Working with cards

A card is a single piece of work on a board: a task, a question, a decision to make, or a problem to fix. The board is your shared list of work, laid out in columns you drag cards across as the job moves from “to do” to “done”. This chapter is about the cards themselves: what goes on them and who can change what.

If you are new to the board, start with the board overview first.

What lives on a card

Every card has a title and a number (like OAK-42). The number is fixed once the card is made, so people can refer to it even if the title changes later. Beyond that, a card can carry as much or as little as you need:

• A type, so people know at a glance what kind of work it is. On a project board the types are Task, Detailing, Change, Reduction, Additional work and Snag. Each has its own colour and icon.
• A description, a longer note with room for bold text, lists and links.
• A priority: Critical, High, Medium or Low.
• An assignee: the one person responsible for the card.
• A start date and a deadline. The start date is filled in for you the first time a card moves from the backlog onto the board. The deadline is a date with an optional time; a card past its deadline is flagged as overdue.
• An epic: a way to group related cards together (for example “Kitchen fit-out”).
• Labels: small colour-coded tags you can stick on cards to mark them however your team likes.
• Roles: the people or functions a card touches (for example the electrician or the client).
• A space: the room or area the card belongs to, if it is tied to one place rather than the whole job.
• Subtasks: a checklist of smaller steps, with a progress count. Each subtask can be assigned to a person.
• Files and attachments: drawings and photos linked or attached to the card.
• Comments: the conversation about the card.

Creating a card

There are two quick ways to make a card.

At the bottom of a column. Every column on the board has an add button at its foot.

1. Open the board.
2. Click the add button under the column where the work belongs.
3. Type a title and press Enter. The card appears in that column, ready to fill in.

From anywhere, with the quick-add palette. This is handy when an idea strikes and you are not on the board.

1. Press Cmd+K (Mac) or Ctrl+K (Windows) from anywhere in Wyroo.
2. Type a title.
3. Pick the project the card belongs to. If you are already inside a project, it is chosen for you.
4. Optionally pick someone to assign it to.
5. Submit. The new card lands in the project’s first column, and a message gives you a link straight to it.

Tip: Keep titles short and concrete. “Order extra tiles for the bathroom” reads better at a glance than “Tiles”.

Filling in a card’s details

Click any card to open its detail panel. The work content (the description and subtasks) sits in the middle, and the card’s properties (status, priority, assignee, dates, epic, labels and so on) sit in a side panel. On a narrow screen the properties fold into a Details section you can expand.

Most fields save the moment you change them. A small “saved” note confirms it. To set or change a field, click it and pick a value. To clear a field, use its clear control.

A note on who can edit what:

• The title and description are the card’s authored content. Only the person who created the card and your company’s admins can change them. Everyone else reads them and joins in through comments.
• The properties and subtasks can be changed by anyone who is a contributor on the project. People with view-only access see everything but cannot change it.

Start date, deadline and reminders

You do not have to fill in the start date. The first time a card is moved from the backlog onto the board (past “Ready to pick up”), Wyroo records that day as the start date: the day work on the card began. Moving the card between columns later does not change it, and a start date you typed yourself is never overwritten.

A deadline is a date, and optionally a time. Leave the time empty and the deadline counts as 09:00 on that day. Two things happen around it, for the person the card is assigned to:

• A reminder ahead of time. Every morning Wyroo checks which of your open cards have a deadline within your reminder window (one week by default, adjustable under Settings > Notifications). You get a bell notification per card, a push if you have it enabled, and a single email listing all of them.
• A “deadline reached” alert. When the deadline passes and the card is still open, you get a bell notification, an email and a push. Clicking any of them opens the card.

Both are sent once per deadline. Move the deadline and they arm again; finish the card first and nothing is sent.

Subtasks and progress

Subtasks are a simple checklist of smaller steps inside a card. They are great for breaking “Install the kitchen” into the steps that get it done.

1. Open the card.
2. In the Subtasks section, click add a subtask.
3. Type the step and press Enter. It is added to the list and the input clears for the next one.
4. Click the circle next to a subtask to mark it done. Click again to reopen it.
5. To put someone on a subtask, click the dashed person icon on its row and pick a name. There is a search box, which helps when a project has many people. Their avatar then appears on the row; hover it to see who it is. To take them off again, open the same menu and choose unassign.
6. To remove a subtask, use the small remove control on its row.

A badge shows how many subtasks are done out of the total (for example 3/5). That same progress count is visible on the card on the board, so you can see how far along a card is without opening it.

Files, attachments and comments

You can attach images and documents directly to a card, and pasted screenshots are saved as attachments automatically. Project files can also be linked to a card (the file stays in the library, the card just points to it), so the same drawing can appear on many cards.

Comments are where the conversation about a card happens. They are covered in their own chapter: see Comments and mentions.

Tip: Use an assignee and a deadline together on the cards that matter. Wyroo uses both to surface the most urgent work first, so an overdue, high-priority card never gets buried.