πUser's Guide to the Kanban Boards
What is a Kanban?
Kanban is a visual process management system which helps to make decisions about what and when should be done.
A Kanban Board is one of the tools that can be used to implement kanban to manage work. In generic, kanban board visually displays stages of a process (or several processes) using cards to represent work items and columns to represent each stage.
Cards can be moved between columns to indicate progress, update statuses and to help coordinate users performing the work.
We will call Kanban Board "Kanban" for the future - this word means a board in the Flexi Kanban application context. Ah, "Dashboard" means the same as "Kanban" :)
Now, let's proceed with several steps of this guide.
Step 1. What Kanban Consists of?
Kanban Board has the following main elements:
Kanban header (it contains kanban main control elements)
Kanban body (it contains columns and sidebars)
Columns
Cards
By default columns consist of:
Header (it contains column name and records counter)
Body (it contains Cards)
Card contains Cells, that represent some values of record which card correspond to. In our default example these cells contain values of Case object records: Number, Subject, Account Name, Created Date and Case type, but you can add there almost anything.
Kanban header contains the following elements by default:
Views selector (allows to select and apply saved filters)
"Make View default" button (allows to "pin" a current View to make it applied by default when Kanban is opened)
"Filters" button (shows a Filters Sidebar that allows to configure and apply filters)
"Refresh Kanban" button (allows to re-load kanban data)
Kanban system menu button (it allows to edit and debug kanban, as far as expand it to fullscreen view)
Of course, Kanban can contain more elements, but they are optional and are a subject of your needs.
Step 2. How Kanban Works in General?
Drag:
The main idea of kanban board is to place cards representing some things, into columns representing some properties of these things and have an easy visual chart of the whole situation. To change this situation and indicate these changes cards can be moved between columns.
Just drag card with mouse and drop it into proper column:
Card will disappear from the one column and appear in another.
Show:
Click on Card opens a sidebar with record details. This sidebar in Flexi Kanban app is called a Layout:
By default card Layout just displays record data. But you can display a lot of other things instead, see below.
Filter:
Click on Filters button shows Filters Sidebar, where you can add some filter criteria:
Filters allow you to limit Kanban with cards matching your criteria. Read this section to know more.
Step 3. How About Some More Visualization?
In some situations you may need more easy way to represent your data in the Kanban. E.g.:
Case priority (importnant property) will be more quickly recognizable with the aid of color sygnals than by reading words
Case type will be more visible with icons than with letters
If case has been created earlier than a week ago, card will indicate this with light red background
There are lot of ways to do similar things:
Step 4. How to See Some More About the Record Represented by a Card?
Default card Layout displays record details, that are read-only. Sometimes this is quite enough, but you can significantly improve your kanban by modifying this. You can show there:
SObject - read-only record details (we have already seen this, yes?)
Form (Flexi Kanban offers powerful Forms that allows to do a lot of useful things)
Visualforce page (admin have created some special page in your org? Integrate it into your kanban easily)
Lightning Component. Re-use any available part of Lightning. Wanna insert Kanban into Kanban? You can (but we recommend try our mighty Composite Dashboards)
URL - integrate any page from yout organization (external sites are not allowed due to Salesforce security reasons)
Want to have several Layouts? No problem! Let's select "Standard" Layout - this is a container for several subtabs that can be easily switched. And even shown or hidden depending on necessary conditions. Read this article to know more.
Step 5. Want to Add Some More Elements?
Before this step you have seen default elements in the Kanban. Let's have a brief tour on other. You can add:
Kanban Statistics - some content in the middle of Kanban header.
Kanban Buttons - extend default Kanban buttons with your own buttons and menus.
Search bar - for quick highlight of necessary text in the whole kanban. Add it just with one click!
Column groups - combine columns into groups that have own headers and settings.
Column footers - for those who need more in columns.
Elements (cells) in column group headers, column headers and footers.
Step 6. How About Improve Interactivity and Automation?
All cells, buttons, menus and card components can be used not only for displaying something. One of most poweful abilities of Flexi Kanban is Actions. Actions allow you to do a lot of useful things:
Show forms and lightning components (in same browser tab, new tab or modal popup)
Display Visualforce and Web pages
Execute form actions and trigger events
Control Kanban behavior with a set of Kanban API methods
Create, update and delete records
Send emails (text, HTML and from templates)
Validate everything with properly set rules
Call Apex Classes methods
Execute Web requests
And even execute chains of actions as Action Groups
Actions can be triggered by Card dragging. Our default-made Case kanban triggers "Record update" action that changes Case statuses, but you can configure your own necessities.
You can set Actions as on generic card dragging, as on dragging at specific directions (we call them Junctions). For example, when you drag Case card from "New" to "Working" column, a generic "Record Update" action will change proper Case status; but if somebody moves a Card from "Working" back to "New", a form that asks for the reason of such change will pop up. And when you submit this form, an email notification about this change will be sent to responsible person... Of course, if you have configured these actions.
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