Introduction
Kanban is the app's to-do list for a team. Work sits on cards, cards sit in columns, and you move a card from one column to the next as the job progresses. It is deliberately simple: no workflow, no approvals, nothing that fires off an email. It is a whiteboard that everyone at your company sees the same way.
There are three levels. A board is one subject — Damage follow-up, say. Inside it are columns, called lanes, such as Outstanding, In progress and Completed. Inside those are the cards: one job each.
You will use it when:
- your branch runs a recurring list that does not belong on a booking
- several people share one queue and need to see who has what
- you want a job written down with a date on it and nothing more formal
Words this screen uses
| The screen says | It means |
|---|---|
| Sort key | The number that decides where a column sits, lowest on the left |
| Load more | Shows the rest of a column past the first twenty cards |
| Due in {1} days | The countdown printed on a card that has a date |
Steps
Before you start: any signed-in member of staff can create cards, move them, comment on them and open them. Creating or renaming a board or a column needs company administrator rights. Cards you create are visible to everyone at your company — this is not a private list.
- Open the boards list from the main menu item called Kanban.
- Click Open board on the board you want.
- Click Create card at the foot of the column the job belongs in.
- Give the card a Title, and add a description, a person and a due date if you have them.
- Click Save at the bottom of the card to store it and close.
- Back on the board, drag a card up, down or across into another column to move it.
Who is allowed to change what. The split matters when you are trying to add a column and cannot find the button.
| Job | Who |
|---|---|
| Create, edit or delete a board or a column | Company administrator |
| Create, edit, move, comment on or delete a card | Anyone signed in |
What fits on a card. More than the board shows. Besides the title there is a formatted description, one person it belongs to, and a due date carrying a time as well as a day. The date picker steps in fifteen-minute jumps and has a Today button. Cards also take file attachments, up to three files at a time and two megabytes each.
The countdown goes negative when a card is late. The board prints the days left under the title. Two days before the date it reads Due in 2 days; the day after it has passed it reads Due in -1 days. There is no colour change and no separate overdue column, so the minus sign is the only warning you get. It is the same convention as the inspections list on your daily overview.
Comments are posted, not saved with the card. The comment box has its own Save button beside it. Pressing that posts the comment straight away, stamped with your name, and empties the box for the next one. Pressing Save at the bottom of the card instead saves the card and throws away anything still sitting unposted in the comment box. Post the comment first, then save the card. An empty comment, or one that is only spaces, is ignored rather than posted.
Cards belong to the company, not to you. Everyone signed in at your company opens the same boards and sees the same cards, whoever made them, and anybody can move or edit any of them — there is no ownership and no lock. Naming a person on a card records who the job belongs to; it does not hide the card from anybody else, and it does not send them anything. If you want somebody to know, tell them — the board will not.
Dropping a card rebuilds the whole column. When you let go, every card in the destination column is renumbered from the top so the order always comes out right. That is why a drop takes a moment on a long column. Dropping a card back exactly where it came from does nothing at all.
Columns show twenty cards at a time. Past that a Load more button appears at the bottom. A column that looks finished may simply be showing its first twenty.
There is no archive at all. Nothing on a card or a board archives it, so a finished job either moves to a Completed column and stays there, or gets deleted from the card itself. Agree with your team which of the two you do, because the columns keep growing otherwise.
What to do next: if this is a brand-new board, an administrator can press Example board on the boards list to get a working four-column board with a sample card, then rename the columns to suit. Otherwise, put your first real job on a card, give it a date, and drag it as it moves.
Tips and common issues
- You cannot find a button to add a column. Columns are added from the board's own edit screen with New Lane, and only a company administrator sees it. Ask them; you can still add as many cards as you like.
- Two columns keep swapping places. Columns are ordered by their Sort key, lowest first, and nothing stops two columns being given the same number. When that happens their order is anybody's guess from one visit to the next. Give every column a different number. The sample board ships with this problem: two of its four columns are both numbered 2.
- Your comment seems to have disappeared. It was typed but never posted. Only the Save beside the comment box posts it; the one at the foot of the card discards it.
- A card you were sure existed is not in the column. Scroll to the bottom and look for Load more before assuming somebody deleted it.
- The due date will not clear. The date field has a small clear control on it — use that rather than deleting the text, which can leave the field reading as an invalid date.
- Someone deleted a card you needed. There is no recycle bin and no archive. Deletion is final, so prefer moving finished work to a Completed column over deleting it.