Cards
Such cards can be chained together with a simple parent-child relationship. Although a parent can have many children, a child can have only one parent. Placeholder
Cards not participating on a particular kanban board are shown as placeholders.
Each card represents a work item. It doesn?t matter if the work item is a task or a user story.
Card context retained due to grandparent and parent title being displayed as required.
Details of a particular card can be reached via unique URL based on card ID (i.e. ABC-12345), thereby allowing direct link.
A card changed in the last 24 hours will be shown slightly rotated on the kanban board to indicate the same.
Card Types
A card placed on the kanban board can be of any one of nine types:
All cards or just those of a particular type can be shown on the kanban board.
Such cards can be hierarchically chained together with a simple parent-child relationship. Although a parent can have many children, a child can have only one parent.
Card Attributes
Many attributes can be assigned to each card:
Custom Attributes
Any number of user-defined custom attributes can be added to all cards in a particular project. Just define the custom attributes within the project itself and every time you add, update or view a card in that project, such custom attributes will appear and be editable.
Card Menu
Each card on the kanban board posseses a popup menu that allows you to do the following:
Adding or Updating a Card
If you have been invited onto a project as a guest, you will be able to view any card but can not add a new one or update an existing one.
Unlike other project management systems, Kanbanara has no notion of a read only kanban board. The ‘editableby’ attribute to each card ensures only those allowed to do so can edit an individual card. The settings of the editableby attribute indicate which edit groups are able to edit an individual card. By default, each card will be assigned the following edit groups:
At any time, you have the option to add or remove any of these edit groups from any card you are allowed to edit.
Add Card
The Add Card page allows you to add a card of type epic, feature, story, enhancement, defect, task, bug, test or transient to the Kanban board.
Should you enter a fair amount of text into one of a number of textarea input fields, a text-to-speech facility is available to allow you to listen to your text prior to submission.
Update Card
The Update Card page allows you to edit any existing card regardless of its type.
Should you enter a fair amount of text into one of a number of textarea input fields, a text-to-speech facility is available to allow you to listen to your text prior to submission.
Delete Card
The Delete Card page is reached whenever you select an individual card for deletion by clicking on its Delete menu option.
You will only be able to perform this action if the project’s ‘Allow Card Deletions’ setting has been enabled (disabled by default
Please note that the deletion of a parent card will cause all its children to be deleted at the same time.
Priorities and Severities
Kanbanara supports both priority and severity, each to four levels, thus giving one of sixteen levels of urgency and importance to an individual card ranging from critical-critical, through high and medium, down to low-low.
The most important cards in any state, those with critical or high priority, are automatically shown towards the top of the kanban board. Within each block grouping cards together of the same priority, such cards are additionally sorted by severity with the critical and high ones again towards the top.
Priorities
A card will be assigned one of four priorities - Critical, High, Medium or Low - at any given time, the default being Medium.
The most important cards in any state, those with critical or high priority, are automatically shown towards the top of the kanban board. Within each block grouping cards together of the same priority, such cards are additionally sorted by severity with the critical and high ones again towards the top.
Higher priority cards are shown towards the top of each state column.
This is not strictly true for the Backlog column, where cards may be displayed in the order they have been arranged by via the Backlog Pyramid.
Coupled with the assignment of a severity, this allows you to sort your cards into one of sixteen priority-severity pairs.
Severities
A card will be assigned one of four severities - Critical, High, Medium or Low - at any given time, the default being Medium.
The most important cards in any state, those with critical or high priority, are automatically shown towards the top of the kanban board. Within each block grouping cards together of the same priority, such cards are additionally sorted by severity with the critical and high ones again towards the top.
This is not strictly true for the Backlog column, where cards may be displayed in the order they have been arranged by via the Backlog Pyramid.
Coupled with the assignment of a priority, this allows you to sort your cards into one of sixteen priority-severity pairs.
Hierarchy
Such cards can be chained together with a simple parent-child relationship. Although a parent can have many children, a child can have only one parent.
Kanbanara posseses an ‘Isolate? facility to show just those cards hierarchically chained together.
Classes Of Service
A class of service may be allocated to a card.
Blocking a Card
A card can be blocked by a team member explicitly setting it as such. To such a block can be additionally added a date upon which the card will be automatically unblocked. A card can also be automatically blocked by its children if the parent and children get out of step as regards their states.
An individual card can be blocked in one of several ways:
Next Action and Deadline
Next action or deadline dates can be individually assigned to a card. The Today kanban board is particularly useful in isolating those cards requiring your attention today (or indeed yesterday). Such cards can also be displayed per day on the Diary page.
Date for next action can be individually set per card. Visual notification/warning will be given when date is approaching or has passed. Such cards can be viewed on mass on the Today kanban board.
Due date for completion (deadline) can be individually set per card. Visual notification/warning will be given when date is approaching or has passed. Such cards can be viewed on mass on the Deadline kanban board.
Attachments
A file may be uploaded and attached to an individual card.
Inline Editing
The card view page allows certain attributes of a card to be edited inline.
Ghost Cards
At the bottom of each column on your kanban board is a section to hold ghost cards. Such ghost cards fall into one of two categories - either they are your own ghost cards having materialised to others whilst in their review/QA period or they are the ghost cards of others which only materialise to you during their review/QA period. For example, should you as a reviewer be assigned to a card many columns prior to reaching a review column, it will appear to you as a ghost card. Such appearance indicates to you that you have been assigned as the card?s reviewer but there is absolutely nothing for you to do until it reaches a review column when it will instantly materialise. You can think of ghost cards as residing in an undercurrent - cards you need to see but are not directly responsible for.
Routine Card Manager
Should you have a task that you do, say, every week, once a month or twice a year, Kanbanara’s routine card manager may prove of assistance as it allows the creation of routine cards to be automated. Should the automatic creation of a routine card cause you to get overwhelmed, it can be manually suspended for as long as you need in order to catch up.
Block
Parent card is automatically blocked by one or more of its children if their states have got out of step.
A card can be blocked by a team member explicitly setting it as such. To such a block can be additionally added a date upon which the card will be automatically unblocked. A card can also be automatically blocked by its children if the parent and children get out of step as regards their states.
Time and Cost
Estimated/actual time fully implemented. Estimated/actual cost fully implemented.
Categories
Allows one or more user-defined categories to be assigned to a card. All cards of one or more categories can be shown on mass on the kanban board via the global filter?s Categories field.
CRM Case and Escalation
To each card can be assigned a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) case number and/or escalation.
Stuck
Ability to flag up that you are stuck on a particular card. Such card will then appear on others? kanban board prompting them to come to your aid.
Should a team member get absolutely stuck with a particular card, a stuck setting can be enabled by entering text describing how they are stuck and what assistance they require, whereupon such a card will appear on everyone else?s kanban board in the same project thus allowing help from a colleague in the shortest possible time.
Emotions
An emotion can be assigned to a card allowing a Project Manager to view all such emotions on the Emotions kanban board thereby getting a feel for the moral within his/her team.
External Reference
External reference and/or hyperlinks can be individually assigned to a card. Such references can be viewed on mass on the ExtRef Kanban board - Especially useful if selecting Service Support person as team member in the global filter.
Service Level Agreement
TO BE COMPLETED
Notes And Statuses
A card's previous notes and statuses are not retained, simply revised over time.
Hidden Cards
Should you have too many cards on your kanban board, Kanbanara allows you to hide them for up to six days into the future. Just set the HiddenUntil attribute and the card will disappear until the allotted time.
Backdrops
You can add a graphic file (.jpg, .gif or .png) as a backdrop to any card you desire. Backdrop files fall into two categories, generic/global, which can be utilised by all projects, and project-specific, which are only available to the current project.
Awards
Selecting from the list of awards specified by the project manager, one may be assigned to a particular card, which upon completion can be awarded to those involved.
Resolution
When a card reaches the closed state, one of the following resolutions can be separately assigned:
Closing Off A Release
Has no concept of closing off a release.
Closure and Resolution
Resolution (Released, Abandoned, etc.) for a Closed card can be separately assigned.