Plan: Is it possible explicitly define start/end dates?

Hello,

I wonder if it's possible to explicitly define work item's start and end dates that will be displayed in Gant Chart?

As far as I know this dates are calculated somehow, could I define them explicitly?

-thanks in advance

I'd also be interested in any insight on this topic.

From what I've been able to decipher is that the default traditional scheduler will schedule tasks automatically based on the ranking attribute, the assigned owner, the predecessor links, and constraint date information. It'd be great if somebody had a document that explained this in more detail though as I'm just guessing based on observation.

The problem we run into is sometimes we want to explictely set the start/end dates, understanding that this might even cause some tasks/work to overlap.

Hope somebody has some insight.