See the timing of the dispute

Many arguments turn on timing: how quickly a party reacted to a notice, whether a deadline was met, how long nothing happened before the claim was brought. A list of dates does not show that. The relative view does: each event sits at its real date, so the gaps and the clusters are there to see.

Two questions decide the settings below. What span of time does the point turn on? Hours on the day of a termination, months for a limitation argument. And which periods are not in issue? Those you can fold away.

Open the relative view

1. Open the timeline and choose Relative in the view switcher in the toolbar. Events are placed by their dates along the date line, so the space between them is the time between them.

2. Set the scale with the slider on the right-hand edge of the timeline. Drag it towards the bottom for years and months, when the whole history of the relationship matters, or towards the top for weeks, days and hours, when the point is what happened in one week.

   

3. Move along the timeline by dragging it. The markers at the left and right edges show how many events lie off the screen on that side; click one to go to the nearest of them (Go to nearest off-screen event).

Fold away the quiet periods

A two-year gap between the contract and the first complaint matters to the argument, but it should not take up half the screen.

1. Click Collapse a date range in the toolbar on the left.

   

2. Choose the Start date and End date of the period. Turn on Hide events in this range if the events in it are not part of this argument; leave it off to keep them, squeezed together.

3. Click Collapse. The period shrinks to a short break in the date line, marked with a lightning icon. Click the icon to expand the period again, and again to collapse it.

To change or remove a collapsed period, open Collapse a date range again and expand Active collapses. Each period there can be edited, deleted, or switched between hiding and showing its events.

Put same-day events in order

When several events fall on the same date, they stack in rows beside the date line. On the day of a termination, the order of the notice, the reply and the board meeting can be the whole point, so the stack should read in that order.

1. Hover an event in the stack.

2. Click Move up or Move down to swap it with the event stacked directly above or below it. The arrows only appear where there is an event to swap with, and only for people who can edit the timeline. The order you set is kept.

   

Tips from practice

• The scale is your own. The slider changes how the timeline looks for you, not for others on the timeline. Collapsed periods and the order of same-day events are saved on the timeline itself.
• Long chronologies. With more than 500 events, the slider goes no further out than weeks. Collapse the quiet periods to bring the active phases closer together.
• Exports follow the screen. When you export a relative timeline to PDF, Collapsed date ranges decides whether your collapsed periods stay collapsed (Keep collapsed) or open up (Expand all). Empty periods set to Remove also folds away every stretch with no events.

To show who acted when, add a swimlane for each party. To put the result in front of the client or the court, make a one-page overview of the dispute.