Task Board Overview
Elairo's Task Board provides a dynamic and visual way to manage your team's tasks and sprints. Built on the principles of Kanban, it offers a clear overview of work in progress, allowing teams to collaborate effectively and track progress toward their OKRs and other objectives.
Understanding the Kanban Board
A Kanban board is a visual workflow management system that helps you visualize work, limit work in progress, and maximize efficiency. In Elairo, your task board is designed to reflect your team's workflow, typically moving tasks from "To Do" to "Done."
At its core, a Kanban board consists of:
Tasks (Cards): Each task is represented by a card on the board, containing essential information like the task title, assignee, and due date.
Columns: These represent the different stages of your workflow, such as "To Do," "In Progress," and "Done."
Swimlanes (Optional): While not a primary feature of the basic view, tasks can be filtered and grouped to create a similar visual separation based on assignees, sprints, or other criteria.
Columns and Task States
The columns on your Elairo Task Board define the "state" of a task. By default, Elairo provides a standard set of columns, but you can customize these to perfectly match your team's unique workflow.
Default Columns:
To Do: This is where new tasks land. These are tasks that have been identified and prioritized but have not yet been started. Think of it as your team's backlog for the current sprint or work cycle.
In Progress: Once a team member begins working on a task, it moves to this column. This signals that active work is being performed.
Done: When a task is completed, reviewed, and finalized, it moves to the "Done" column. This provides a clear visual indicator of completed work and contributes to your team's overall progress.
Customizing Columns:
You can add, rename, and reorder columns to better suit your team's specific processes. For example, you might add columns such as "Review," "Testing," or "Blocked" to delineate more nuanced stages of your workflow.
To customize columns:
Navigate to your Task Board.
Click the "Board Settings" or "Customize Columns" option (usually represented by a gear icon) in the top right corner of the board.
From here, you can:
Add New Column: Click the "Add Column" button and provide a name.
Rename Column: Click on the existing column name and type the new name.
Reorder Column: Drag and drop columns to change their sequence.
Delete Column: Click the trash can icon next to a column (note: you cannot delete default columns if there are tasks within them).
Tip: Keep your column count manageable. Too many columns can make the board appear cluttered and harder to follow. Focus on the essential stages of your workflow.
Board Navigation
Navigating your Task Board in Elairo is intuitive, designed to help you quickly find the information you need and manage tasks efficiently.
Viewing Options:
List View: While the Kanban board is the primary view, you can often switch to a list view for a more tabular display of tasks. This can be useful for bulk editing or exporting.
Filter and Sort: Use the filter options at the top of the board to narrow down tasks by assignee, due date, priority, tags, associated OKRs, or sprints. You can also sort tasks within columns by various criteria.
Search: A search bar is typically available to quickly find specific tasks by title or keywords.
Interacting with Tasks:
Dragging and Dropping: The most common way to change a task's state is to drag and drop it from one column to another.
Clicking a Task: Clicking on a task card will open its detailed view, where you can edit its description, assignees, due dates, add sub-tasks, link to OKRs, and more. See Creating and Managing Tasks for more details.
Quick Actions: Hovering over a task card may reveal quick action icons, such as assigning a user or marking it complete.
Example Scenario: Managing a Marketing Campaign
Imagine your team is launching a new marketing campaign. Your Task Board might have the following columns:
Ideas: Initial brainstorming and rough concepts for campaign elements.
To Do: Approved campaign tasks ready to be worked on (e.g., "Write blog post," "Design social media graphics," "Schedule email blast").
In Progress: Tasks actively being worked on by team members.
Under Review: Tasks awaiting approval from a manager or client.
Blocked: Tasks that cannot proceed due to an external dependency or issue.
Done: Completed campaign tasks.
As tasks move through these stages, the team gains a real-time understanding of the campaign's progress, potential bottlenecks, and overall workload.
For more information on adding tasks and managing their details, refer to Creating and Managing Tasks. To understand how tasks contribute to broader goals, see OKRs Best Practices.
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