Customising Task Properties

The use of Boards helps teams to visualise the flow of work, work collaboratively and get work done in a structured manner.

In this article, we will discuss how you can customise your boards to collect custom data relevant to your business process.

Irrespective of the business domain, all boards consist of vertical columns to indicate which stage a task is in. They also consist of tasks (or cards) that represent the work to be done, and themes (or epics/swimlanes) to group tasks that have the same organisation goal or belong to the same body of work.

Task properties allow you to add custom data to board cards to better describe your business process. For instance, they can be used to:

• indicate which client a task is for
• link to the project the submission is for
• add additional business data like the sponsoring organisation or the executive sponsor
• track the submission date or the submitter name

Below is an example of a Demand Management board using board task properties: 

In this article, you will learn how to:

         ✔ Create custom task properties

         ✔ Create custom task types

         ✔ Set custom task property values

Board settings page

You can customise board task properties at the time of the board creation or by navigating to the Board settings page if the board already exists. 

• To access the board settings page, click on the Edit Board Settings button in the left hand navigation panel of the board or backlog page.

Note: with existing custom properties that share same values, you can convert those to shared lists. Learn  more on converting shared values to shared list here. 

NOTE: Only board owners can access the board settings page and customise themes.

Creating Board Task Properties

To create new task properties, you need to navigate to the Properties section on the board settings page. 

• Click on + Add Property to open the dialog to create a new custom property. To edit an existing property, click on the pencil icon next to the property name. 

• The following dialog will appear where you can capture all the detail relating to the custom property that you're adding. Once complete, click Save. (See below the image on how to complete the form). 

• Data Type
  • This field is mandatory and describes the type of property you want to create.
  • You can learn more about custom properties data types here.
• Name 
  • This field is mandatory and is the title of the property.
• Label
  • If the name of the property is a technical name or a long name for instance, you can set a label to make the property more user friendly. The label will be used on the board cards instead of the property name.

• Category
  • You can group task properties into categories. Simply give the name of the category the property applies to.
• Required
  • Indicates whether the property is mandatory when a new board task is created.
• Reportable 
  • Set the switch to Yes if the property should be displayed on the board card. 
  • Board cards can become very busy if all properties are displayed. Therefore, use this flag to only make the most important properties visible on the board. 
• Hide to non board members
  • This property is important if your board is a community requests board. It allows you to set whether the property should appear on the work request form.
  • If it should not, set the value to Yes to make the property only visible to owners or members of the board.
• Property Dependency
  • Define the value for one property as a conditional custom prop that is evaluated according to the value of another property. (Please refer to the Conditional Custom Properties article for more information on this option)
• Select the types the property applies to (optional)
  • If the property only applies to certain task types, use this field to list the task types the property applies to. The property will then be visible on the board task dialog only if the task type is listed in the property definition.
  • Leave this field empty if the property applies to all tasks.

Depending on the Data Type selected for the custom property, additional fields will be presented to set a default value for the new property or to set the list of options.

NOTE: To learn more about how the data type values are set, please refer to the Custom Properties article by clicking here. 

Setting Task Property Values

Custom task properties can be set when creating a new task or editing an existing task (example in the image below). They are listed in the task dialog and are visible on the board card if they have been set to Reportable. 

NOTE: The board card will only display the properties that have been set to Reportable.

Grouping by Task Properties

Custom task property values can be grouped as a way of managing board tasks. This functionality can be accessed from the board page or the backlog page using the Group option.

Once you click on the drop down on the Group option, select which task property you want to display and all board tasks with that property value will be displayed.