Running a project board

Running a project board#

A project is a piece of work with an end: a website build, an onboarding, a campaign. A task is one thing somebody has to do for it.

Your first project#

Open Projects and choose New project. A name is enough — everything else can be filled in later.

The project arrives with a board of four columns:

To do · In progress · Review · Done

These are ordinary columns, and you can change them. Drag a column by the grip beside its name to move it along the board, or open the ⋯ to:

• Rename it;
• Move it left or right;
• decide what it means — tasks in it count as Not started, In progress or Finished;
• Remove it, once it is empty.

Add column is at the end of the board. A column that counts as finished shows a small tick beside its name — drop a card there and it counts as done, whatever the column is called.

Only people who manage projects, and the project's owner, can change the columns. Everybody else just uses them.

Adding tasks#

Press Add task under the last card — or + at the top of the column — type what needs doing, and press Enter. The box stays open, so you can empty your head in one go rather than clicking Add for every line. Escape closes it.

Without a mouse: move to a card with Tab, press Space to pick it up, then use the arrow keys. Left and right move it to the next column, up and down move it among the cards around it. Space puts it down.

Click a card to open the task. It opens as a full workspace over the board: the description, the checklist, the subtasks, the files and the conversation, all in one place.

In a hurry? The eye on a card gives you a quick look — who is on it, what state it is in, the last comment — without leaving the board. It is there for "what is this?"; clicking the card is for working on it.

Inside a task you can set:

• Who is doing it — one person, several people, or nobody yet. Press Assign, search for somebody, and they are on it; press the × beside a name to take them off. The card shows their faces, and +2 when there are more than three.
• When it starts and when it is due — dates, not times. The start is what the timeline draws from.
• An estimate — how long you think it will take. Type it the way you say it: 2h, 90m, 1.5h. This is what the Workload view counts.
• Whether it repeats — every day, week, month or year, optionally until a date. The next one is created when you finish this one, so there is only ever one of them on the board and a missed week shows as one late task rather than four copies.
• Priority — low, medium, high or urgent.
• Labels — your own words, shared across every project.
• A description, comments, and files.
• A checklist — the steps inside the task. Type a step, press Enter, type the next. Tick them off as you go; the card shows how many are done (2/5).
• Subtasks — when a step is really its own piece of work, with somebody's name on it and a date of its own.
• Dependencies — what this task is waiting for, and what is waiting for it.

Keeping people in the loop#

Three separate things, on purpose:

Assignees are the people doing the work. They hear about everything that happens to the task without having to ask.

Followers are people who want to know. Press Follow on a task and you get the updates without being responsible for it — a manager watching a launch, or whoever reported the problem. Press Following again to stop. Writing a comment also starts you following that task, so you hear the reply.

Mentions are for getting one person's attention. Type @ in a comment, keep typing a name, and pick the person: "@Sara can you check the copy?" They get told, whether or not they are on the task, and the notification takes them to that comment.

The @ menu only offers people who can see the task. On a private project that is the people on it — nobody else appears, and nobody outside it can be mentioned into the conversation.

What you get told about#

• somebody puts you on a task, or takes you off one;
• a new comment on a task you are on or following;
• somebody mentions you;
• the task moves column, is finished, or is reopened;
• its due date changes;
• it is overdue, or due tomorrow — to the people doing it;
• something it was waiting for is finished.

You are never told about your own actions, and one thing happening means one notification, however many reasons you had to hear about it.

Checklist or subtask?#

Use a checklist for steps you only need to tick: phone the printer, confirm the address, send the invoice. It lives inside the task and belongs to whoever owns it.

Use a subtask when the step is work in its own right — it needs an owner, a date, or a status of its own. "Design the packaging" is a subtask; "email the file" is a checklist line.

Subtasks are real tasks: they turn up in the list view, in My project tasks, and in the person's own list of work. They do not appear as separate cards on the board — they live inside the card they belong to, which shows how many are done. Open a subtask to give it an owner or a date.

Subtasks go one level deep. A subtask cannot have subtasks of its own, so there is never a tree to get lost in.

Deleting a task never deletes its subtasks. They stay, as tasks of their own.

Waiting on something#

Open a task, find Dependencies, and choose Add what this waits for. The card then says Blocked by 1 on the board, and the task it waits for shows that it is holding something up.

Nothing is locked. A blocked task can still be picked up, moved and finished — the board tells you what is waiting, it does not stand in the way.

Two tasks cannot be set to wait for each other, even around a third one: that would describe a plan where neither could ever start.

When the last thing a task was waiting for is finished, whoever owns the freed task is told once that it can start.

Moving work along#

Drag a card from one column to the next. That is the whole thing — the move is saved as you drop it, and everybody else sees it.

Prefer the keyboard? Tab to a card, press Space to pick it up, arrow keys to move it, Space again to drop it.

A card that lands in a Done column counts as finished. Move it back out and it counts as unfinished again.

Finding things on a busy board#

Type in the search box above the board, or press Filter to narrow it down by who it is assigned to, its label, its priority, when it is due, or whether it is blocked. The button shows how many filters are on, and each one appears as a chip underneath — click the × on a chip to take that one off, or Clear to remove them all.

Filters show up in the address bar, so a filtered board is something you can send to someone: "here is everything Sara is stuck on." The board and the List view filter together.

Planning across time#

The Timeline tab lays the project out left to right: one bar per task, from its start date to its due date. A task with only a due date gets a single day — Nazzam will not invent a start you did not give it.

• Drag a bar to move the work. Both dates move together, keeping the same length: you are rescheduling it, not making it longer.
• Weeks or Months changes how much you can see at once.
• The line down the page is today.
• Tasks with no dates at all are counted underneath rather than hidden.

Is the plan possible?#

Projects → Workload answers the question a board cannot: whether the people you have can do the work you have promised, in the weeks you have promised it.

Each row is a person, each column a week, and each cell is the work due that week. Over 40 hours the cell is marked.

Three things it does on purpose, because a capacity view that hides them is worse than none:

• Work counts in the week it is due. Nazzam does not spread a task across its start-to-due range — nobody knows how the effort is really spread, and a smooth curve would be a guess drawn as data.
• A task two people share counts for both of them. That is what each of them agreed to; dividing it would invent a split nobody discussed.
• A task nobody has estimated is never counted as zero. It shows as unsized, so a week that looks light because nothing in it has been estimated says so.

Work with no due date cannot be placed in a week, so it is counted in the No date column — visible, rather than quietly missing.

You only see the work you are allowed to see. Private projects you are not on are missing from these totals, which means two people can honestly see different numbers for the same colleague.

Seeing what is due when#

The Calendar tab lays the month out by due date — useful for "what is landing this week", which a board cannot tell you, since a column says where work stands and not when it is due.

Drag a task to another day to change its due date. Tasks with no due date are not on the calendar; they are counted underneath it, so they do not quietly disappear.

Seeing where things stand#

Three views, the same tasks:

• Board — for working.
• List — for scanning: filter by person, priority or date, sort, and search.
• Overview — for reporting: how much is done, what is overdue, what is coming up, and what just happened.

All tasks (top right) shows every task across every project, which is the fastest way to answer "what is on my plate".

Who can see what#

By default, everyone in your workspace can see a project. Set a project to Only the people on it and it disappears for everybody else.

People who manage projects can still see private projects. That is deliberate: nobody should be able to hide the company's work from the person who runs the company.

When work finishes#

Archive the project. It stays readable — the tasks, the comments, the history — and stops appearing in the list. Restore it any time.

Individual tasks can be archived too, and an archived task leaves the progress count entirely: tidying up should not look like falling behind.

Connecting it to a customer#

A project can point at a company or a deal you already have in the CRM. The overview then links straight to them, so the work and the customer are one click apart.

It works from the other side too. Every company and deal page has a Projects tab showing the work for that customer — including anything overdue, which is worth knowing before you pick up the phone.

Just won a deal? Open it, go to Projects, and choose Start a project. It arrives named after the deal and already linked to it and its company.

This is optional. Plenty of work — a rebuild, a hiring push — has no customer attached, and a project does not need one.

Running the same project again#

Some work repeats: every new client is onboarded the same way, every campaign follows the same seven steps. When a project has gone well, open it, choose Settings, and pick Save as template.

Next time you press New project, the template is in the Start from list, and the new project arrives with the same columns and the same starter tasks — checklists and labels included.

What a template keeps is the shape of the work. It does not copy who did it, what was said in the comments, the files, or the dates that belonged to that particular run.

Dates become "days in". If that project started on the 1st and the brief was due on the 4th, the template remembers three days in. Start a project from it on 10 June and the brief lands on the 13th. If the original project had no start date, tasks simply arrive without one.

To see or remove your templates, press Templates on the Projects page. Deleting a template does not touch any project made from it.

There is no template editor, and that is deliberate. To change a template, start a project from it, fix what was wrong, and save that as a template — the same two clicks, and you can see the result on a real board before you keep it.

Your own list#

Projects → My tasks is everything assigned to you, across every project, grouped by when it is due: overdue first, then today, then the next seven days, then later, then anything with no date at all. Finished work is one click below.

Need the wider view? Everyone shows every task you are allowed to see, and the same filters apply.

These are project tasks. Calls, meetings and follow-ups against a customer are Activities, and they live on the CRM calendar.

Reminders#

As well as the updates above, Nazzam reminds the people doing a task when it is due tomorrow — once, the day before — and when it is overdue — once, not every day. Change the due date and both reminders reset for the new date. Followers are not reminded: they asked for news about the work, not to be chased about somebody else's deadline.

Your dashboard can show My project tasks — everything assigned to you, soonest first. If you have arranged your dashboard yourself, add it from Customize.

Nobody is told about every comment on every project. A tool that interrupts constantly is one people learn to ignore.