Create and move cards on Kanban

Introduction

Kanban is the app's to-do list for a team. The screen is headed Kanban, with Manage your teams to do's and increase your productivity. underneath, and below that sits the list of your company's boards. 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 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, which this screen calls lanes, such as Outstanding, In progress and Completed. Inside the lanes are the cards: one job each.

You will use it when:

• you want to see at a glance what your team is working on and what is due this week
• 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

Use Kanban for internal jobs that need a name and a date. Anything tied to a customer or a vehicle belongs on that booking or vehicle instead.

How to use

Configuration

Boards and lanes are set up by a company administrator; everyone else works with cards.

Create a board:

1. From the main menu, click Kanban.
2. Click New Board above the list. A form opens.
3. Type the board's Name.
4. Click New Lane above the lane list. A small Lane window opens.
5. Fill in the lane's Title and its Sort key — the lowest number sits on the left. The Sort key takes decimals, so 1.5 slots a lane between 1 and 2. A new lane starts at 0. The window also has a Board field, already set to this board; change it only to move the lane to another board.
6. Click Save in the Lane window. Repeat steps 4 to 6 for each lane.
7. Click Save on the board form.

The lane is stored the moment you press Save in its own window; Cancel on the board form does not take it back. To remove a lane, use the trash-can icon at the end of its row. To change a lane, use the pencil icon beside it.

Start from a sample instead. Example board on the boards list builds a board called Example productivity board with four lanes — Outstanding, In progress, Review and Completed — and one sample card, Populate cards, due five days from now. It opens straight away. Rename the lanes to suit, and fix the Sort key first: In progress and Review are both numbered 2 (see Q&A).

Rename or delete a board. On the boards list, the pencil icon beside a board opens its form; the trash-can icon deletes it without asking. Deleting a board also deletes its lanes and every card in them.

Before you start: creating, renaming or deleting a board or a lane needs a company administrator account; only a company administrator can use those buttons and icons. Any regular staff account can work with cards. A limited, view-only account sees the list of boards but cannot open one. Cards are visible to everyone at your company — this is not a private list.

Using the Kanban board

From the main menu, click Kanban. The boards list opens.

1. Click Open board on the board you want. The board opens, with its name at the top and a Back button to return to the list.

2. Click Create card at the foot of the lane the job belongs in. The Edit Card window opens.

3. Fill in the card:

   Field	What goes in it
   Title	A short name for the job; this is what shows on the board
   Description	Formatted text, up to 200 characters including the formatting; put longer detail in a comment
   Assigned to	One member of staff the job belongs to
   Due date	A day and a time; the picker steps in fifteen-minute jumps and has a Today button

4. To add a comment, open the Comments tab, type in the box and click the Save right beside it. Post it before you save the card.

5. To attach files, open the Files tab and add them — up to three files at a time, two megabytes each.

6. Click Save at the bottom of the card to store it and close the window.

7. Back on the board, drag a card up, down or across into another lane to move it. The move is stored as soon as you let go.

To change a card later, click it on the board; the same window opens. To delete it, use the red trash-can icon at the top of the card window. It deletes straight away, without asking.

When it worked, the card shows in its lane with its title, the person's name and, if it has a date, the countdown.

Key details

The countdown goes negative when a card is late. The board prints the whole days left under the title, rounded down. A card due Friday at 17:00 reads Due in 2 days on Wednesday morning; on Saturday morning it reads Due in -1 days. There is no colour change and no separate overdue lane, 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. Pressing the Save beside the comment box 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. An empty comment, or one that is only spaces, is ignored rather than posted.

Cards belong to the company, not to you. Everyone at your company opens the same boards and sees the same cards, whoever made them, and anybody with a regular staff account can move or edit any of them — there is no ownership and no lock. Assigned to 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 renumbers the whole lane. When you let go, every card in the destination lane is renumbered from the top so the order always comes out right. That is why a drop takes a moment on a long lane. Dropping a card back exactly where it came from does nothing at all.

Lanes show twenty cards at a time. Past that a Load more button appears at the bottom. A lane that looks finished may simply be showing its first twenty.

There is no archive. Nothing on a card or a board archives it, so a finished job either moves to a Completed lane and stays there, or gets deleted from the card itself. Agree with your team which of the two you do, because the lanes keep growing otherwise.

What to do next: on a brand-new board, ask a company administrator to press Example board or set up the lanes as described under Configuration. Otherwise, put your first real job on a card, give it a date, and drag it as it moves.

Q&A

Someone deleted a card or a board I needed. Can I get it back? No. There is no recycle bin and no archive, and deleting a board takes all its lanes and cards with it. Prefer moving finished work to a Completed lane over deleting it.

Why did the comment I typed disappear? 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. Open the card, open Comments, type it again and press the Save beside the box.

Why do two lanes keep swapping places? Lanes are ordered by their Sort key, lowest first, and nothing stops two lanes being given the same number. When that happens their order can change from one visit to the next. Ask a company administrator to open the board with the pencil icon and give every lane a different number. The sample board ships with this problem: In progress and Review are both numbered 2.

Why can I not find a button to add a lane? Lanes are added from the board's own form with New Lane, which only a company administrator can use. Ask them; you can still add as many cards as you like.

A card I was sure existed is not in the lane. Where is it? Scroll to the bottom of the lane and click Load more before assuming somebody deleted it.

How do I clear a due date? Use the small Clear control on the date field rather than deleting the text, which can leave the field reading as an invalid date.