PMO Pilot

What's new in PMO Pilot

Every change that reaches the add-in or the site, newest first, written by the person who shipped it. Updates arrive automatically; there is nothing to install.

Move the items that depend on it, fiscal years numbered your way, durations in working days, and Today line styles

  • When an item moves later, move the items that depend on it. Turn it on under Edit → Shift dates (it appears once a plan has dependencies). Moving a date in the editor, on the slide or with AI then pushes every item that depends on it later by just enough to keep its link (finish-to-start, start-to-start, finish-to-finish or start-to-finish, with lag), keeping each item's length. Items are never pulled earlier, so slack you left stays. Off is still the default: a link that's broken shows in red.
  • Number fiscal years by the year they start or the year they end. With a fiscal year that doesn't start in January, Style → Timescale & dates → Number fiscal years by picks FY27 (the year it ends, as before) or FY26 (the year it starts) for July 2026 to June 2027.
  • Durations in days, weeks or months, and in working days. With Duration on under Style, choose Duration as Auto, Days, Weeks or Months, and turn on Count working days (Mon–Fri): a two-week task then reads "10d" or "2w" instead of "12d". Holidays aren't counted out.
  • Today line styles. Under the Today marker: Today line (Auto, Solid, Solid thick or Dashed), Today label (show or hide) and Today color. AI edits can set them too ("make the Today line thick and navy").
  • Every new option is off or unchanged by default, so slides you've already made look the same.

"Week 1" scales, a third scale row, and Move plan to start on…

  • Count the scale from the plan's start. Style → Timescale & dates → Scale labels now offers Week 1, Week 2… next to Dates. Week 1 is the seven days from the plan's first item, so a 12-week onboarding plan that starts on a Wednesday reads Week 1 to Week 12 whatever the calendar says. With Units on Days, Months or Quarters it counts Day 1, Month 1 or Quarter 1 instead, and on Automatic it picks weeks for short plans and months for long ones. When the units are narrow the labels shorten to W1, W2…, and counted months keep the day they start on (Jan 31, Feb 28, Mar 31). A calendar row above (Months, Quarters or Years) still shows the real dates.
  • A third scale row. Once there's a Second row, a Third row can go above it: years over quarters over months, for example. The second row then drops the year it no longer needs ("Q1" under "2026"). Fiscal years work here too.
  • Move plan to start on… Edit → Shift dates → Start on: pick the day the plan should start and press Move plan (or Enter). Every item moves by the same number of days, so lengths, gaps and dependencies stay as they were, and a template or last year's plan can start next Monday. A manual timeline start & end moves along. A saved baseline stays where it was, so the move shows as slip against it. Undo puts everything back.
  • All three are off or unchanged by default, so slides you've already made look the same. AI style edits can set the scale labels and the third row too.

Update from file: removed links, milestones and renamed rows handled properly

  • A Microsoft Project file can now remove a link. When next month's Project XML no longer has a predecessor on a task, Update from Excel / CSV takes the arrow off the slide and lists "dependencies removed". Before, a file could add links but never remove one. A plain Excel or CSV file still never removes links, so relationships you drew in PMO Pilot stay.
  • A bar that became a milestone (or back) is listed in the review ("now a milestone") instead of counting as unchanged.
  • Removing items that aren't in the file takes their links with them, so no arrow points at an item that no longer exists.
  • When a spreadsheet row was renamed, the review now says why it shows as one new item and one not in the file, and how to keep its colors (rename it in the plan first).

Microsoft Project XML import, statuses that import right, no silently missing items, and what's on each slide

  • Upload a Microsoft Project plan directly. In Project, choose File → Save As and pick XML, then upload the .xml file with Upload Excel / CSV in Create. Tasks, milestones, dates, % complete, resources (as owners), the baseline (as ghost bars) and predecessor links with their type (FS, SS, FF, SF) and lag come across. The file is read on your computer and never sent to the AI.
  • Top-level summary tasks become swimlanes, and summary tasks aren't drawn as bars of their own, so the slide doesn't repeat its subtasks. Inactive tasks are left out; the review screen says how many.
  • Update from Excel / CSV takes next month's XML too. Tasks are matched by Project's task ID, so a task renamed in Project updates the same bar instead of arriving as a new one. Colors, moved labels and other hand tweaks stay.
  • Picking an .mpp file now tells you what to do (save it as XML, or export it to Excel) instead of saying the file type isn't supported.
  • Excel or CSV exports from Project: dates written with the weekday in front ("Mon 9/1/26") are read correctly, and with an Outline Level column, summary rows group the rows under them instead of showing up as extra bars.
  • The free timeline maker on the website reads Project XML files too.
  • A table or Excel file with Not started in its Status column now imports as Not started. Before, it came in as In progress, including the sample file and a Download CSV file uploaded again with Update from Excel / CSV.
  • When a plan has more items than one slide can hold, PMO Pilot says so before you insert ("34 of 48 items won't fit on one slide") and again after, with Choose what to show and Split into slides. Before, the message after inserting said only "Timeline added", and the items that didn't fit were left off without a word.
  • Reset manual tweaks now asks before it throws away the changes you made by hand on the slide, and Undo brings them back.
  • Buttons use the same words everywhere: Insert adds new shapes to a slide, Update slide changes the ones already there. "% done" in the editor is now "% complete".
  • When PMO Pilot can't reach its server, Create with AI says so instead of saying AI is off, and Generate with AI waits until it's back. Tables and Excel or CSV files still work. Errors show right under the button you pressed, an unexpected server error says what to do next, and a lost connection offers Try again.
  • An AI change preview names colors ("red", with a swatch) and shows moved items next to their old dates. Update reports show statuses in words ("Not started → In progress").
  • In the items list, the box that puts a status on the slide is labeled On slide. Insert on slide is the one main button while you review a draft, and the "Start here" tip steps aside meanwhile.
  • Style → What's on the slide decides what each slide shows of its plan: All items, Summary (one bar per workstream with its milestones, in larger text) or Custom. It replaces the PM detail / Exec summary switch in the same place, and Summary is what Exec summary was (part of Pro, as before). Slides you made before look exactly the same.
  • Custom narrows the slide by outline level (for Microsoft Project plans: tasks below the level you pick are left off the slide, or with Pro, rolled into one summary bar per summary task), by workstream, by milestones (all, key only, none, or milestones only), and by dates (next 3 or 6 months, this fiscal year, or dates you choose).
  • Summary bars (Pro) are computed from the tasks inside them: their span, the worst status, % complete weighted by duration, and the baseline span, so a slip still shows. Change the tasks' dates and the bars follow; dragging a summary bar on the slide doesn't change any task.
  • Hide or show any item by hand: the eye icon next to each item under Edit → Quick edits and on the review screen, the On slide column in the editor, or Choose items…, which lists the whole plan with a search box and a star to mark key milestones. Edit's Items heading shows how many items are on the slide, for example "31 of 48 on slide".
  • Hidden items stay in the plan. They keep updating when you edit, use AI or update from a file, and come back as they are now when you show them again. Dependency lines are drawn only between items that are both on the slide, and the critical path is still worked out on the whole plan.
  • The rules are saved with each slide, so items that Update from file adds follow them without re-ticking anything. The update summary says whether the new items will appear on the slide.
  • Pick with AI suggests a one-slide view for a steering committee: summary bars plus the 5–8 milestones that matter most. You see the change before the slide does, and it uses one of your monthly AI edits, on every plan. On the free plan, the suggestion comes without summary bars. Describe a change understands requests like "show only Build and the gate reviews", and it hides items rather than deleting them.
  • Custom and every show/hide control are on the free plan. Summary and summary bars are part of Pro, as Exec summary was.
  • Split into slides by workstream now puts the whole plan on each new slide, set to show one workstream. Update from file works on any of them, and an item that moves to another workstream moves to that slide.
  • Undo is at the top of the pane on every tab and says what it will undo ("Undo: Hide Today"). Ctrl+Z (⌘Z on a Mac) does the same when you aren't typing in a box. It now covers Style changes and diagram changes too.
  • The review screen before inserting: rename the timeline, pick its look, open the full editor, and jump from a "Please check" note to the item it's about. Plans with more than 12 items show one line per item; click a line to edit that item.
  • Start with an empty plan on Create with AI opens the editor with three starter rows. In the editor, a Type column switches between task and milestone, Enter moves down a column, Ctrl+Shift+= adds a row below, Ctrl+− deletes one, Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y undo and redo, and rows copied from Excel can be pasted into any cell to add them. Dates and status no longer get cut off, and the preview can be folded away.
  • Looks come first: the Style tab starts with Look and Change look…, Create with AI links to the timeline starters, and with a timeline on the slide, a look from Diagrams → Timelines & roadmaps can be used with your own plan instead of a sample. On the free plan, the suggested looks start with free ones.
  • Diagrams: one click on a card opens its page, where Use this diagram starts with empty boxes and the sample shown as hints. A diagram on the slide is edited on the Edit tab and restyled on the Style tab, like a timeline. Timelines & roadmaps, and the last section you used, are open when the tab opens.
  • Style → Timescale & dates has one Today marker setting (Off, Line, or Marker + line) and a Status date, for a slide that reports "as of" a given day.
  • The upgrade window leads with See Pro plans, and each plan says it opens checkout. The rating question waits for a quiet moment instead of arriving with an insert's message.
  • PowerPoint's Black and Dark Gray Office themes get a dark pane. On older PowerPoint versions, Account → Troubleshooting sums up what works in one line, and Style says where a button works differently.
  • Ctrl+Enter (⌘Enter) runs Generate on Create with AI and Preview AI change on Edit. Long help paragraphs on Edit moved behind ⓘ buttons.
  • A new home page on the website. The top shows a status email turning into its timeline slide, one item at a time, and stops on the finished slide if your device asks for less motion. On a phone it's a portrait slide whose labels you can read. Under it are five things you can check yourself, including the same plan as a .pptx download made of native shapes.
  • How it works now shows the slide at each step: the email on an empty slide, the date check, the inserted timeline, and the same slide a month later with the moved bar's old dates as a ghost. On a phone the steps are cards.
  • One plan, six looks: switch the same plan between Classic, Executive Minimal, Phase Chevrons, Detailed Gantt, Status RAG and Midnight right on the home page. The free timeline maker, eight popular templates and answers on price, cancelling, SmartArt and iPad are on the home page too.
  • The website is lighter: the home page downloads about 420 KB instead of 770 KB, with smaller images and a trimmed font. Support, Privacy and Terms now use the site's own header, footer and type, and the footer is four columns.
  • Template pages put the slide first. Each of the 133 template pages shows its slide full width with an Enlarge view, makes the free .pptx download the main button, and links the import steps for your planning tool, more templates from the same category and related blog posts. A shared link now shows that template's own slide.
  • Put the free timeline maker on your own site. The timeline maker page has an Embed this tool section with code to paste into a blog post or intranet page. It runs in your readers' browsers and uploads nothing.

Free timeline maker, Gantt chart maker and .pptx downloads; rate PMO Pilot on Microsoft Marketplace

  • New free timeline maker and Gantt chart maker on the website. Type your tasks or paste them from Excel (or upload a CSV or .xlsx file), pick one of the 18 free looks, and download an editable PowerPoint slide. No sign-up, no AI, and your plan never leaves your browser.
  • Every template page now has a Download this template (.pptx, free) button: the sample slide as native PowerPoint shapes and tables you can edit. Diagram cards come grouped, so each one moves as one.
  • New Gantt chart templates page with four ready-made Gantt charts to download.
  • Each downloaded slide has a small "Made with PMO Pilot" text box in the corner; delete it if you like.
  • After you've put a few timelines, diagrams or tables on your slides, PMO Pilot asks once whether it's saving you time, with a button to rate it on Microsoft Marketplace. Choose Not now and it asks at most once more, much later; choose Rate PMO Pilot and it doesn't ask again. It never shows while something is running or over an error message, and it never stops you working.
  • Account → Rate PMO Pilot on Microsoft Marketplace opens the reviews page any time. If your browser blocks the new tab (PowerPoint for the web), the link is shown for you to open.
  • When checkout opens in a new browser tab, the pane no longer says the pop-up was blocked.
  • A new page, How to rate PMO Pilot, walks through rating on Microsoft Marketplace. If something's broken, tell us first at contact@getpmopilot.com — we fix fast.

PMO Pilot is on Microsoft Marketplace

  • PMO Pilot is now available to everyone on Microsoft Marketplace (formerly AppSource). In PowerPoint, select Home → Add-ins (older versions: Insert → Get Add-ins), search for PMO Pilot and select Add. It works in PowerPoint for Microsoft 365 on Windows and Mac, and in PowerPoint for the web.
  • Microsoft 365 admins can deploy it to the whole organization from the admin center, under Settings → Integrated apps.
  • The free plan stays free, with no account and no card: unlimited timelines from Excel or CSV, 3 AI timelines and 10 AI edits a month, 18 timeline looks and 17 program diagrams.
  • Pro can be bought on the pricing page. The license key arrives by email; paste it under Account in the add-in.

Style fixes: "Timeline default" resets, and the options for a selected item stay open

  • Choosing Timeline default for a selected item's size, label position or label color now puts it back to the timeline's style. Before, the item kept its own setting. With items selected, the Style tab's size and text-position lists offer the same choice.
  • After you change a selected item's shape (a milestone from star to circle, say), its style options stay open, so Apply to all milestones and Reset to timeline style are one click away. Before, the options closed and the pane jumped back to the top.
  • A new three-minute demo video on the home page shows the Oct 17 additions: the new looks, the risks & assumptions table, the Timelines & roadmaps section and the new diagram sections.

More timelines and roadmaps, two new diagram sections, real tables

  • 41 new timeline looks (80 in all), with at least five in every category. Three new categories: Roadmaps (quarterly, strategic, technology, IT, capability, data & AI), IT & transformation (ERP rollout, cloud migration, cutover plan, transformation program, security & compliance) and Corporate & finance (deal timeline, 100-day integration plan, fiscal year plan, audit & close calendar, investor roadmap). Marketing gets a marketing plan and a sales plan.
  • Each look previews on a sample plan that fits it, so a technology roadmap shows a technology plan rather than a generic project.
  • Suggested looks in the Style tab always offer at least five options.
  • The Diagrams tab opens with every section collapsed; click a section to open it. A new Timelines & roadmaps section inserts 22 common starters (milestone timeline, quarterly and product roadmaps, 3-year strategy, release plan, phase-gate, ERP and cloud migration, cutover, go-to-market, 30-60-90 and 100-day plans, and more) with a sample you can replace. Search covers them too.
  • Two new diagram sections, Change management (change readiness, change impact, change canvas, training needs) and Business case & finance (business case one-pager, cost-benefit summary, investment options scorecard, benefits realization tracker). 53 diagrams in all.
  • The Pro label now shows only on the free plan.
  • The risks & assumptions table: on PowerPoint versions that can only draw it as separate cells, opening the deck in a newer PowerPoint (or PowerPoint for the web) and clicking the table button again turns it into a real PowerPoint table, keeping everything you typed. Right-click any cell to insert or delete rows and columns.

Pre-launch check: sturdier license, downloads and imports

  • The PMO Pilot name, Account and the tabs stay at the top of the pane while a long Edit or Style panel scrolls.
  • If the add-in can't reach the server when PowerPoint opens, it keeps trying on its own and Pro unlocks as soon as it answers; the Account tab has a Check again button.
  • Download CSV works in desktop PowerPoint (the file comes through your browser, as saved styles already do).
  • Spreadsheets saved as "Unicode Text" (UTF-16) import correctly, and a title row above a tab- or semicolon-separated table no longer confuses the import.
  • Edits typed into the table while an AI change is being prepared are kept when you apply the change.
  • A blocked pop-up on checkout now shows the link to open yourself instead of claiming it opened.
  • Security hardening behind the scenes: tighter content-security headers on the site and the add-in, keyed hashing of usage counters, no published source maps, and a rate limit on every endpoint.

Blog, email updates, and import guides

  • A blog at /blog: short, practical posts on timelines, roadmaps and program reviews in PowerPoint, written from real program experience. New posts go out by email to subscribers (double opt-in, one-click unsubscribe).
  • Import guides for Excel, Microsoft Project, Jira, Smartsheet and Asana at /from: the exact export steps and the columns PMO Pilot reads from each.
  • A narrated two-minute demo on the home page.
  • An About page and this changelog.

Editor review: owners, swimlanes, dates, relationships

  • Owner on slide can be switched per item, like Status on slide.
  • Workstreams become swimlanes automatically; a Workstreams strip in the editor adds, removes and counts them, and an empty lane can be created to drag items into.
  • Text placed left of the first bar (or right of the last) now widens the timescale instead of flipping sides.
  • Every date reads the same way: "Oct 5, 2026" on items, "Oct 2026" on the scale. Templates that showed dates without a year now show the year.
  • Relationships: item numbers (#4 → #3), the full relationship name, an arrow on/off checkbox, no lag field to fill in.
  • Dragging only a milestone's name no longer drags its date along.
  • Auto arrange sorts items by date and packs the rows; the Snap to dropdown is gone (drags snap to the timescale; hold Alt/Option for exact days).
  • Nothing overlaps after text is dragged to any side of a bar.

Long names, AI quality

  • A long name above a short bar wraps onto two lines instead of running past the bar.
  • Timeline creation from free text runs on the stronger AI model for every plan, including Free, after a measured quality check (97% of checks passed vs 93% for the smaller model).
  • Fiscal quarters, year rollover (Dec → Jan), "early/mid/late" dates and one-day demos are read more reliably.

Text boxes, relationships, legal pages

  • Name, dates, owner and status are separate text boxes you can drag on the slide and in the editor preview; a new default layout keeps them tidy.
  • Relationship types: Finish → Start, Start → Start, Finish → Finish, Start → Finish, with an arrow on or off.
  • Status on slide per item.
  • Report a problem from the Account tab.
  • Fixes: a crash on Windows when opening the Style card, undo after a slide-size change on Mac, new-slide ids in PowerPoint for the web.

Live updates, drag to arrange, styles, licenses

  • Changes in the editor reach the slide as you make them; Cancel puts the slide back.
  • Drag to arrange with snapping; formatting you applied by hand is kept through data updates.
  • My styles: save a look and reuse it; slide-size refit when a deck changes size.
  • PowerPoint for the web is noticeably faster.
  • Pro license keys and checkout inside the add-in.

Public site and early access

  • getpmopilot.com with 39 timeline looks and 45 program diagrams, each with a short guide.
  • Early-access sign-up by email.