Task Boards: Views, Grouping, and Sharing

Once a project has more than a handful of tasks spread across several people, a list of everything you are responsible for stops being useful. You need to see what is in progress, what is late, and who is working on what, without asking anyone.

A task board gives you that picture. It is a visual overview of your tasks, which you can arrange by status, by assignee, by project, or by anything else you track, and share with the colleagues who need it.

In this article, you will learn what a task board is, how the two views work, how to group and filter your tasks, and how to share a project board with your team.

What a task board is

A task board is a filtered view of the tasks you already have access to. It is not a container: a task does not live on a board, and adding a board does not move anything.

That has two consequences worth understanding before you start:

• A task can appear on several boards at once. A design task can show up on its project board, on the Design team board, and in a view you saved for this week. It is the same task in all three places.
• A task has only one status. Change it on one board and it changes everywhere, because you are editing the task, not a card.

The two kinds of boards

Project task boards are created for you. Every project has one, on the project's Tasks tab, showing the tasks for that project. You do not need to set it up.

Team task boards are created by power users in the Tasks module and belong to a team, such as Design or Workshop. They answer a different question: not "how is this project going" but "what is my team working on this week". Learn more about teams and team task boards.

Board view

In board view, your tasks appear as cards in columns. The columns come from whatever you have grouped by, which is your task statuses by default.

Moving a card changes the task. When you drag a card from one column to another, Rentman updates the matching field on the task automatically. Drag a card from To do into Completed and the task status changes. If you have grouped by assignee instead, dragging a card to another column reassigns the task. This is the fastest way to keep a board current, but it is worth knowing that it is a real edit, not just a visual move.

From a card you can see the task at a glance and open it in full to edit any field. A task that has passed its deadline is marked so you can spot it without reading every card.

List overview

List view shows the same tasks as rows instead of cards. Use it when you need detail rather than an overview: comparing deadlines across many tasks, checking planned time, or editing several tasks quickly.

You choose which columns to show. Two worth adding early are the planned time and the hours registered against each task, which together show whether the work is running over. Learn more about columns.

When you group in a list overview, your tasks are divided into sections rather than columns. Sorting, filtering, and editing work as they do elsewhere in Rentman.

Switch between overviews

To switch between board and list view:

1. Navigate to the Tasks module or a project's Tasks tab.
2. Click on Overview.
3. Click on Board or list.
4. Select the overview you want to see.

Filters, groups, and views

Filters decide which tasks appear. You can filter on many kinds of information, including project status and type, color, and expired deadlines.

To filter an overview:

1. Navigate to the Tasks module or a project's Tasks tab.
2. Click on Filters.
3. Select the filter.
4. Click on Add.

Groups decide how those tasks are divided up. Anything that can be shown as a column can also be used as a group, so you can group by status, tags and linked items (in the Tasks module). You can also use subgroups for a more detailed overview.

To use groups and subgroups:

1. Navigate to the Tasks module or a project's Tasks tab.
2. Click on Overview.
3. Choose Groups or Subgroups.
4. Select the option you want.

Views are a saved combination of filters and groups that you apply to a board. Once you have set up a board the way you want it, save it as a view and switch back to it in one click. Learn more about views.

Find your way around your boards

The Tasks module is where all your boards live. From there you can open any project board you have access to, open your team boards, and reach every task you can see.

If you have a long list of boards, one way to make it manageable is to hide boards that are not relevant to you.

To hide a board:

1. Navigate to the Tasks module.
2. From the boards menu on the left, find the board you want to hide.
3. Click on more options.
4. Select Hide.

Hidden boards are not gone, and you can show them again at any time.

To see hidden boards:

1. Navigate to the Tasks module.
2. From the boards menu on the left, click on more options.
3. Toggle on Show hidden boards.

Share a project task board with your colleagues

Share a project board with the people working on that project, so everyone is looking at the same plan. You can do this at any time while working on the board.

1. Open a project's task board, either from a project's Tasks tab or from the Tasks module.
2. Click on Share.
3. Add an existing crew member by searching their name.
4. Learn how to invite an external user.
5. Save.

The people you add receive a notification that the board has been shared with them.

How sharing works with user permissions

Two separate things decide what someone can do on a board, and it is worth keeping them apart:

• Sharing the board decides which tasks a person can see and edit.
• Their user role decides what they are allowed to do with those tasks and the tasks outside of the board, such as deleting tasks created by someone else.

So sharing a board with a colleague does not give them rights they do not already have. It gives them access to the tasks on that board, within the limits of their role. Learn more about user roles and permissions.

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