Bulk Editor

Preceden's Bulk Editor lets you quickly add and edit events on your timeline:

The Bulk Editor's spreadsheet-style view, listing the events in a Diagnose layer and a Design layer with columns for name, start date, end date, color, icon and notes

Open it with the Bulk Editor button in the timeline editor. If you don't see the button, you're probably on a device with a small screen; switch to a desktop, where the Bulk Editor is easier to use.

Plan Availability

The Bulk Editor is included on some plans and not others. The button is there whatever plan you are on, but if your plan does not include the Bulk Editor, the dialog it opens is covered by a notice naming the plans that do, with a View Plans button.

On a plan that has an event limit, the Bulk Editor also tells you how many of your allowed events the timeline is using, once it holds five or more of them, alongside a link for lifting the limit. When the timeline reaches the limit, clicking + Add Event shows a message saying your plan is limited to that many events instead of starting a new row, and pressing Enter in a layer's last event no longer adds one. You can still edit, move and delete the events already there. See Maximum Number of Events.

Adding Events and Layers

Click + Add Event at the bottom of a layer to start a new event in it, or + Add Layer at the bottom of the editor to start a new layer. Preceden saves a new event once you move out of its row, and a new layer once you give it a name. If your timeline doesn't have any events yet, the Bulk Editor opens with a blank row ready for your first one.

Key Details Only

The Bulk Editor lets you set these key event details:

Name (required)
Start Date (required)
End Date
Color
Icon
Notes

To mark a start or end date as approximate, put a tilde (~) before it: ~March 3, 2021.

The following event details cannot be set with the Bulk Editor:

Image
Connections
Percent Complete
Milestone
Dependencies

Similarly, the only thing you can set about a layer is its name.

To set any of these, click the event or layer on your timeline and edit it there.

Notes is the one column you don't type into. Click the note icon at the end of a row and Preceden opens a box headed Notes for event name: where you write them, then click Update Notes. The icon doubles as an indicator: it is an outline when the event has no notes yet and solid once it does, so you can see at a glance which events carry them.

An event that starts when another event ends (a dependent) shows (dependent) in place of its start date, and you can't change that date in the Bulk Editor.

Automatic Syncing

Preceden saves your changes to events and layers automatically. When you change a field, a green spinner shows that it's saving.

Once the update is complete, the spinner is followed by a green check:

An animation of edits being saved in the Bulk Editor, with a green sync spinner appearing to the left of the event name

If there's a problem, such as a date Preceden doesn't recognize, a red error icon appears to the left of the name. Hover over it to see what went wrong:

An animation of a red error icon beside an event name, whose tooltip reads that the start date Friday is not a supported date format

While a change is saving, the Bulk Editor's close button is disabled, so wait for the check before closing it.

Keyboard Shortcuts

A few keyboard shortcuts are worth knowing in the Bulk Editor:

Enter normally moves to the name of the next row. In the last event in a layer, it works like clicking + Add Event and starts another event. In a blank new event row, it takes you to the name of the next layer, if there is one. This lets you move through your timeline quickly:

An animation of Enter moving down the name column of the Diagnose layer, adding a blank event row at the end and then continuing into the Design layer below

Pressing Enter in a layer's name moves you to its first event, or starts a new event if the layer is empty.

Tab lets you move forward to the next field:

An animation of Tab moving focus one field at a time along a row and on into the next event, highlighting each date value as it lands

Shift + Tab moves back to the previous field.

You can use the Up arrow and Down arrow to move to the same field in the previous or next event.

The Keyboard Shortcuts link at the bottom of the Bulk Editor lists these whenever you need a reminder.

There's currently no way to change the color, icon, or notes using keyboard shortcuts, but if that would be helpful, let us know at [email protected].

Reordering Layers

You can reorder layers by clicking the grip icon beside a layer's name and dragging it into a new position:

An animation of the Design layer being dragged by the grip icon beside its name into a new position above the Diagnose layer

Preceden saves the new order automatically, and it is reflected on your timeline when you leave the Bulk Editor.

Reordering Events

You can reorder events in a similar way:

An animation of the Process Alignment event being dragged to the top of the Diagnose layer's event list

Unlike layer order, though, event order here has no effect outside the Bulk Editor. The order on your timeline is governed by other factors (like the event's dates and whether you've dragged and dropped it into a new position), and the order in the list below your timeline is based on the events' dates. Reordering events here only helps you organize them while you edit.

You can drag an event into a different layer, however, and that does change the event's layer on your timeline.

Deleting Content

Hover over a layer or event to reveal a red X on the right, then click it to delete that event or layer.

There is no confirmation for deleting an event (which makes it easier to delete multiple events quickly):

An animation of a Stakeholder Comms event being deleted from the Develop layer by clicking the red X at the end of its row, with no confirmation step

The X is greyed out on an event that has dependents, and hovering over it explains why. To delete that event, open it from your timeline and click Delete; Preceden then gives each of its dependents a fixed start date matching its end date, or its start date if it has no end date.

Deleting a layer that has events in it does ask you to confirm, since accidentally deleting a layer and all of its events can cost you a lot of time:

A confirmation dialog asking whether you really want to delete the layer Design and all of its events, with Yes and No buttons

One more delete lives below the rows rather than in them: Delete All AI Suggestions... clears every event that came from the AI Suggestions tool in one go, after telling you how many it will remove and asking you to confirm. The button only appears when the timeline actually has events from that tool, and it leaves the events you created yourself alone.

Feedback Wanted

We'd love to hear your feedback and feature requests. Send questions, comments or ideas to [email protected]. Thanks!