Kanban board

Editing a board is simple! Just head to the board’s Settings → Board Editor panel.

Here’s what you can do:

• Use the + add column, + add swimlane buttons to expand the board.
  Not sure what swimlanes are for? Click here.
• Use the pencil icon to edit a column’s properties:
  name, policy, WIP limit, lane type, lane width, archive support.
• Click the split-fork icon to create sub-columns.
• Use the bin icon to delete a column
  (you’ll be prompted to decide what happens to any cards it contains).
• Adjust the columns/swimlanes order with the arrow icons (right, left, up, or down).

Note: Board settings are accessible only to team members with project manager privileges or board owner status.

Swimlanes are an excellent way to manage multiple similar projects on a single board. They provide a comprehensive overview while allowing you to focus on individual projects by collapsing the others. Think of swimlanes as rows that help you organize work vertically across your board.

You can use swimlanes however it best suits your workflow, but here are some popular approaches:

• One swimlane per client or product.
  Perfect for managing multiple clients or products that follow similar process steps (columns). Instead of recreating boards, you simply add new swimlanes for each client or product.
• One swimlane per team.
  For complex processes involving multiple teams, swimlanes can help visualize who is responsible for each task at different stages. Tasks flow from left to right (columns) and from top to bottom (swimlanes), making it easier to track work progress across teams.
• One swimlane per employee.
  In smaller teams, assigning a row per person is a great way to instantly see individual workloads and responsibilities.

Need help adding swimlanes?

If you’re unsure how to add a swimlane, check out our guide on editing the Kanban board.

Yes, you are welcome to edit the workflow at any time!

To keep your board tidy and reduce visual clutter, you can collapse or hide columns and swimlanes. Here’s how:

• To collapse: Simply click on the header of the column or swimlane you want to hide.
• To expand again: Click on the collapsed column or swimlane name to unfold it.

It’s a quick and easy way to minimize scrolling and focus on the areas of the board that matter in the moment!

Setting a WIP limit is straightforward. Follow these steps:

• Go to the board’s Settings page.

• Enter the Board Editor and click the pencil icon to assign a Work in Progress limit to a specific column.

You’ll have four options for configuring your WIP limit:

• By tasks: Set a limit for the number of tasks allowed in a column.
• By estimated hours: Limit the total estimated work hours in a column.
• By difficulty: Define a limit based on the total difficulty score of tasks in a column.
• Per user: Specify individual limits for each assigned user.

Simply choose the type of WIP limit that works best for your workflow, enter the desired value in the numeric field, and save your changes.

Want to learn more about Work in Progress limits? Check out this article.

Kanban board policies help streamline your workflow by providing clear guidelines for the process stages (columns) and swimlanes (rows). They’re especially handy when you’re updating the processes—keeping your team aligned and on track.

Policies are also great for onboarding new team members, ensuring they understand how to handle items on the board, even during times of high turnover.

Adding a Kanban policy:

• Go to the Board Editor
  While on your board, navigate to Settings → Board Editor.
• Edit the column or swimlane
  Click the pencil icon below the column or swimlane where you want to add a policy.
• Enter your policy Fill in the Lane Policy/Description field. Once added, the policy will appear when users hover over the blue info icon on the board.

Looking for a place to store general board guidelines or team notes? Try the Board Readme Power-Up for even more visibility.

You can easily zoom in and out of your Kanban board using either the built-in zoom feature or your browser’s scale controls.

• Using the built-in zoom
  Navigate to Settings → Board Background to adjust the board’s zoom level.
  This change will apply to all users of the board.

• Using browser zoom
  Press CTRL + or CTRL - to zoom in and out.
  You can also hold CTRL and scroll with your mouse.
  To reset to the default view, press CTRL 0.
  This mode of zooming only affects your personal view of the board.

Note, that board settings, including the built-in zoom, are accessible only to board owners and account admins/owners.

For additional informaton and suggestions on making the board view larger, please view this guide.

Kanban Tool is built for seamless online collaboration, so it doesn’t include dedicated features for saving hardcopies of your board.
However, if you need a printout, you are welcome to use one of these methods:

• Use the built-in screenshot utility
  Go to the Tools menu and select Take a screenshot.
  Once the image is ready, open it and press CTRL P, or go to File → Print.

• Use your browser’s print shortcut
  Press CTRL P to open your printer settings, and click Print to generate a hard copy of the board.
  Note that each browser has its own implementation of the print functionality, and results may vary.

Need to print an individual Kanban card? Please view this guide.

The possibilities for Kanban boards use are endless—what you do with them depends entirely on your workflow and preferences!

We have companies tracking software development, marketing, operations, construction sites, manufacturing and everything in between.
One of our customers even tracks the production of knee replacement implants—when we say the potential is endless, we mean it!

Here are the most common ways of using Kanban boards:

• For tracking work
  Visualizing all activities and tasks, optionally divided into swimlanes for better readability.
• For project management
  Tracking each project separately and gaining insights through Analytics.
• For customer work
  Managing workflows for multiple clients with unique processes and requirements.
• As a list
  Organizing a specific process (e.g., marketing, sales, development), tracking ideas, or managing multiple projects within your company.
• As a planner/reminder
  Keeping appointments, meetings, and important tasks top of mind.

Looking for inspiration?

Check out Kanban board use case examples, common layout templates, and customer stories to see how others are making the most of their boards!

If your Kanban cards have various heights while your board uses wide columns—aligning several tasks next to each other—it can look disorganized. But it can easily be fixed with a ready-made Developer Tools script. Here’s how to use it:

• Go to Settings → Power-Ups and enable Developer Tools.
• Paste the Fixed Card Height script link from our GitHub database.

With that, your board will stay clean and organized.

Keep in mind:

• Board settings aren’t available to everyone—only project managers and board owners can make these changes.
• The Fixed Cards Height script isn’t compatible with Power-Ups that affect your card size, namely: Interactive Checklists, Card Covers, and Task Summary.

Yes, you can track your process working and waiting times with Kanban Tool board features!

• Explore the seamless Time Tracking & Reporting functionality, built to monitor working times and efficiency.
  (Available only to Enterprise plan subscribers.)
• You can also use the Lead & Cycle Time diagram to analyze average and individual task data, such as start time, end time, and the cycle time.

These metrics will help you gain deeper insights into your workflow and optimize performance!

Love how your Kanban board is set up? Need the same structure for a new project? Good news—you can simlpy clone it!

With a few clicks, you can duplicate an entire board, including its layout, card types, templates, enabled power-ups settings, process automation rules, and—optionally—all the visible tasks. Here’s how:

• Head to your dashboard.
• Enter the More menu hidden under the hamburger icon, next to the board you want to duplicate.
• Select Clone.
• Give your new board a name and hit Clone now.

That’s it! Keep in mind that archived tasks, task comments, and team member assignments won’t be copied over.

If you don’t see any boards or folders when you log in, it means the team member who invited you to join the account hasn’t shared anything with you yet.

This isn’t a bug—just ask them to share a board with you.

Kanban follows an incremental, continuous improvement approach called Kaizen. The use of a Waiting column depends on your workflow, team capacity, and the Work In Progress (WIP) limits applied to your In Progress column.

Here are two common scenarios where a Waiting column comes in handy:

• When planning work for the day or week ahead
  Gather your day’s or week’s tasks under Waiting and use the column as a buffer, holding tasks you intend to complete within the set timeframe. As you finish tasks in progress, you can pull new ones from the Waiting column, keeping your workflow smooth and organized.
• When requiring task approval or needing more information
  If a task requires someone else’s approval or additional details before moving forward, place it in Waiting. This is especially useful in multi-level teamwork, where senior team members delegate tasks to junior staff. Once reviewed, the task will either move back to Doing for further revisions, or get to Done if no further action is needed.

Of course, these are just popular use cases—feel free to tailor the Waiting column to fit your team’s unique needs.

Pro tip: WIP limits all around!

To maintain a healthy workflow, consider setting a WIP limit on your In Progress column. This helps prevent bottlenecks and ensures tasks move efficiently through the board.
Furthermore, consider WIP-limiting the Waiting stage as well - task accumulation in the buffer/waiting stages contributes to flow impediments as much as in any other step!

For more information, please read Limiting Work in Progress and Importance of Kanban Work in Progress (WIP) Limits.

There are several ways to viewing the meaning behind a board’s various card types/colors:

• Enable the Card Legend power-up
  The dedicated method of permanently displaying a key to a board’s card types - the Card Legend feature, available to switch on at Settings → Power-Ups , adds a visual reference directly to your board:
• View card types in Settings
  Navigate to Settings → Card Types to see a list of all available card types. This is also where you can modify existing types or add new ones to fit your workflow:

• Use the Lane Policy field
  To hide a custom card type legend in a specific column, you can type it into the Lane Policy field:
• Right-click any task
  For a quick glance at available card types, right-click any task and select Change Type. Without having to make a change, you’ll see a list of the available card types:

Creating a new board is easy! From your board view, click the hamburger icon in the top-left corner, then select the home icon or your account name to return to the dashboard. Once there, you can quickly set up a new board to organize your workflow.

For further information on board setup options and templates, please view this detailed tutorial.

You are welcome to update the clock setting for your Kanban Tool user profile to match your time zone. Doing this will adjust time display across all your boards.

Please make the change from My Profile → Edit my details → Local timezone.

In Kanban, new cards are typically added to the bottom of a column, following the First-In-First-Out (FIFO) approach—this ensures tasks don’t get stuck for too long. Ideally, team members should pick up tasks from the top of the column to maintain a smooth workflow.

However, if you prefer a different sorting method, Kanban Tool makes it easy! Each column has a built-in sorting option. Simply right-click the column header—or an empty space within the column—and select your preferred sorting parameter.

Need to update several tasks at the same time? It’s easy with Kanban Tool’s multiple selection support.

Selecting multiple tasks

• CTRL + Click:
  Select individual tasks by clicking on them while holding the CTRL key.

• SHIFT + Arrow Keys:
  Use the keyboard arrows while holding SHIFT to add more tasks to your selection.

• Click & Drag:
  Draw a selection box with your mouse to grab multiple tasks, just like in your operating system.

Editing and moving selected tasks

Once you’ve selected your tasks, you can:

• Edit them all at once:
  Right-click any selected card and choose Edit # tasks or any other option from the context menu.

• Move them to another column or swimlane:
  Drag and drop your selection to reorganize your workflow, or move tasks to another board.

• Archive, delete, or assign them to someone:
  Use keyboard shortcuts for quick actions.

Advanced selection options

• CTRL + Click:
  Add or remove individual tasks from your selection by clicking on them with the CTRL key pressed.

• SHIFT + Click & Drag:
  Extend your selection by drawing another area without losing the previously selected tasks.

• SHIFT + Drag:
  Duplicate all selected tasks instantly by dragging them while holding SHIFT.

Editing large batches of tasks?

If you need to update a large number of tasks at once, consider using the import function. As long as you include task IDs from your board, the imported data will overwrite existing task details efficiently.

The way you organize and manage your project backlog is entirely up to you—choose a method that suits your workflow.

In the video below we share a few popular strategies to help you get started:

Need help editing your board to try out a new approach? Please view this guide.

While Kanban Tool doesn’t have a built-in sprint feature, many users successfully implement sprints within the platform. There’s plenty of flexibility in how you can approach this!

One simple method is to designate one of the backlog columns as your current sprint. Work then moves through the other stages until the sprint column is empty. Meanwhile, tasks for future sprints can be stored in backlog stages preceding the current sprint stage.

Other ways to manage Sprints in Kanban Tool:

• Swimlanes: Use a separate row for each sprint.
• Tags: Assign a unique tag to tasks within a sprint.
• Card colors: Use a specific card type to visually group sprint-related tasks.
• Dependencies: Create a tree of dependencies between sprint tasks to track workflow.

For additional details on how Kanban Tool fits into a Scrum process, please read this blog post, or watch the video below:

To quickly archive completed tasks, you can use the Archive all option. Simply right-click on a column header or any empty space between cards to archive all tasks in the Done column.

Automating archiving

To have completed work put away automatically, Kanban Tool Enterprise plan subscribers can set up automatic archiving. To enable this:

• Go to board Settings → Process Automation.
• Define the conditions for when tasks should be archived.
  Use the below example template as a reference.

For more information on custom-defined functionality like this, please view the automation rules examples page.

Don’t see an archive option in your Kanban card’s and board’s menu? Learn which board columns support archives.

Yes! There are two simple ways to do that:

Board zoom

You can adjust the size of your Kanban board to better fit your screen using the magnifying glass (+/-) icons found under Settings → Board Background.

Wider columns

You can also increase the board’s column width to fit multiple cards side by side.
Go to Settings → Board Editor, click the pencil icon under a column, and adjust the Lane Width value to control how many cards align horizontally.

Note: Board settings are only available to board owners and account admins.

Each board column in Kanban Tool can have a designated lane type , which influences time tracking and task management. There are four lane types available:

Why lane types matter?

• Time tracking:
  Tasks moved to an In Progress lane automatically start a timer, which stops when moved to any other lane.
• Due date display:
  The Done lane hides due date countdowns, assuming completed tasks no longer need them. If you want to keep the countdown visible, set the column to Backlog / Inventory or Queue / Waiting instead.
• Time in Stage power-up:
  The add-on visually groups time spent in columns of the same lane type using the same color in the Time in Stage bar graph.
• Interactive Checklists power-up:
  The feature displays to-do items on card fronts, with an option to either always show them, or show them only in the In Progress lane types.

How to edit lane types?

Navigate to Settings → Board Editor, then click the pencil icon under a column to change its lane type.

The Board Navigator makes switching between boards quick and seamless. Simply click the three-line (hamburger) menu at the top-left corner of any board to open it. This allows you to load other boards directly on the same page—saving time and reducing clicks.

Key features:

• Saves your scroll position
  When switching boards, your view will remain exactly where you left off - e.g., if you were focused on the bottom swimlane, you’ll return to the same spot.
• Lists only visited boards
  To keep things clean, the navigator only shows boards you’ve accessed at least once, so you’re not overwhelmed by projects you don’t need.
• Quick board search
  Use the magnifying glass at the top of the navigator panel to find a board by name.
  
• Star favorite boards
  If you have a long list of boards, add a ⭐ to frequently used ones to pin them to the top.
• Dashboard access
  Need to rename, clone, or delete a board? Click the Home icon or your account name at the top of the navigator panel to jump to the dashboard.

Absolutely! Kanban Tool boards are highly scalable and can be adjusted to match your evolving workflow. You can:

• Expand the layout to accommodate more tasks, columns, and swimlanes.
• Enable optional features to enhance functionality.
• Invite more team members as your project grows.
• Automate processes with custom rules to streamline work.

We recommend starting small and gradually expanding your board as needed.

All changes can be made from the Settings page, accessible to account admins and board owners.

In Agile workflow management, the term epic can mean different things to different teams. Some see it as a broad task outline, while others define it as a goal broken down into smaller jobs. For some, an epic represents an entire project. These variations arise from the lack of a universal definition, but no matter how your team structures epics, integrating them into your Kanban Tool workflow is simple.

Create a dedicated board for each epic

This method gives you full control over who can access the epic and whether they can edit or just view it. Keeping each epic on its own board ensures clarity, focus, and seamless collaboration.

Reporting: Automated metrics - the Cumulative Flow chart, Lead & Cycle Time, Breakdown Charts, and Time Reports.

Use a separate swimlane for each epic

If you prefer to keep everything on one board while reducing project switching, swimlanes are the way to go. This approach keeps all your epics visible in one place, showing real-time progress across multiple initiatives.

Reporting: Automated Lead & Cycle Time, Breakdown Charts, and Time Reports—all sortable by swimlane.

Assign a unique card type to each epic

For a highly visual approach, color-coding epics makes it easy to shuffle tasks across multiple boards while staying organized. At a glance, you’ll always know which card belongs to which epic.

Reporting: Automated metrics - Cumulative Flow, Lead & Cycle Time, Breakdown Charts, and Time Reports, all sortable by card type. Real-time filtering by card color or the Card Legend power-up further simplifies tracking.

Use a parent card for the epic with dependent cards for stories

For teams that need a structured, hierarchical view, Task Dependencies are a great solution. Each dependent task links back to the parent card, creating clear relationships between work items. Plus, with multi-level nesting, you can map out even the most complex epics effortlessly.

Bonus: A Developer Tools add-on provides a visual highlight of task connections—perfect for teams managing epics on a single board.

Reporting: While reporting isn’t available for this method, the structure helps maintain a clear roadmap of your epic and its sub-tasks.