The Kanban board is populated with work items and external items based
on feeds added to your Kanban board.
Use a Kanban board to:
- View the phases of a process and mange work in progress.
- Move items from one phase of the process to another.
- Identify bottlenecks and work in progress (WIP) limits.
Navigating a Kanban Board
The following diagram shows a Kanban board used for tracking issues
from a backlog to completion. Refer to the legend below to learn more about
using a Kanban board.
- Search
Use the search field to perform a local search of the Kanban board
and display specific cards. For example, you can search for cards by owner, ID,
or keywords in an item's title. In this example, only cards with the BUG prefix
are displayed.
If values are mapped to the Status Indicator field, you can search
by status value as well (if the values are different). If active and inactive
values are mapped, a search for active displays both active and inactive items
because inactive contains the word active.
- Settings and Refresh
Click the settings icon to change the Kanban board's current
configuration (feeds, columns, swimlanes, and more). Click the refresh icon to
update the view if any of the cards have been changed.
- Columns
The Kanban board is divided into columns that you define when you
create or alter the view. In this example, four columns (Candidates, In
Development, QA Testing, and Done) have been defined and state field values for
the work items are mapped to one of the four columns.
- Work in Progress (WIP) Limit
Each column on the board has a defined WIP limit. In this example,
the number of items that are considered "In Development" (19) currently exceeds
the WIP limit that has been assigned to that column (5).
- Collapsed Columns
Click a column header to collapse a column. The short name that
you assign to the column is displayed when you collapse a column. In this
example, the Done column is collapsed in order to provide more space for the
other columns on the board. You can still see that 8 items are considered to be
"Done".
- Sub-Columns
Columns can be divided into multiple sub-columns if multiple
statuses apply to a given phase. In this example, issues that are in the Coding
and Peer Review states are both considered to be "In Development".
- Cards
Each card on a Kanban board represents an
SBM
work item or an item from an external data feed. Different options are
available for each type of card. For details, refer to
Viewing Cards.
- Swimlanes
You can optionally organize cards into separate horizontal
swimlanes as well. In this example, the creator of the Kanban board decided to
use the
Severity field to group critical items into one swimlane and
high severity items into another. You can scroll up or down to view each
swimlane and collapse them as necessary. If you move a card on the board and it
is suddenly no longer visible, try looking in a different swimlane—the field
used for organizing swimlanes might have changed during the transition.
Viewing Cards
When you are viewing a work item card:
- Click the card's title (BUG000120, in this example) to open the
full item view in a pop-up window.
-
Click the body of a card to open the
Item Details pane:
This provides a quick view of the item, with fields that were
selected and ordered according to the designer of the Kanban board. Toggle the
list of fields that are displayed by clicking
All Fields or
Required Fields.
In the
Item Details pane, you can also perform an
Update transition. After you finish changing field values, click
OK to complete the transition.
- Click the avatar to view the user's contact card information. By
default, the avatar for the current owner is displayed on each card. If the
item does not have an owner, a user silhouette appears instead.
- Hover over the status icon in the lower right corner to view the
item's current status. The icons and corresponding status values are defined
when the Kanban board is created.
When you are viewing an external item card:
- Click the body of a card to open the
Item Details pane. This provides a quick view
of the item, with fields that were selected and ordered according to the
designer of the Kanban board.
- Hover over the avatar to view owner information.
- The icon in the lower left corner of the card that indicates the
item is read-only and cannot be changed.
- Hover over the status icon in the lower right corner to view the
item's current status. The icons and corresponding status values are defined
when the Kanban board is created.
Moving Cards
You can drag and drop work item cards from one column to another on
the Kanban board (though not from one swimlane to another). If the columns on
the Kanban board correspond to states in
SBM,
this effectively transitions the item from one state to another as long as all
required fields are entered and the corresponding transition is available from
the current state. Available columns are visible as soon as you begin to drag a
card; columns that are not available are grayed out and a red icon appears on
the card if it cannot be moved to a particular column.
When you drag and drop a work item card to a different column, a
transition form appears to the right of the view if there are any required
fields that you must complete first. Toggle the list of fields that are
displayed by clicking
All Fields or
Required Fields. Click
OK when you have completed all required fields
to finish moving the card. Click
X or
Cancel to stop and send the card back to the
original column.
If you move a card within the same column and the column represents
one or more
State field values, you are prompted to select a transition to
use. If your columns are organized by a field other than the
State field, an update transition is performed in this scenario
and you are prompted to select an applicable field value for the column
instead.
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