Track work with Kanban boards

A Kanban board tracks work as cards that move through columns: a hiring pipeline, a content calendar, a list of jobs for a client. For bugs and product work that need identifiers, priorities, projects and cycles, use Create and track issues instead.

Create a board

Kanban Boards lists the boards in Personal or the selected team. Choose New board, type a name and choose Create board. The board is created in Personal or the selected team, starts with Inbox, To Do, In Progress and Done columns, and opens next. A board name must be unique within its team. Names that differ only by capitalization, punctuation or spacing count as the same name. On the Free plan the number of boards is limited to 1; Pro and the Team plan have no limit.

To build a whole board, with its columns and cards, from a document, see Build a board by pasting JSON.

Columns

Select a column's name to rename it. To add a column, select + Add a column at the end of the board and type its name; a board can have up to 20 columns. Drag a column by its header to move it. A column can be deleted with the Delete column button (✕) in its header once it has no cards. The Inbox column cannot be deleted: it is where suggestions from people outside the team arrive (see Share a Kanban board and take suggestions).

Cards

To add a card, choose + Add a card at the bottom of a column, type its title and choose Add card. The new card opens, ready for the rest. A board can hold up to 500 cards. Drag a card to move it up or down its column or into another column.

Select a card to open it. Its title, description, column, assignee and due date are edited where they are shown: select one, change it, and press Enter or click away to save. The description uses Markdown and can be up to 20,000 characters long; in it, Enter starts a new line, and Ctrl+Enter (Cmd+Enter on a Mac) or a click away saves. Escape cancels an edit. Choosing another column moves the card to the bottom of that column. A card can be assigned only to a member of the board's team.

The card's title and Close stay at the top while you scroll a long card. Press Escape, or click outside the card, to close it as well. When you open the card again in the same browser, it opens where you stopped scrolling. While a card is open, the board's address ends with the card, so you can reload the page or copy the address to open the same card.

Each card shows the date and time it was added, in the time zone set on your account. Open a card to see who added it.

Open a card and select its Color to change it. The picker shows swatches for colors already used by cards on this board, along with the spectrum and hex field for choosing a different color. Select a swatch, or choose a color and close the picker, to save it. The whole card on the board takes a light shade of its color, with a stronger edge. Clear removes the card color.

Select a card's heart to vote for the card; the number beside the heart counts the votes. The heart stays red for you after the board reloads. Select it again to take your vote away.

To delete a card, open it and choose Delete card. The card and its comments are removed from the board; its To-dos stay in To-dos.

To-dos on a card

Open a card to see its To-dos, under the card's details. A To-do on a card is an ordinary To-do in the board's team: it also shows on Team To-dos in Use To-dos (Today, Upcoming or Anytime), and ticking it off in either place ticks off the same To-do. To add one, choose + Add a To-do, type a title and press Enter. The To-do has no date unless the title ends with one, such as "Call the printer Friday". Select a To-do's title to open its page and give it a date, a reminder, a List or an assignee. Adding a To-do to a card is recorded in the board's activity log.

A card with To-dos shows how many are done, such as "2 of 5 To-dos done". On the card, completed To-dos are under Show 2 completed. Deleting a card does not delete its To-dos: they stay in To-dos without the link to the card.

To-dos on cards are shown to team members who can use To-dos in the team. A member with View only access sees them and can tick off only the To-dos assigned to them. People outside the team do not see them.

Images

Open a card and choose + Add images under its description to attach images or screenshots. The picker lets you search Your images, upload files, or paste or drop a screenshot. Uploads are saved in your image library. Select an attached image to open it at full size. Remove image takes it off the card and keeps it in your library. Other team members can add their own images to the card or remove images from it. Image changes are recorded in the activity log and are included in the card creator's update email. A card can have up to 10 images, and Magpie says so when the limit is reached.

Images are visible to everyone who can view the board, including people outside the team when the board is open to them. Removing an image from Your images does not remove it from cards that already use it.

Comments

Open a card to read its comments and add one in Add a comment. Comments use Markdown. To add images, paste or drop a screenshot into the comment box, or choose the image button in its corner to pick from Your images. Images wait above the box until you choose Comment, and you can remove one before then. A comment can be only images. Comments and their images are visible to the board's team and, on a board that takes suggestions, to anyone signed in to Magpie who opens the board.

Activity

Select Activity beside the board's name to see the board's activity log in a panel beside the board, newest first. It records cards added, moved, edited and deleted, columns added, renamed and deleted, comments, images, hearts and To-dos added to cards.

Keyboard shortcuts

Press ? on a board to see its keys.

Board details, address and deletion

A board's name, its description and who can see it are shown above its columns. To change them, choose More and then Edit details. Each detail saves on its own. Outside access sets whether people outside the team can open the board; see Share a Kanban board and take suggestions. A board stays in the team it was created in.

A board's address has the form /k/<team>/<board>, made from the team's and the board's names. Changing a board's name changes its address, so links to the old address stop working. Older links that end in the board's long ID still open the board.

Delete board in More deletes the board's columns, cards and comments after you confirm, and cannot be undone.

Email about your cards

When another person moves, edits, recolors, comments on, or changes the images on a card you created, Magpie emails you. Changes on one board are collected and sent in one email, in the order they happened, once no new change has arrived for a while, or a set time after the first one if changes keep arriving. Several edits in a row to the same card appear as one line. Each comment is its own line and shows the comment's text; a comment deleted before the email is sent is left out. Moving a card up or down within its column is not included. The email ends with how many of your cards are in each column.

Turn these emails off with Kanban card updates under Email notifications in Account settings. Emails about suggestions on boards you created are described in Share a Kanban board and take suggestions.

The assistant

You can ask the assistant to list your boards, find cards and read their comments. It can also create boards and columns, add, edit and move cards, comment on cards and heart them. It deletes a board, a column, a card or a comment only after you confirm in your message.

In the Magpie app

In the Magpie app, a board shows one column at a time. Select Column to open Choose column, which lists each column with its number of cards; the column shown is marked Current. New card adds a card to the column shown. Open a card to read it and its comments. Move card moves it to another column, at the Start of column or the End of column. Edit card and Delete card are in the card's menu. The board's menu has Share board link and Board settings, where you change the board's name, description and outside access, add, rename and delete columns, and delete the board.

While you write or edit a card, the app keeps a copy on your phone until the card is saved, so the text can be restored if the app closes first. If someone else changed the card after you opened it, your save is refused rather than replacing their change.

A card shows its images under the description, and each comment shows its images under the comment. Tap an image to open it at full size. To add images to a card, choose Add images, then select from Your images and choose Add (it shows how many you chose, such as Add 2 images), or use Choose photos to pick several at once, or Take photo. A photo is saved in Your images first and then added to the card. To take an image off a card, open it and choose Remove from card; the image stays in the image library it came from. To add images to a comment, choose Add images to comment before Add comment. Remove under a chosen image takes it out of the comment before you send it.

If a card move, assignment or comment is not kept after you reload the board, Contact support.