Plan mode

Plan mode is a way of working on a tab, made for running work on boards: a Kanban board, a sprint, a bug triage, a retro or a roadmap. A Plan board shows your work as columns of cards. Each card is an item, a task, a bug, a note or an idea, stored with the document rather than drawn on the tab, so moving a card changes the item for everyone at once, and the same item can sit on two boards (a sprint board and a roadmap) and move on both. See Items.

Plan mode gives a tab over to boards. Its palette holds Cards, Boards, Widgets, Metrics and Visualisations, then Content (sticky notes, text, images and pages) and Tools (Temperature, Estimate, Idea Box, Picker, Timer and Stopwatch), it starts on the Hand tool (cards take the pointer themselves; pick Select to move or resize a board), and Layers, the Eraser and Format stay with the other modes.

Switching modes

• Press the mode switch and choose Plan, or press Shift+D until you reach it. The switch sits in the Palette panel's title row, or beside the menu button with the Toolbar layout. On a phone, open the tab menu, choose Opens in, then Plan.
• Your mode is yours: someone else on the tab can be in Diagram mode while you are in Plan mode. They see the cards move as you move them.
• To have a tab open in Plan mode for everyone, open the tab menu, choose Opens in, then Plan.
• Plan mode is new, so it has a switch in Settings, Experimental, Plan Mode. It is on unless you turn it off.
• Switch modes whenever you like. Your boards and cards stay where they are. In Diagram or Draw mode a board is an element like any other: you can move it, resize it and draw around it, and it still updates as cards change. Its cards only take clicks and drags in Plan mode, so switch back to work them.

Starting a board

An empty Plan tab shows Start with a Board in the middle: pick a board type and it is placed, empty, ready to build.

• A new document: in the New Document wizard, pick Blank Plan on the Popular shelf, or choose Plan beside the search box to see the Plan templates. Each sets up a way of working across several tabs, with no cards, so you start straight on your own work (see Plan templates below).
• On any tab: in Plan mode, open the palette's Boards category (under Plan) and press a board (Kanban, Sprint, Retro, Roadmap, Bug triage, Week or a blank board), then click the canvas, or drag it out to the size you want.

Plan templates

Every Plan template but Blank Plan makes several tabs, each with its board set up for the job (columns, rows, card fields and widgets), charts of your cards and, where a session is run, a how-to note, a timer and other tools beside it.

• Cards move between tabs. Boards on different tabs share some columns: move a task to This Sprint on the Project Planner's Backlog and it is on the Sprint board too. A card's Status in its panel lists the columns of every tab, so you can send it anywhere.
• Charts read every card, whichever tab its board is on.
• Picking a template from Quick Start on an empty tab fills that tab and adds the rest straight after it.

Working on a board

• Add a card: every column ends in + Add card. It opens Add a Card: press a type (Project, Task, Note, Idea, Action, or any your document adds) to add a card of it, then give it a title in its panel.
• From the palette: drag a card from the Cards category into a column. While you drag, the column opens a gap where it will land. Cards from the palette always go onto a board, never loose on the canvas. Or press a card in the palette, then click the column it belongs in; the hint at the top says so, or reminds you to add a board first.
• Right-click a card to Open, Duplicate or Delete it, Move to another column, Archive it, or Add to Slides to present it full screen from the Slide Deck.
• Present a whole board: right-click the board, open Board and choose Add to Slides. The slide frames the live board, so it shows the cards as they stand when you present.
• Trash a card: drag it onto the Trash button beside Undo (it grows as you drag). Open the Trash to restore a card or delete it for good (it asks first); Empty Trash deletes them all.
• Archive a card to take it off your boards without deleting it. An Archive board (in the palette's Boards) shows every archived card, and an All Cards board shows every other card, a row per status, so nothing gets lost between boards; drag one back onto another board, or choose Restore, to bring it back.
• Move a card: drag it to another column, or up and down its column. On a board with rows (by assignee, priority, type or parent), dropping it in a row also sets that field: drop it in Sam's row to give it to Sam.
• Open an item: click a card. Its panel opens over the canvas: the title and the card's tabs on the left, and Details (status, assignee, priority and the rest) on the right, with who made it and who changed it last. The description is rich text: bold, italic, underline, headings, lists and links, from the toolbar over it or the usual shortcuts. Every change saves as you make it. On a phone the panel rises from the bottom, with Details as its first tab. A card type's tabs are set in Card Types.
• Assign a card: pick yourself or a teammate as its Assignee. Until it is done, the card shows up on that person's Activity page in the Explorer, under Assigned to You, so they can find it without knowing which document it is in. They need to be able to open the document, so assign cards on a team document or one shared with them.
• Take a card off the board: drag it out onto the canvas to leave a Plan card there, for example beside the part of a diagram it is about. The item stays on the board as well. Drag a Plan card onto a board to file it in the column you drop it in. Drag a card from one board onto another to move it there.
• Undo: Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z on a Mac) undoes your item changes in the same order as your canvas edits: a moved card goes back, a deleted item comes back with its number.

In Diagram and Draw modes a board is an element like any other: pressing it selects and moves the whole board. Double-click a card to open its item.

With the keyboard

Tab to a card, then:

• Arrow keys move between cards.
• Enter opens the item.
• Shift+Left and Shift+Right move the card to the previous or next column; Shift+Up and Shift+Down move it within its column.
• N opens Add a Card for the card's column.
• Delete deletes the item (you can undo it).

Screen readers hear every move ("#12 moved to In progress, position 2 of 4").

Setting up a board

A column is set up from the column itself: hover its head and press the cog at the far right (on a touch screen it is always there). You can rename it, give it a colour, set a WIP limit (its count turns amber when it holds more than that), mark it Counts as Done (its cards show a progress bar in the header), move it left or right, add a column after it, or remove it. Removing a column with cards asks where they should go.

The board is set up from its own menu: right-click the board (or select it and press ⋯):

• Board: its Title, and its Swimlanes: none, or one per assignee, card type, priority, project or status, or By a Field: any field your card types have, your own included.
• Cards: the Card Size (Minimal shows the title alone, Compact the title over a line of number, priority, due date, votes and assignee, Detailed everything, down to a description excerpt and checklist progress), and which fields each card face shows, a tile each to press on or off. Tiles the chosen size can't show are dimmed.

Every board shows every card whose status is one of its columns. A Team Retro board comes with voting and hidden writing on: everyone else's cards show face down until someone presses Reveal in the header, so people write without reading each other.

Items whose status matches none of the board's columns are counted in the header ("3 not on this board"); open the count to move them to a column.

Widgets in the header

A board's header holds widgets: small read-outs and controls such as Completion, Filter, People, Card Types, WIP Alerts, Due Soon, Points, Priorities, Unassigned, Top Voted and Stale Cards. Each board type starts with the ones that suit it (Points on a sprint, Priorities on a bug triage, Top Voted on a retro). Find them all in the palette's Widgets category:

• Drag a widget into a board's header. A bar shows where it will go.
• Tap a widget to add it to the end of the selected board's header.
• Reorder widgets by dragging them left or right along the header, or focus one and press Alt+← or Alt+→.
• Remove a widget with its × (select the board first to show it), or focus it and press Delete.

A board holds each widget once; adding one it already has makes it flash.

Widgets narrow the board: press a person in People, a type in Card Types, a priority, Unassigned, or the overdue count in Due Soon to see only those cards, and press it again to see everything. While the board is narrowed, Item Count reads "3 of 14 · Show all". Top Voted opens the leading card, and a Completion widget on a board without a done column offers Set Done Column.

Metrics and Visualisations

Metrics are the read-out widgets, free on the canvas: place Completion, Due Soon, People or any other beside your boards, and each counts every card in the document, whatever board it is on. Archived cards and the Trash are left out.

Visualisations chart every card:

• Project Gantt Chart: a row per Project card, a bar from its Start to its Due date, filled to the share of its cards done, with a line for today. A project with only a due date is a diamond; press Add a start date to open it and set one.
• Due Calendar: this month, each day listing the cards due then. Step through months with the arrows.
• Workload by Person: a bar per person, split Not Started, In Progress and Done.
• Status Breakdown: a donut of the cards by status.
• Priority by Status: how many cards of each priority are not started, in progress and done.

A card counts as done when its status is a board's done column. In Plan mode, press a row or entry to open its card; in other modes, double-click it. Resize a visualisation like any element.

Together

Everyone with the document open sees cards move, appear and change as they happen. A card someone is dragging or has open shows their colour and name. Voting and hiding writing are in the board itself, so a retro needs no other tools: write, reveal, vote, then turn the top votes into actions.