Auto Stack compresses a timeline by merging rows, and it can merge two rows only when the items in them do not overlap in time and the rows already sit next to each other. How much it compresses therefore depends on the order the items happen to be in. Items that could comfortably share a row sit apart, the rows between them stay separate, and the timeline runs taller than the work in it calls for.

With this update, a new sorting option arranges items so that Auto Stack can collapse the timeline into the fewest rows possible. Craft.io reads the dates of the items in the view, works out which sets of them never overlap, and orders each set together. Auto Stack then runs exactly as it does today. The sort changes the vertical order only, and works separately inside each group in the view.

Eight items on eight rows, none of them mergeable because the compatible ones were never adjacent, come out as four rows.

To use it, open the sorting dropdown on any Timeline view and select Optimize for Stacking.

A timeline with dependencies drawn on it gets harder to read the more it holds. Connected items end up rows apart, their arrows stretch across unrelated work, and the arrows cross each other. The relationship the arrows exist to show is the first thing lost.

With this update, a new sorting option places items connected by dependencies as close together as possible. Craft.io reads the dependencies among the items visible in the view and orders them so that everything connected, directly or through a chain of other items, sits together. Only what is visible counts: a dependency pointing at an item filtered out of the view, or at one in a different group, is left out of the calculation.

An epic with three dependents scattered down a fifty-row timeline comes out with all four together, each arrow reaching only as far as the next row.

To use it, open the sorting dropdown on any Timeline view and select Dependency Proximity.