Using the Kanban View

Learn how to make the most of the Kanban View.

Maayan Ayalon avatar
Written by Maayan Ayalon
Updated over a week ago

The Kanban view is a column view with Kanban behavior. You can use this view to present all your items as cards, and easily drag and drop items between columns.

In 'Default Mode', the Kanban cards display the following fields for each item:

  • Status: view and edit an item's status.

  • Assignee: view and edit the team member or team that the item is assigned to.

  • Importance: view and edit an item’s importance.

  • Dependencies: see the number of dependencies (relations) an item has; if a dependency blocks an item, you’ll see its icon in red. Clicking on the dependency icon opens the dependencies panel.

Compact Mode

With the Kanban View, you can easily visualize items in columns, where each one represents a group that is derived from the “group by” mechanism. While we developed the UI for easy viewing of cards and columns, we do know that sometimes you want to see more cards together on a screen. For example, when you want to take a screenshot to use in a presentation.

To support this use case, and others, you can use the Compact Mode. When selecting the Compact mode (by clicking on the 'Layout' Button), card heights are reduced and their width is increased. This will enable you to display more cards on a screen at the same time. Note that when in Compact Mode, less data is presented on each card, and fewer groups are visible on the screen. In addition, when sorting by single selection fields (e.g. Release, Sprint, Assignee etc.) in Compact Mode, each column is divided into sub-groups to make the reading experience easier and friendlier. Subgroup dividers are also very useful for displaying the second dimension of grouping.

Tip: To maximize the visibility across numerous cards, use the Compact View together with the Expand Mode!

Among other use cases, the Kanban view is a great layout for both sprint planning and product process management.

Grouping by Sprints

You can use Sprint grouping for sprint management. Refer to the tips below:

  • Select 'Group by: Sprints' in the filter toolbar.

  • Create a new Sprint by clicking the blue '+' button in the top right toolbar.

  • To activate the drag and drop capability, select 'Sort by: Drag & Drop'. This will enable you to move tasks from backlog to sprints. You can also move items between sprints by changing the order of the cards inside their own column, in addition to dragging and dropping them between columns.

  • You can also check Sprint statistics by clicking on the 'View stats' button (graph icon) at the top of each Sprint column (below the Sprint name).

  • To mark a Sprint as deployed, you can click on the three-dot icon at the top of a Sprint column to open the menu, and then click on "Release".

Note: When releasing a Sprint you will be prompted to decide where to send incomplete tasks if any exist.

Product Process

A Kanban view is also great for your product process management.

We’ve made Craft.io flexible so that you can customize the product process to match your team's workflow. You can find the default workflow inside Workspace Settings > Workflow & Statuses, but you can rename, delete and add as many statuses as you want and update the workflow as you see fit (for more information about Workflow & Statuses go to this article).

We recommend using the Product Process view (under "Track" in the Navigation menu) to easily mange and track the status of items and manage your product process.

This view includes a Kanban board with Grouping by Status and Filtering 'Type' by Epic. You can update the status of items by simply dragging them between the columns.

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