Milestones, Gates & Events

Beyond tasks and segments, GreenVee provides three dedicated record types for marking key moments in a project: Milestones, Gates, and Events. Each serves a distinct purpose.

Milestone

A Milestone is a pure timeline marker. It has no conditions attached — it simply says “we have reached this point in the project.”

Field	What it means
Name	The milestone label (e.g. “Design Approved”)
Description	Longer details about what this milestone represents
Planned date	Either a working-time offset from the project’s planned start date, or a fixed date you pin directly — see Floating vs. fixed dates below
Actual	The timestamp recorded once the milestone is marked completed
Completed	Whether the milestone has been reached

Milestones are ideal for recording significant delivery dates, handover points, or contractual deadlines.

Gate

A Gate is a formal checkpoint with internal pass/fail conditions. Unlike a milestone, a gate must be actively evaluated before the project can move forward.

Field	What it means
Name	The checkpoint label (e.g. “Ready for Construction”)
Description	Longer details about what this gate checks
State	Current status of the gate: Open, Passed, or Failed
Planned date	Either a working-time offset from the project’s planned start date, or a fixed date you pin directly — see Floating vs. fixed dates below
Deal-breaker	Whether failing this gate blocks the entire project
Value	A free-text field for recording a note or measurement captured at review time
Risk Actions	Risk mitigation actions linked to this gate — each linked action must be resolved before the gate can be signed off (see Project Risks)

Gates sit inside the project’s schedule just like milestones, but require active evaluation before the project can proceed.

Gates can also be archived to hide a resolved or abandoned gate from the active view without deleting it, and — like most GreenVee records — support soft deletion, so a deleted gate is removed from view but not immediately destroyed.

Milestone vs. Gate — a direct comparison

	Milestone	Gate
Has pass/fail conditions	No	Yes
Can be a deal-breaker	No	Yes
Links to Risk Actions	No	Yes
Records a value	No	Yes
Marks “we are here”	Yes	Yes (also blocks until passed)

Event

An Event is a digital or physical project meeting or site visit. Events give the project a record of when the team gathered, who was there, and what was discussed.

Field	What it means
Title	The event label
Description	Longer details, e.g. an agenda
Type	Whether the event is digital (video call) or physical (on-site visit)
Planned date	Either a working-time offset from the project’s planned start date, or a fixed date you pin directly — see Floating vs. fixed dates below
Start time / End time	The time window the event occupies on its day
Location	Physical address or venue
Meeting URL	Link to a video call (for digital events)

Attendees

Unlike the fields above, attendees aren’t stored directly on the Event — each invite is its own record linking the event to either a Project Member or a plain email address (for guests who aren’t project members). Each attendee record tracks an attendance state: Pending, Accepted, Declined, or Tentative.

Floating vs. fixed dates

Milestones, Gates, and Events share the same scheduling toggle:

• Floating (default) — the item’s date is calculated automatically from the project’s planned start date, using a working-time offset (see Segments, Task Packages, Tasks & Subtasks for how offsets resolve to calendar dates). If earlier work in the schedule shifts, the computed date shifts with it.
• Fixed — turn on the Fixed date toggle to pin the item to an exact calendar date. It stops moving with the rest of the schedule, which is useful for hard external deadlines (e.g. a contractual sign-off date or a booked site visit).

For Project Managers

Use gates for go/no-go decisions where you need evidence and sign-off before proceeding. Use milestones for marking progress and communicating delivery dates to stakeholders. Use events to keep a project-level log of all key meetings.

Note

A gate’s deal-breaker flag signals that failing this checkpoint should trigger escalation — but the actual escalation workflow depends on your organisation’s process configuration.