one-page overview of the dispute
The whole dispute on one page, lanes and colours included, to show on screen at a hearing or a mediation.
Screenshots are taken from the app on every release. Updated 13 October 2026.
Before a hearing or a mediation, the whole dispute should fit on one screen: who did what, when, and how long nothing happened in between. A relative timeline exported to one page does that. Each event sits at its date, with the swimlanes and colours exactly as they are on screen, on a single page sized to fit. The page is made for a screen or a projector, not for paper; for a printed chronology, see present the case chronology.
Two questions decide the settings. Must it look exactly as the parties have seen it on screen, or is readable text more important? And does the reader need every event, or one issue?
Set up the view first
The relative export is a copy of the Relative view: colours, event boxes and the legend come from the timeline itself, not from the export dialog. Get the view right before you export.
Open the timeline in the Relative view and put each event in its party's lane. See show each party's side in swimlanes.
Compress long quiet stretches with Collapse a date range in the toolbar on the left, so a year of silence does not take up half the page.
If the overview is for one issue, select that issue's story first. The export then offers only the story's events, all ticked.
Export one page
Click Export in the toolbar and choose PDF.
Choose Relative timeline. It always exports as one page.
Tick the events that belong in the overview in the event list. Tick the box at the top of the list to include everything.
Decide how close to the screen the page should be:
- Empty periods: Remove collapses stretches of time with none of the selected events. Your own collapsed ranges stay as they are. Keep matches the screen.
- Empty swimlanes: Remove leaves out lanes with none of the selected events, so the page is smaller and everything else comes out larger. Keep matches the screen.
- Collapsed date ranges: Keep collapsed keeps the ranges you collapsed in the view; Expand all shows every period in full.
Read the line under the preview. It gives the page size in centimetres and the scale. If the timeline had to be scaled down to fit, a warning gives the size the text comes out at. To make the text larger, remove empty periods and lanes, collapse more of the quiet stretches, or select fewer events.
Click Download. The PDF downloads when it is ready. A download link also arrives by email, so you can leave the page while the PDF is prepared; the link expires after one hour.
Settings for the occasion
| The occasion | Empty periods | Empty swimlanes | Worth checking |
|---|---|---|---|
| A mediation, on a screen or projector | Keep | Keep | That it looks as the parties have seen it on screen |
| A hearing, on the courtroom screen | Remove | Remove | The text size in the warning under the preview |
| One issue, for counsel | Remove | Remove | That the issue's story is selected before you export |
Without swimlanes: a linear one-pager
If the timeline has no lanes and evenly spaced events read better, choose Linear timeline instead, then One page (digital) under Output. Number of lines decides how many lines the events wrap onto: Automatic rows picks a shape close to a standard page, and One continuous line puts every event on one long line. If the warning under the preview says the text will be too small, go back to more lines.
Tips from practice
- Try it on the real screen. Open the PDF on the screen or projector it will be shown on before the day, and check that the dates can be read from where the reader sits.
- Notes stay off the page. Notes on the timeline are never exported, so the team's working questions do not reach the overview.
- One overview per issue. A story per issue gives you a one-pager per issue from the same timeline, without touching the events.
For a chronology that runs over several pages, see present the case chronology. To show the overview inside a slide deck, see put the chronology into a slide deck.