Kanban Tool User Manual
Kanban Tool User Manual
User Manual
Nov 2020
Dear User,
welcome to the Kanban Tool guide manual.
On the following pages you will find a collection of the service’s most important functions, which
will allow you to start managing your project without further delay.
Table of Contents
1. Creating your first board using a template...................................................................................6
7.6. Assignment.................................................................................................................................................. 25
9. Notifications................................................................................................................................27
10. Import of tasks from Excel or CSV, mass updates on tasks & export to CSV..........................29
18. Speeding up your work – shortcuts, filters, global search & automation rules.........................47
19. Power-Ups................................................................................................................................48
19.22. Pinboard.................................................................................................................................................. 61
In this section you are able to name your board, provide a short description and, most importantly,
choose one of the pre-defined types of the board that will allow you to start the work as quickly
as possible.
There are two kinds of boards – simple and team, each with three sub-types:
This is a very simple workflow, suitable for basic personal work and time management. It has
three self-descriptive states:
In progress with limit to keep you from doing too many things at the same time.
The time driven version of basic workflow. Works best if you plan in a time based manner.
The board layout looks as follows:
To do
In progress with limit to keep you from doing too many things at the same time.
The event driven version of a basic workflow works best when some external event (like approval,
or a pre-defined completion of a particular stage etc.) determines which tasks are ready to be
worked on next. The board layout looks as follows:
In progress with an all important limit to keep you from doing too many things
at the same time.
Team boards use buffers to signal that tasks are ready to be pulled to the next workflow stage,
possibly by other team members. The board layout looks as follows:
This template can act as a base for describing a product development process.
Requirements gathering
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Requirements analysis
In development
o Waiting
o Working on
In QA
o Waiting
o Working on
In verification
o Waiting
o Working on
This template can act as a base for describing your sales pipeline.
Leads
New opportunities
Initial communication
Solution development
Proposal
Solution evaluation
Negotiation
Closed
o LOST
o WON
This template can act as a base for running your online marketing processes.
Alerts
To do
Scheduled
o This Week
o Today
In Progress
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Monitoring
Done
- Creating folders:
For better organization, Kanban Tool allows creating folders, in which you can store your boards
(very helpful once you get going and end up with a lot of boards). While on the Dashboard, just
click Create new folder. To place a board in a folder, go to more option and choose the “move”
option to decide where to put your board.
As you can see, there are many available options of designing the board to suit the needs
of a particular team or project. At first glance it may look confusing, but we do not want you to get
confused. For this reason, it is best to start with any of the basic Kanban Boards and suitably
develop them on further steps of the project depending on your needs. This way you can avoid
confusion among the team members that need to learn the tool as well – keep it simple from the
beginning and it will stay simple even when you've created a whole network of projects.
Before you leave the board creation screen, you can tick the option “I want to further customize
this board” to be transferred to the board edition screen.
Board edition screen is the place where you can change the layout of your board, as well as add
further columns and swimlanes that will suit your project flow.
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The board edition screen is accessible through Settings → Board Editor. Settings are located
in the top right corner of a board view – next to Tools, Help and filters box.
In the board edition screen your board is a little faded and each column has a set of four icons
that can be used to introduce changes to this particular column (or swimlane):
- the split fork icon is used to divide a particular column into two separate ones. There may be
a situation when one group of items has to be further divided into two more, like TO DO items
into: - TO DO (this week) and - TO DO (next week), etc. You can divide and subdivide the
divisions as much as you need
- the bin icon is used to delete a particular column or swimlane when you decide it is no longer
needed
- the gray right / left arrow icons – these icons allow for changing the location
of a particular column or swimlane on the board. Click on the arrow icon for the column
/ swimlane to swap places with the one indicated by the arrow’s point.
To add a column or a swimlane just click on the big green icon visible on the right and at the
bottom of the board respectively.
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Start collaborating by adding new users to your account. Please click the People tab, visible
in the top left the menu.
In the screen that follows, you are able to set an entire sub-account for any person you need
to take part in using your Kanban board.
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There, you can also assign privileges that determine how much change the particular person
can introduce onto the boards:
- If you want this person to view all boards and folders, select the Account owner privileges.
These privileges allow to see and do everything with and within your account.
- If you'd like for a user to be able to see, manage and create new items within the account,
assign them Account administrator privileges. They will not be able to edit any account settings.
- When you want a user to only access the boards that were shared with them and create and
manage new ones, give them Project Manager privileges. Project Managers will be able to invite
new people, but will not be able to edit the People section to edit users' options.
However, if you only want a user to have access to one selected board or a folder, after inviting
this person, please go to the share option and select this person to give access. When you fill
the pop-up form, the person will receive an email with their user name, password and URL
to access your account.
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Then, click Add new person and fill the form. Choose the full access option to allow invited
person to create, modify, move and delete tasks. This person will have access to this board
or folder only.
In the custom access option you can specify what exactly a particular person is allowed to do on
the board. A read only access will only allow to view the board, no modifications of any kind
allowed.
Individual boards can also be shared with others directly from the board view – just use the Share
option in a board's top right corner, next to Settings, Tools and Help links.
Fig 12: Sharing the open board with others, without exiting the board view
If you have a .csv file with details of people you would like to add to your account, you can import
them at once instead of adding each person individually. Please go to the People → Invite
a Whole Team option.
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Enterprise plan subscribers can take advantage of a user groups feature. This saves you from
having to share individual boards with individual people – instead, when creating users, you
assign what groups they belong to. Then, boards only need to be shared with a group once – all
current and future members of a group will automatically get access to them.
It's a great feature for larger teams, for which data access control is crucial and user
management more complex.
To learn more about user groups please visit this page.
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Account Owners can add a logo image to the account, making a visual connection between your
company workflow and company branding. Simply upload a logo image from Account
Administration - Account Settings. The image will be shown on your account login page, and on
the dashboard.
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With your board edited to suit the needs of your team or project, you can now begin adding tasks.
To add a task to a particular column either just double click on the empty space within the column
or click the +add task link.
A card creation screen will appear. Here you are able to:
- create a checklist of items that are part of this task (each of them can be assigned to a specific
user)
- write a task description, or simply copy & paste any external information about it
- add card attachments that make the task easier to complete / understand – at this point, you
can only attach files from your computer, unless you have previously enabled the Google Drive
/ Box integration, or had you switched on the fabulous Web Attachment Power-Up (read more
about this on page 57).
The file attachments (uploads from a computer) are not a feature supported in Kanban Tool's
Free plan. Free plan users can, however utilize the Google Dive / Box and other file hosting
service integrations to attach files to cards.
- change the type of the card – types are usually connected to colors and will be discussed
in sections that follow
- add tags, to help in managing and searching tasks via the search engine visible in the top right
corner of your board
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Once you've filled in all the information on your task, you have the option to place this newly
created task at the top of the column (bottom right corner of the task card) – this is particularly
helpful when adding last-minute or urgent tasks to highly populated columns.
Note: Please note this is a standard layout of a card. Adding further functions (fields) to the cards
will be described in the next sections.
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Fig 16: Additional options available when editing a newly added task
When you open your new card you will notice some additional options available.
Comments and Card History – in the side panel opened with the red chat-like icon, any user
with access to the board may leave notes concerning this particular task. Each comment comes
with the name of the user that wrote it, as well as a date, so it is not necessary to sign the
commentary.
Comments will be intertwined with card history – given in chronological order, since the card's
creation to the latest changes and comments. All changes are accompanied by date, time and
name of the person who made them.
Comments are to be entered via the bottom text window, and can include attachments and links
to convey more information.
Comment notifications can also be sent to a specified person, people or user group via email.
Comments can be exchanged either by replying in Kanban Tool or by replying to the notification
email – whichever works for you.
At the bottom of the card, you will also notice the time passed since the card's last edition.
If you're using Kanban Tool's Time Tracking – once the team had been working on a card, and
timing this work – under the task's name there will also be information on the time already worked
on it.
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By clicking the time logged, a list of all users' time worked on this task will be displayed.
If you're not using Time Tracking, the only additional information under the task's name will be the
name of the column, in which that task is currently placed.
To move a card around the board just use the standard Drag & Drop method. You can also use
a card drop-down menu. Just right-click on the card and select Move. This action will progress the
card to the next column to the right.
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If you have more tasks that need to be moved from one column to another, right-click in any
empty space within a column and select Move all.
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In Card Template, you are able to add more options to your cards:
7.1. External ID
You can add an external ID to your cards. It's possible to make it editable, visible on the front
of cards, set sequential numbers (this will make the number unique across all your boards) and
choose an option to auto generate them for new cards. Editable external ID is useful for fast
searching and keeping cards in groups.
Allows you to attach external links to your cards - very useful when information vital for
completion of the task is found on a website. Once an External Link had been placed in a card,
it will be possible to open with one click – both from an open and closed card (chain-link icon).
The Estimated time field is designed to store your task duration guess. Additionally, the
Enterprise plan clients can use it to get a visual clue comparing the time recorded while working
on a task, to their estimate on how long that task should have taken.
You can add your estimation of how long you think the task will or should take. The Estimated
time field is set to work in hours. For instance, you can write: “6” for 6 hours or ",5" for half
an hour or ":25" for 25 minutes.
When work is started on a previously estimated task, there will be a pale green progress bar
displayed at the bottom of the card, informing of the running time being within the estimate.
If you work on this task for longer than estimated, a new progress bar will be displayed - pale red,
showing how far over the estimate you've gone. To learn more about this feature, please visit
this site.
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Allows you to rank the difficulty of a task, indicating how much effort will be required to complete
it. The scale (points) are predefined, but you can edit them and input values used by your team
for this purpose.
This is the part allowing you to create up to 15 custom fields, that will appear on each of the
board’s cards. Custom fields can contain either: free text, numbers, drop-down menus with
options, external links, date pickers, web links, a progress indicator, an email address, votes,
rating or an address. You can also set how much space a particular custom field will take on the
card edition screen (width in %).
7.6. Assignment
Once this field had been activated, you will be able to assign each of the tasks to different users
of the board. Their initials will then be displayed at the fronts of the cards. Users will also
be notified of a task assignment via email, and will be able to filter the boards to see the work
items that were assigned to them.
Enabling this field will allow you to add a due date to each card. This date will be visible within the
card and on top of a closed card (when hovering over the calendar icon associated with the due
date field).
Once the due date is less than 10 days away, there will be a number of days left visible next
to the calendar, showing you when the due date is approaching. Once exceeded, the number will
be displayed in a visible red color.
When editing the Default card template of your board, you are selecting the base template for
all your cards.
You can, however, also assign other, more limited templates to specific card types (colors). If you
switch over to a particular card type below the Default template - you will be able to remove
or reorder some fields for that specific card type. So that different card types will have different
fields on them, or have a different order of fields on them. It's a good way to make various job
types use different card templates.
Please do keep in mind, that the Default template is your baseline here.
In order for any card type to have a specific field on it, that field first needs to be enabled for the
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Default template. From the fields selected in Default template, you can then remove some for
the specific card types. You can learn a bit more about using this functionality here.
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9. Notifications
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If you want to be informed about the status changes of all tasks on a board, you need
to subscribe to RSS feeds.
You can easily generate a link to RSS. While on the Kanban board, please go to tools
→ subscribe to RSS.
The correct URL for RSS feeds is generated for each user individually for security reasons
to protect access to your cards, boards and projects via RSS. Your URL should include
surl= + a number.
You can manage your preference for these emails in My Profile – Edit my details. My Profile
is available under your name displayed in the top right corner of the dashboard view.
You may also define completely custom notifications with the help of Automation Rules
(Enterprise plan only). This is configurable from board Settings – Automation Rules.
Also, you can create own due date reminders with the Task Reminder Power-up.
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If you're going to import a file, which contains a title row, naming what data type is listed in which
columns, you should either delete this row before uploading, or use the built-in import option
to change file format where you can select to ignore the first row. If the imported file seems
to have incorrectly detected your data separators, you may also tweak this in here.
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Once you've got the first row removed and data separators in order, it's time to assign which card
fields are represented by which column. On many occasions, Kanban Tool will recognize some
fields itself, especially if you're using a Kanban Tool export file to import back.
If your file has any empty columns, or columns you do not want or can't import back to Kanban
Tool, leave the heading above this row as (ignored). For all other columns, be sure to choose the
right data type field from the drop-down list.
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In cases where you need to choose an option defined by the board settings, such as a card type
- you can do this by hovering over the field - an arrow will show and let you choose the right type
from a drop-down menu. This will happen for various field types - whenever you see this arrow,
it means that cues are available for you to choose from.
After this, simply hit the blue Import button at the bottom. If there are any problems with the
import, you'll see a black exclamation point - if you hover the mouse cursor over it, you'll see
information about what exactly was the problem.
The import functionality also allows to make updates to tasks that already exist on your
board. To do that, please be sure to include IDs of the existing tasks on the import list - the data
you import for a task of that ID will overwrite what was there previously. It's a great way to mass
update task due dates, user assignments, priorities or tags.
You can export all tasks from your board to an Excel or a .csv file. While on the board, please go
to tools → Export tasks option to download your data export file. You will be given a choice of
what information the file should include.
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By default this option is available only in the last column of your Kanban board, but you can edit
the options of your columns (Settings → Board Editor → pencil icon under the name
of a particular column) to allow tasks to be archived in any of the columns.
To archive all tasks in a column just right-click anywhere in that column and select the Archive
all option.
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Should you want to put a task from the archive back on the board – just go to the
+ x archived tasks tab at the top of an archive-enabled column, and then right-click on the item
that you want to un-archive. You will see an option to Put back on the board. It can also be done
for multiple cards at once, after a number of cards was selected with the CTRL button pressed.
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It allows you to generate various reports about the current status of your board. Select the
information that interests you in the drop-downs at the top and hit the green Go button to see the
results in form of a pie chart.
It shows the average time it takes tasks to get from a specified start point
to a specified end state. It is a powerful metric which can be used to track the delay between the
initiation and execution of a process, which is a holistic way to measure team performance.
In short, it shows the difference between the work time and process time for tasks.
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The (CFD) shows a detailed picture of your entire process and enables you to track items
by state. The horizontal x-axis in the CFD stands for time, and the vertical y-axis indicates the
number of tasks. Each colored area of the chart represents the amount of work for each stage
of your process at a given time. CFD can be used to identify bottlenecks and team velocity.
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To be able to benefit from this powerful feature, you need to be on the Enterprise pricing plan
of Kanban Tool. Once you are, simply edit the column types in Settings → Board editor. There
are three possible column types, and they will trigger different actions:
- Done - the timer stops and the task is removed from the list of timers (My Work for today
widget).
Wondering what your team is doing? With the insightful Time Report, you always know how much
time your team spends on all activities. To get an overview of what your team does, please select
the Summary report. On the bar graph you will see the total time spent working each day.
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Right below this, there is the information on which team member had been working on what task
and for how long. There is also a corresponding pie chart showing the ratio between different
team members' time records.
You may also view detailed information on what tasks were the team members working, after you
press the “+” mark on the left side of the team member's name. The pie chart will then show the
ratio of the different tasks this person was working on to one another.
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The Detailed report shows a specific list of all timings. It displays a sum of the time spent, the
number of tasks and the total number of entries. Every time you start and pause timers, a new
entry is created here. Both Account Owners and regular users can modify and remove entries by
clicking on the icons to the right of each row. Regular users can only edit and remove their own
entries.
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You can filter the report by: boards, time interval, users, task types, tags and swimlanes.
Furthermore, you can sort the details below the graph by: users, tasks, current card type, boards,
swimlanes or stages.
Grouping by column (stage) is of particular value to your knowledge about the process - with it,
you can easily tell in which stage the team is spending the most time. Great information, if you're
considering what specialists you need to hire more of.
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To be able to use this widget, you need to be on a pricing plan that includes Time Tracking
(Enterprise or Unlimited).
The widget is displayed on the right-hand side of your Kanban board (in the side panel's portion
to do with Time Tracking).
To add tasks to the My Work list, please right-click a task and select Add To My Work. That's all.
Also, when someone else assigns a task to you, it will appear on this list – this also goes for when
a checklist item (and not just an entire task) is being assigned. To sort tasks with your own
preferences, just use drag and drop.
The timer on a task starts just when you move the task into an In Progress type of column,
or - if there's more tasks in there already, and you pick one of those - when you right-click
on it and select start timer. As you start timing a task, wide diagonal lines will start to animate
on it. Please note, that these animations will be displayed for all users' timers (so that you know
who is currently working on which task).
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Once you've completed a task and moved it to the Done type of column, the timer will stop
automatically and the task will then disappear from My Work widget, and animation will stop. You
can also pause work at any time.
My Work widget also allows displaying the subtotal amounts of time spent on each individual
task. It is accessible by clicking the time passed record (time value). Doing this opens a list of all
subtotals. They are also available to view in Time Report - just make sure to open the Detailed
Report.
Please note, that regular users (nor Account Owners or Administrators) may only edit their own
time records.
Fig 39: Time being recorded on a task – animated lines on timed item visible
The name of the task will appear in a bold format, when there's been a new comment made
in the task and when the task comes back to the list after being postponed. This widget allows
displaying tasks from multiple boards - clicking on a particular task in My Work widget will take
you to the Kanban board, that the task is from.
Also, if someone assigns a checklist item to you, a task to which this checklist belongs, will be
added to My Work widget - and will appear in bold, so you know there's been new activity and
that it needs your attention.
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Please, carefully copy the email address displayed on top of the form (in the address section).
Sending emails at this address will add tasks to your board.
Fig 40: A unique email address of a Kanban Tool board allows creating tasks by email
The subject of the email will be the name of the task, while the message itself will constitute the
description of the task. Filling in the subject field is necessary to create a task. Please note,
that you can write up to 256 signs in the task name field.
You can also include any type of files in the email, as regular attachments (note the size
limit for 1 file being 20 MB).These will get added to the task in Kanban Tool as attachments. This
makes for a great tool for better email management - you can just forward all emails to your board
and work them into your workflow.
Advanced task adding via email - you can further determine the features of the task by adding
tags to the subject of the email. Names of the tags [always written within square brackets]
correspond with the names on your Kanban board and determine the location of the new task
added to the board.
[Tags] should be added before the name of the task, without spaces between them.
- column name,
- swimlane name,
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- card type,
Any other attribute set in the email subject within square brackets will go to the Tags field.
The graphic below shows a properly prepared task-creating email.
[Yellow][To do]Task 1
An email subject written like this will assign a yellow card to the „To do” column of the Kanban
board with a name „Task 1”.
An email subject written like this will assign a red card to the „Waiting” column of the „Marketing”
swimlane with the name of Bill Thompson and a task name „Perform A/B tests”.
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44
Fig 44: Setting the column for adding tasks via the Add Task button
This is the easiest way to sync Kanban Tool with other web services, that you and your team
already use on a daily basis. With Zapier you can hook Kanban Tool with any of the over 200
supported applications.
We-Wired Web is an online service, that allows you to easily create automated tasks for popular
web services. All you need to do is choose the online applications, that you like and link them
- select a trigger and an action that you want to combine. You can even use multiple triggers and
actions per task, as well as location-based triggers defined on maps.
In order for this integration to work, you'll need to have some tasks with due dates first. To enable
the Due Date field on your card: while on board please go to Settings → Card Template and
enable the Due date field. Once you've filled in the "due date" on your cards, you will be ready
to export tasks to Outlook.
To export task names with tasks due dates to Outlook, while in board view please go to tools
→ export to calendar and select Outlook / iCal. Note please, that Outlook should be your
default calendar in order for the set-up to work correctly.
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In order for this integration to work, you'll need to have some tasks with due dates first. To enable
the Due date field on your card: while on board please go to Settings → Card Template and
enable Due date field. Once you've filled in the "due date" on your cards, you will be ready
to export tasks to Google Calendar.
To do it, while on the board, please go to tools → export to calendar and Google. On the
Google Calendar tab you will be asked: "Do you want to add this calendar?". Please click "Yes,
add this calendar". Now your tasks with due dates should appear in Google Calendar.
Integration with these file hosting services allows you to attach files from them to your task cards
or to place direct external links in cards. Please read more about this on page 57.
Kanban Cast is Kanban Tool's integration with Chromecast, a Chrome (internet browser)
streaming device, that when attached to a tv screen, displays your Kanban board in a view
customized to best suit a large screen. Perfect for daily stand-ups or other work related meetings,
but most of all – a great parallel to the original Kanban whiteboard idea, and a fantastic
information radiator for the whole team.
To enable it, please open your Kanban board view in Chrome, switch it on in the top right corner -
right next to the tools section, choose a receiver and see it loading.
If you often work in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, and want to integrate your Kanban board with
Excel data - you may wish to simply create tasks on a Kanban board directly from the Excel data
cells.
Please download this guide. Follow the clearly explained steps to add a custom macro to your
spreadsheet, and you will be adding tasks to Kanban Tool from Excel in no time!
You will be transferred to a board cloning screen, where you can give a name to the new board,
provide description and even place it inside a folder (if any have been created). Most importantly,
here you can also choose whether to copy it with the existing tasks or without them.
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You can also easily filter your tasks by a specific criteria. To view the criteria available, please
click the funnel icon next to the filter's text editing window (marked green above).
Alternatively, you can scan all of your boards in search of particular card information or by certain
criteria. To use the global search, click the magnifying glass (marked in red above) icon on the
right side of the filtering funnel. To find out what search queries are supported please view this
guide.
Please note, that the important difference between filtering and searching is in their range:
filtering is limited to 1 board, and searching applies to all boards you have access to.
For Enterprise plan subscribers, it is also possible to create custom Automation Rules.
It's a clever way of determining an action on the board to be causing
a reaction. For example, it's possible to make tasks of a certain type (color) get assigned
to a relevant team member, or to change card priority basing on a set due date, or to set
a custom email notification for when a card meets a set of requirements: task values, position
in a given column or swimlane and many more.
To add Automation Rules to a board, go to board Settings - Automation Rules and use the widget
provided. There are a few examples predefined for your convenience, but you are most welcome
to create any rules possible on your own.
Process Automation is an advanced feature with a lot to offer. To see a few examples
of Automation Rules being created please visit this page.
19. Power-Ups
With Kanban Tool's Power-Ups you can customize your boards and fine-tune your experience
with the service. We are constantly working on developing new features, that will add to Kanban
Tool's usefulness.
To get started, go to Settings → Power-Ups and enable those that you fancy using.
Board Settings are located in the top right corner of a board view – next to Tools, Help and
filters box.
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On the next page you'll find an outline of what Power-Ups you will find there, followed by
a detailed description of each of them.
This Power-Up is a simple calendar, that will be displayed in the side panel and highlighting your
tasks' due dates. You can click on highlighted days to see what tasks are due when.
The days that are highlighted in yellow are those that have due dates on tasks assigned to you,
while the ones highlighted in bold are due dates on tasks with no assignment, or assigned
to other team members.
You can also view a large calendar, by clicking on the magnifying glass icon, highlighted on the
image above. Moving tasks in this view will update their due dates.
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It offers a simple way of getting to view and tick-off their task lists without having
to open the card itself. To enable it for your board, please go to the board's Settings
– Power-Ups and switch the Interactive Checklist Power-Up on.
In there, you will find a setting to have the checklist items expanded in all or just the "Working"
types of columns, you will also be able to choose whether all list items should be displayed, only
the incomplete ones or just the firs incomplete one. Simply adjust the settings to match your
requirements & enjoy the easy checklist access.
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With this Power-Up, the cards will begin to fade as they haven't been edited or active for some
time (it's up to you what time that is exactly).
This is the perfect way to make your work planning a whole lot easier.
If there are tasks that you're doing every day, week, few days or monthly - rather than having
to create them for each of these instances separately, just use the Recurring Tasks Power-Up.
With this Power-Up, an instance of a recurring task will be popping up on the board on a desired
day and time. For more details on configuration, please visit this page.
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This Power-Up brings the possibility of making significant changes to the way your board looks.
Aside for the Default theme, there is a choice of Dark and Lite themes.
Also, you can choose a custom background image from among thousands available in this
Power-Up, or upload your own.
Also from here, you will be able to choose your closed card card view font size.
This is a useful log of activity on a board. Displayed in the side panel, this will inform you about
recent happenings on the board. New comments posted, tasks being moved, edited or deleted,
and more. Enable it if you want to make sure that you're always up to date with what's going on.
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By enabling this Power-up it will be even quicker to add new tasks. Once active, you will see
a simple task box in a column, over which you'll hover the mouse cursor. Simply by writing in the
task name and hitting Enter - a new task is placed on the board.
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There are situations, when you want to view or edit a number of tasks one after another. Once
you've switched this Power-Up on, whenever you open a task card, useful arrows on each side
will appear.
The arrows will speed up the navigation between tasks, and save you having to open and close
tasks by hand. Just click an arrow to move to the next task in column.
Thanks to this Power-Up you can add custom scripts and style sheets to your board. All of these
free scripts are available on: http://github.com/kanbantool/scripts.
Once you've added it to your chosen Developer Tools, go to the board view and click on tools
→ high contrast mode.
For a much better dark board result we recommend using the Custom Theme Power-Up and
enabling the Dark Theme, without this script.
Use „medium-font.css” to make the font slightly bigger, and „large-font.css” to make it extra large.
You can join this script with High-contrast to get an even greater experience on large TV displays.
Font size can also be increased from the Custom Theme Power-up.
Adds an option to remove all cards from one column. Please use with caution, as deleted cards
cannot be restored.
It happens sometimes that different size cards get stuck on a particular height of a column, but
you can get this sorted with this script.
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It will block the auto-scaling feature of cards and makes them appear next to each other without
spaces in between them.
This new button will be added to a task card, and once you tick it, the card will be moved to the
last column of the board.
a similar effect to Move to done button action can be achieved with the Task done script, but this
one adds the option to the context menu (right-click on a task while in board view).
If you'd like to move a task to a particular column on the board, but this is not necessarily the
closest to its current position, you can benefit from the Change column script. It will allow you
to send the task to any column within the board.
If you're interested in seeing the amount of time that a task has spent on the board, you can use
the Cycle Time script, which will make this exact information display on the front of the card.
Should you decide, that each of your board's swimlanes (rows) should hold tasks specific
to a given user, you can set it up, so that when a card is moved to a specific swimlane, it will
automatically be assigned to that person. An email notification will also be generated for each
of these auto assignments. In order to make it work, you need to add a team member's name
to the name of a swimlane and copy the script link to your board's Developer Tools window
(as you do with most scripts).
Want to ensure that tasks are being worked on in the exact order of their priorities? This script will
add a red highlight to a column, in which the task order does not match the correct order of task
priorities.
The order recognized as correct is: high priority, normal priority (or no priority assigned), low
priority.
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This script allows to show your team members' avatars on card fronts.
To use it, you first need to have your team photos available online - URLs to these images need
to be defined in this script. For best results, please add images for all of the team members.
Leaving someone out will result with a broken image preview on cards assigned to them.
Once you have the images ready, copy and edit the code provided on this page and paste
it in your Developer Tools Javascript-highlighted slot.
Using this script, you''ll enable new menu options for quicker board editing:
By default, Kanban Tool supports a few keyboard shortcuts, a list of which you'll find under a
board's Tools – Keyboard shortcuts menu option.
With this script, you can add the following extra keyboard shortcuts to your board:
• B - to reveal boards express menu dropdown (next to home). Once the boards dropdown
is visible, you can navigate there by hitting tab a fair few times
• T - to reveal the Tools menu
• S - to go to Settings
• H - to navigate to the Dashboard (home icon).
With this Power-Up cards can be marked as blocked from the context menu. Blocked cards
cannot be moved, they have distinctive look (stripes) and a message explaining why they have
been blocked.
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This clever Power-Up will let you link any address on the internet (a task, a board, a website)
to a task card. To do this, simply click on the +add attachment link on your card and choose the
„Attach from the web” option.
Integrate your Kanban board with your favorite file hosting service. This will enable you to store
file attachments on either service and easily access them through Kanban Tool.
To use this type of integration, please go to Settings → Power-Ups, and enable the ones that
you wish to use. Now you will be able to add and link file attachments from any of these services.
You will now be able to add documents to your tasks and access them directly through the stored
link. Google Drive will allow you to collaborate on your attached documents in real-time.
Wouldn't it be great if just moving an unassigned card meant that it's being assigned to the user
who moved it? This is what this Power-Up does.
This power-up will add pop-up notifications of task updates, that will appear when board changes
are made by other users while you're also logged in at the same time. This helps you all to stay
on track of the recent changes.
The changes that will be included on these notifications are adding, moving, deleting or archiving
a task.
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This is a great way to make your Kanban Tool boards into an information radiator and to keep the
team always informed of current activities. This integration has been characterized on page 46
of this User Manual.
Want to make your Kanban Tool comments say more with expressive emoji?
To enter an emoticon to your Kanban Tool comment, please use the twemoji model,
so instead of ":)" for a smile icon please use ":smile:".
You can view a full list of supported twemojis here. Or - you can make this easy for yourself
by enabling the Emoji Picker Power-Up in board Settings. This will add an icon picker to your
comment editing section.
Checklist Templates Power-Up allow for preparing a number of default lists for your cards. Once
created, they can be added to your cards with just one click. To use this feature, please enable
it in board Settings - Power-Ups and create your checklists from there.
After the templates have been prepared, you can choose a template for any new or existing card.
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It's a great way to clear your boards from items that you can't get to work until a specific event
takes place, or simply until you have the time for it.
The supported options are to postpone until the evening, next day, next week or a specific time
and date. When the set time comes, your task will come right back into the column, that it was set
to delay from.
Task Summary will let you show more information on a closed card.
You can choose from among all of your custom fields, as well as from the generic information,
such as card type, due date, external link, assigned user, priority, ID etc. - and, additionally, it's
possible to show information on the task creator, logged time and lead time (time passed since
card creation).
On top of this, you can display the entire task description (or its first paragraph) on a closed card
too if you like.
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This add-on will show you the names and colors of card types used on a board, right at the
bottom of the board. So, without having the view of your board obstructed, you will be able
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If you wish to see images on closed cards, simply enable Card Covers in board Settings
→ Power-Ups.
Now, you can select any of your graphic files or pdf attachments to become a card cover
or covers - selecting multiple files with the eye icon will create a gallery on your card.
Furthermore, any of your file attachments or Web Attachments can be pinned to the card front.
This will make your files accessible directly from the closed card view, great for an easy preview
or download.
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19.22. Pinboard
Pinboard Power-Up lets you attach frequently needed files and links to websites or online
documents - directly to the board's side panel. It needs enabling in board Settings → Power-Ups.
To pin a file, just use the + icon, located in Pinboard's header.
And to pin a website link, first make sure that you have enabled either Web Attachments, Google
Drive, Box, Dropbox or One Drive Power-Up.
Task Dependencies allow for building relations between cards, to visually connect work items that
need doing in bunches. This way, complex work gets broken down into items of a more
manageable size, giving a clear picture of how far along a big job has come. It's a great way not
only to bring order to large tasks, but to also show parent-child card relations, and to delegate
pieces of work to other team members or boards.
Once activated in board Settings → Power-Ups, there will be an "+ add dependencies" link in an
open task's header, with which you can connect tasks to each other. With it, you can either create
a new, dependent task, or link an existing one as dependent.
Any task that you have access to can be made dependent on another - you can build
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dependencies between tasks across all columns, swimlanes and boards. Dependent tasks can
be opened directly from the master task view, and will be shown over it.
A tree-like scheme of dependent tasks shows additional information about cards status - you may
come across backlog, in progress, waiting and done icons. They relate to what Lane Type
column that task is in, thereby hinting on their completion stage. If present, team member
assignments and any tracked time records will also be displayed in the tree-like list.
Fig 58: Tree-like scheme of dependent cards with status icons on individual tasks
This Power-up allows you to set custom reminders about any date listed on tasks (due date or
custom field date). The reminder can take the form of an email, or of an action, i.e. moving a task
to the top of a column, changing its color or priority, etc.
To use it, click the date field in an open card view, and select to “+add reminders”.
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This integration will allow all your team members to log in to Kanban Tool with just one click. Also
creating new accounts is much simpler, just add a new person's profile to the identity provider's
service. Similarly, when someone leaves your company, you'll be able to delete their profile with
a single modification.
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To enable it for your team - you will first need to have an account with one of the identity providers
(an example: OneLogin, SecureAuth). Then, from the Kanban Tool's Owner Account go
to Account Administration panel, then Single Sign-On and click right next to the enable SAML
2.0 Single Sign On. Here you will need to fill in the information provided by the identity provider's
service. From here your team is all set.
The application that you need to install for this is Google Authenticator (Android, iOS), Microsoft
Authenticator (Android, iOS) or any other compatible 2FA application.
The 2FA feature is available to each user of your account individually - every user needs to set
it up for themselves.
To enable 2FA for your user account, please go to My Profile (available under your name
displayed in the top right corner of the dashboard view) - Two-factor authentication and click Set
up two-factor authentication.
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For more details on how to set this up, please view this guide.
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