Managing Your Flow Board

The Flow Board is Project Manager's board view of a single project: every task sits in a column matching its state — Backlog, To-Do, Doing, Done — and cards move between columns as work is started, timed, and finished. This guide covers reading the board, moving work through its states, and filtering the board down to the work in front of you.

Opening the board

In the sidebar, open Project Manager and select Flow Board. The project selector on the right of the toolbar picks which project the board shows.

To create a task directly on the board, click + Task. The Create Task dialog asks for a Title and a Category (required) and lets you choose the task's starting state: Todo places it on the board as ready work, Backlog holds it for later. Click Save and the card appears in the matching column. The full create form, with every other field, is covered in Tasks.

Reading the columns

Each column is a task state, arranged left to right. The Backlog column is hidden while it's empty, unless its stages are spread, and an Archived column appears when you turn on archived cards with the archive icon in the board header.

Each card shows the task's reference, title and category, a state label, and its logged hours against the estimate. When a task has scheduled dates, the label also carries a day count, and a blocked task's card is outlined in red.

When Stages are enabled, the Backlog and Doing columns carry a Spread stages / Collapse stages tab on their right edge. Spreading splits the column into one column per stage, with unstaged cards remaining under Backlog or Doing; collapsing returns them to a single column. The tab only changes the layout — stages themselves are managed in Settings → Stages.

Moving work

Click a card — or the vertical dots on it — to open the task; archived tasks open read-only. The horizontal dots in the task header open Task Actions, the menu that moves a task between states.

A task moves as the work does. Move to To-Do readies a Backlog task, and Move to Backlog sends a To-Do task back. Doing isn't on the menu: a task gets there when you record time against it with Enter Time (the calendar icon) or Start Timer in the task header, and Start Timer isn't offered on Backlog tasks. Once a Doing task has time recorded, Mark as Done finishes it. Owners, admins, and managers can Reopen a Done task, which returns it to Doing. Archive is on the same menu. Mark as Done, Reopen and Archive each ask you to confirm first.

A task whose hours were logged on another task in the project has no time of its own to mark done; choose Close instead. The Close Task panel opens in place of the right rail: pick the task that carried the work under Closed By, add a note saying why, and click Close Task. The task moves to Done, and your note is saved as a comment on it.

An archived task comes back with Unarchive, available to owners, admins, and managers. It returns to Doing if it has time recorded, otherwise to To-Do. Close and Unarchive are both covered in full in Tasks.

Stages subdivide Backlog and Doing; they aren't additional states. The Transition To control on the task's right rail assigns a stage, or clears it back to plain Backlog or Doing, and is unavailable on Done and Archived tasks.

For work that's held up, Mark Blocked and Unblock sit on the same Task Actions menu. The remaining actions there — merge, split, and promote — are covered in Tasks.

Filtering the board

The filter bar under the toolbar narrows what the board displays.

Search... matches task titles and references, and the avatar row shows one member's tasks, or Unassigned. Categories, Priority, Epic, Tags, and Dates narrow the board further. Epic and Tags appear only when the project has them, and a date filter keeps tasks without dates visible.

The cancel icon, Clear Filters, resets everything at once. On the right, Avatars shows or hides assignee faces on cards, and the gear opens the board settings, where Show Empty Stages keeps spread stage columns visible even when they hold nothing.

Keeping the board current

The board stays readable when each column reflects reality: To-Do holds what's genuinely next, Doing holds work that's actively receiving time, and Done is emptied regularly.

Move work that isn't current back with Move to Backlog. When a Doing task is finished, Mark as Done and later Archive it, so the Done column stays short.

Card fields and the full set of task actions are covered in Tasks, and shaping a project before it reaches the board is covered in Planning Your First Project in Project Manager.