Creating Your First Board

A board is a dedicated workspace for a specific type of work. Each board has its own statuses, views, custom fields, members, and settings. Boards keep different workflows organized without mixing concerns — your engineering team's sprint board stays separate from the customer success team's account health board.

This guide walks you through creating a board, choosing the right type, and understanding what you get out of the box.

How to Create a Board

  1. In the left sidebar, click the + button next to "Boards" (or use the command palette with Cmd+K and search "New Board").
  2. Choose a board type from the options presented.
  3. Enter a board name — descriptive and specific (e.g., "Core Platform", "Mobile App", "Customer Bugs").
  4. Review the auto-generated slug — this is the URL-friendly version of the name used in direct links.
  5. Click Create Board.

You'll be taken directly to your new board with default views ready to go.

Tip: You can create as many boards as you need. Large engineering orgs often maintain separate boards per product area. Smaller teams often start with one R&D board and add more as they grow.

The Five Board Types

Each board type ships with pre-configured defaults optimized for that workflow. You can customize everything after creation — but the defaults get you productive immediately.

R&D — Full Product Development

The most feature-rich board type. Built for engineering teams that need a complete development workflow from ideation to production deployment.

What you get out of the box:

  • Story → Task → Sub-task hierarchy
  • Sprint planning and velocity tracking
  • Dual-track workflow: separate development and QA stages
  • Design status tracking (Unstarted, In Design, Design Review, Ready for Dev)
  • Pipeline stage tracking: Predev → Dev → Production
  • Estimated hours and QA estimated hours per task
  • RICE scoring fields (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort) for prioritization
  • Default views: Board, Backlog, Sprint, Timeline

Best for: Engineering and product teams building software. Start here if you're not sure which type to use.

Tip: R&D is the right choice for most software teams. Even if you don't use every feature immediately, they're there when you're ready.

Feature Requests — Capture the Customer Voice

A structured intake board for capturing, organizing, and prioritizing requests from customers and internal stakeholders.

What you get out of the box:

  • Simplified single-level item structure (no hierarchy required)
  • Voting and popularity tracking
  • Status workflow focused on intake and prioritization: Submitted → Under Review → Planned → In Progress → Shipped → Declined
  • Linked customer accounts per request
  • Default views: All Requests, By Status, Top Voted

Best for: Product managers and product teams who want a formal process for evaluating customer feedback before it enters the engineering backlog.

Bugs — Defect Tracking

Track defects from discovery through resolution with built-in severity and reproducibility fields.

What you get out of the box:

  • Bug-specific fields: severity, reproducibility, environment, affected version
  • Status workflow: Reported → Confirmed → In Progress → Fixed → Verified → Closed
  • QA assignee and verification step built into the workflow
  • Priority inheritance and escalation rules
  • Default views: Open Bugs, By Severity, My Bugs, Recently Resolved

Best for: QA teams, support engineers, and any team managing production defects or customer-reported issues.

Customer Success — Customer Lifecycle Management

Manage your customer base from onboarding to renewal. Track health, milestones, escalations, and tasks per account.

What you get out of the box:

  • Customer account hierarchy: Account → Milestone → Task
  • Health scoring and risk flags
  • Status workflow: Onboarding → Active → At Risk → Churned → Renewed
  • CS-specific fields: contract value, renewal date, NPS score, health status
  • Default views: All Accounts, At Risk, Renewals This Quarter, My Accounts

Best for: Customer success managers, account managers, and implementation teams managing post-sale customer relationships.

Custom — Start From Scratch

No assumptions, no pre-configured fields. A blank board where you define everything: statuses, fields, views, automations, and hierarchy.

What you get out of the box:

  • An empty board with a single default status: "Open"
  • No pre-built views (you'll create your own)
  • No custom fields added by default

Best for: Teams with unique workflows that don't map to any standard template — internal tools teams, ops teams, legal, finance, or cross-functional projects with custom requirements.

What Comes Pre-Configured

Every board type ships with sensible defaults, but nothing is permanent. After creation you can:

  • Customize statuses: Add, rename, reorder, or remove statuses to match your team's language
  • Add custom fields: Create any field type — text, number, date, select, URL, and more
  • Build new views: Combine filters, sorts, groupings, and display modes into named views
  • Set up automations: Define trigger-action rules to reduce manual work
  • Adjust board members: Control who has access and at what permission level

Everything Is Customizable

Every default can be changed. Open your board → click the gear icon to access Board Settings. The settings page has these tabs:

  • Views — Create, edit, reorder, and delete views
  • Levels — Configure the item hierarchy and custom labels
  • Pipeline — Enable, disable, and reorder pipeline stages
  • Statuses — Toggle statuses on/off and reorder within groups
  • Fields — Enable/disable built-in fields and manage custom fields
  • Defaults — Set default values for new items by level
  • Members — Manage who has access and their board roles
  • Automations — Create trigger-action rules
  • Import — Bring in data from CSV or Excel
  • Projects — Link code projects to this board
  • AI Agent — Customize AI generation prompts

Board Name and Slug

The board name is what your team sees in the sidebar and throughout the UI. Keep it short and specific.

The slug is auto-generated and used in direct URLs to the board. It's lowercase and hyphenated (e.g., core-platform, mobile-bugs). You can edit the slug before saving — after creation it's stable so existing links don't break.

After Creation

Once your board is created, you'll land on the default view. From here:

  1. Explore the default views — Each board type includes views pre-configured for common workflows. Try switching between them in the left sidebar.
  2. Create your first work item — Click "New Item" or press N anywhere on the board.
  3. Customize your board settings — Click the gear icon on the board header to open Board Settings. Use the Statuses, Fields, Views, Pipeline, and Members tabs to tailor the board to your workflow.
  4. Set up a sprint (R&D boards) — Navigate to the Sprints view to create your first sprint and start pulling in backlog items.

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