Boards

A Board is a named filter view over a Project’s Work Items. Columns describe the status flow you want to see; the Board does not own a separate set of cards.

Opted-in Organization members can see who else is currently viewing the same board in the page header — name and avatar only, disappearing about a minute after someone leaves. See Presence.

Create a Board

Create a Board from a Project and define its column layout. A Board can filter by Work Item type, priority, and Sprint scope, which makes it useful for a focused delivery view without hiding the rest of the Project.

Group cards into swimlanes

Any board member can temporarily group the board into horizontal swimlanes with the Group by control:

No grouping — the plain column view.
Assignee — one lane per assignee, with a separate Unassigned lane.
Priority — one lane per priority, in the existing priority order.
Parent — one lane per immediate parent Work Item, with a No parent lane.
Epic — one lane per nearest ancestor Epic, with a No Epic lane.

Every card you are authorized to see appears in exactly one lane, including parents and Epics that are themselves cards on the board. Lanes that would be empty are never shown. User lanes order by display name; parent and Epic lanes order by Work Item key. An identity you cannot see — for example an assignee who has left the Organization, or a deleted or archived parent or Epic — collapses into a single Undisclosed lane without revealing who or what it was.

The control writes a temporary, viewer-local choice into the URL. It wins over the saved default, survives sharing and reloading that URL, and never changes the board for anyone else; selecting the saved default again (or clearing the parameter) returns to it. Browser back and forward navigate through your grouping choices.

Project administrators can make the current grouping the board default with Save as board default. The save is checked against the board revision like other settings: if another administrator changed the board first, the save is refused and you can refresh and retry. Existing boards keep No grouping as their default.

Moving cards on a grouped board

Within a lane, everything works as on an ungrouped board: drag a card to another column to change its status, drag within a column to reorder it, or use the card’s status control and grip with the keyboard. Other lanes’ cards keep their relative order — a move rewrites only the moved card’s position.

Dropping a card into another Assignee or Priority lane explicitly changes that field after the usual authorization and eligibility checks, in the same atomic save as the status and order change. A card can be dropped into the Unassigned lane to clear its assignee, or into a priority lane that currently has no cards. If the save fails — a stale board, a concurrent edit, or a revoked assignment — the card snaps back and the board re-renders the authoritative state.

Parent and Epic grouping is read-only presentation: cards cannot be dragged between lanes, and moving a card never re-parents it. Change a card’s parent from its details page. Within a lane, normal reorder and status movement still works.

For touch and keyboard users, every card in an Assignee or Priority grouped board has a Move to… control listing the lanes it can move to and the destination column; collapsed lanes hide their cards until expanded, and collapse state is remembered locally per viewer, board, and grouping — never shared with other members.

Move Work Items

Dragging a card between columns changes its status. Reordering within a status changes the Project-wide status ordering shared by every Board that shows that Work Item.

Drag from the card itself or its grip and drop it into the destination column, including an empty column. For example, moving a card from Backlog to To Do changes that Work Item’s status to To Do. Clicking a card opens its details. On touch screens, drag from the grip; swipe from the card itself to scroll the Board.

To move a card with the keyboard, focus its Move grip, press Space to pick it up, use the arrow keys to move it, and press Space again to drop it. Press Escape to cancel. While a move is saving, further dragging is temporarily disabled. If the save fails, the Board restores the previous or latest saved order and shows an error.

The same Work Item may appear on more than one Board. A change made on one Board is therefore visible on the other views that include it.

Live board updates

A Board reconciles changes made by other members without a manual reload. If another member creates, moves, reorders, archives, or deletes a Work Item, the Board re-runs the same authorized query it loaded with, so the authoritative order, membership, and what you may see are always resolved on the server. Reconciliation is queued while you are mid-drag or while a save is settling, then applied after your drop or cancel rather than while the card is in flight; if the order changed underneath you, the existing reorder conflict handling resolves it. See Live updates for the connection, reconnect, and conflict behavior shared by Boards, the Work Items list, and Work Item detail.

Board and Sprint ordering are different

Board position and Sprint priority are intentionally separate:

Board movement controls the Work Item’s order within its status.
Sprint reordering controls the Work Item’s order inside a Sprint.

Changing one does not silently rewrite the other.

Advisory WIP limits

Project administrators can set an optional WIP limit on each board column. A limit is a whole number from 1 to 10,000; leaving it blank means no limit. Columns without a configured limit remain unlimited. Existing configured limits are preserved. Limits are stored with the board’s column configuration and can be changed at any time from Board settings.

Each column header shows count (or count/limit) and a text indicator:

At limit when the count equals the limit.
Over limit when the count is greater than the limit.

These indicators are advisory. A WIP limit never blocks a drag, keyboard move, bulk change, transition, import, automation, or API write; the move still succeeds and the column simply shows that it is over its limit. The indicator uses text and an icon, so it is not conveyed by color alone.

The count reflects every active, non-deleted Work Item you are authorized to see that matches the board’s filter and has a status mapped to that column. If a column groups a status, the whole status is counted once. Subtasks are counted when they themselves match the filter; a parent’s subtasks are not rolled up into the parent. A Work Item is counted once even if a join or a grouping would otherwise repeat it, and grouping the board into swimlanes does not multiply the count. The count is not limited to the cards currently on screen.

Counts are scoped to what you can see. A user who is not authorized for a Project never sees its boards or their counts, and a viewer-scoped filter that narrows the displayed cards is reflected in the count label so the number is not mistaken for hidden work. Counts refresh after a successful board change and on a page refresh.

Filter a Board

Use Search, Status, Type, and Priority, then Apply filters. The URL preserves these choices and the column counts reflect the narrowed set. Links can also include assignee, sprint, and label UUID filters; none is accepted for an unassigned Work Item or one without a Sprint. Clear filters restores the saved Board view. Clear these viewer filters before dragging cards; you can still change status from Work Item details.

Settings saves check the Board revision. If another administrator changes the Board while you edit, your save is refused without overwriting their changes. Choose Load current limits, review the latest configuration, and edit again.

Cumulative flow from a Board

Choose View cumulative flow to open the Project’s existing cumulative-flow report. The link captures the saved Board filter, current viewer filters, the resolved active Sprint, and the as-of time. Reloading or sharing it retains that context even if an administrator later changes the Board. Report date limits, timezone, count/points controls, accessible table, and exports remain available.

Bands use canonical statuses, not custom column names. Filters select current Work Item field values, and history is replayed through the captured as-of time; the report does not reconstruct historical Board configuration, labels, or assignees. An inaccessible or deleted Board or referenced Sprint/label returns the normal safe not-found response. Remove Board scope explicitly to return to the ordinary Project report.