Boards (Work Management)

OmniCRM Boards provide a flexible, kanban-style work management system for tracking tasks, installs, feature requests, and any other work your team needs to coordinate. Boards sit alongside the Support Ticket System, but where tickets are customer-issue driven, Boards are work-and-project driven — giving teams a visual way to organise items into groups, move them through statuses, assign owners, and collaborate.

See also: Support Tickets <support_tickets> for customer-issue tracking, Users and Roles <rbac> for permissions, Customers, Contacts & Sites <basics_customers> for the records you can link items to.

Overview

Boards enable:

1. Visual Work Tracking — Organise work into groups (rows) and statuses (workflow stages)
2. Templates — Start fast with pre-built layouts for to-do lists, installs, and feature requests
3. Ownership — Assign items to staff, record who requested them, and track due dates
4. Linking — Connect items to customers, services, and support tickets
5. Collaboration — Comments, change history, @mentions, and subscriptions
6. Access Control — Per-board membership with role-based permissions
7. Public Sharing — Optionally expose a read-only board via a secure link for embedding

Core Concepts

A board is built from a small set of building blocks. Understanding how they fit together makes the rest of this guide straightforward.

Concept	What it is
Board	The top-level workspace. Contains its own groups, statuses, labels, members, and items.
Group	A horizontal row (swimlane) that organises items into sections — for example This Week, Next Week, Later. Groups can be collapsed.
Status	The workflow stage of an item — for example To Do, In Progress, Done. One status is the default for new items; any status can be flagged as a "done" state.
Item	A single unit of work (a card). Has a title, description, priority, assignee, due date, labels, and a unique item number.
Label	A colour-coded tag applied to items for categorisation (for example Bug, Feature). An item can carry multiple labels.
Member	A user who has been granted access to the board, with a role that controls what they can do.

How the layout works: Groups are the rows of the board. Within each group, items are listed and show their current status, assignee, due date, and priority. Items move between groups to re-organise them, and between statuses to progress them through the workflow.

Board Templates

When creating a board you choose a template. The template pre-populates the board's statuses and groups so you can start working immediately. You can add, rename, recolour, or remove statuses and groups afterwards.

Template	Purpose	Statuses (default first)	Groups
To-Do Tracking (todo)	General task lists	To Do · In Progress · Done	Main
Install Planning (install)	Scheduling field/network installs	Scheduled · In Progress · Completed · On Hold	This Week · Next Week · Later
Feature Requests (features)	Product/feature pipeline	New · Under Review · Planned · In Development · Released	Feature Requests · In Progress · Completed
Blank Board (blank)	Minimal starting point	To Do · Done	Items

Statuses shown in bold are flagged as "done" states — items in those statuses count as completed. If no template is selected, the Blank Board layout is used.

Item Numbering

Every item is assigned a unique, human-readable number when it is created, so it can be referenced in conversations, tickets, and emails.

The format is:

{PREFIX}-{BOARD}-{SEQUENCE}

For example: BRD-001-00001

Segment	Meaning
PREFIX	The board's item prefix. Defaults to BRD and is configurable per board (up to 10 characters, for example INST for an install board).
BOARD	The board's ID, zero-padded to three digits.
SEQUENCE	The item sequence within the board, zero-padded to five digits.

You can open any item directly by its item number from the board view or via the API.

Creating and Managing Boards

Creating a Board

1. Navigate to Work Management → Boards
2. Click Create Board
3. Complete the board details:
   • Board Name (required)
   • Description (optional)
   • Template — To-Do Tracking, Install Planning, Feature Requests, or Blank Board
   • Item Prefix — used in item numbers (default BRD, up to 10 characters)
   • Visibility — Staff Only or Public (API Embedding)
4. Click Create

The user who creates a board becomes its owner.

Board Settings

Board owners and admins can edit a board to change its name, description, icon, colour, linked customer, item prefix, and visibility. Boards can also be archived to hide them from the active list without deleting their contents, and deleted (a soft delete that removes the board from view while retaining the underlying records).

Customising Statuses, Groups, and Labels

From within a board you can:

• Statuses — add, rename, recolour, reorder, set the default status for new items, and mark statuses as "done". Deleting a status leaves its items without a status (they are not deleted).
• Groups — add, rename, recolour, reorder, and collapse. Deleting a group leaves its items ungrouped (they are not deleted).
• Labels — add, rename, and recolour. Deleting a label removes it from all items.

Working with Items

The Board View

The board view shows each group as a section with a coloured header displaying the group name, the number of items, and completion progress (how many items are in a "done" status). Within each group, items are listed with their title and number, assignee, status, due date, and priority. A quick-add row lets you create items inline.

The status names above are illustrative — each board defines its own statuses.

Creating an Item

Items can be created from the quick-add row in any group, or via the Create Item button. An item has:

Field	Description
Title	Required. Short summary of the work.
Description	Optional detail.
Group	The row the item belongs to. Defaults to the first group if not chosen.
Status	The workflow stage. Defaults to the board's default status.
Priority	Low, Medium, High, or Urgent (defaults to Medium).
Due Date	Optional deadline.
Assignee	The staff member responsible.
Requester	Who requested the work — a staff user or a customer contact.
Customer / Service / Ticket	Optional links to related records.
Labels	One or more category tags.

Moving Items

Items are moved to re-organise or progress them:

• Change group — move the item to a different row/swimlane
• Change status — progress the item through the workflow
• Reorder — change the item's position within its group

Every move is recorded in the item's history.

Priority Levels

Priority	Typical use
Urgent	Critical work requiring immediate attention
High	Important work, address soon
Medium	Standard work (default)
Low	Minor or nice-to-have work

Collaboration

Comments and Activity History

Each item has an activity feed combining manual comments with an automatic change history. The system records changes to status, assignee, title, priority, due date, and group — capturing the previous and new values — so the full story of an item is always visible.

Subscribers and Notifications

Subscribers receive notifications when an item changes. Subscriptions are managed automatically and manually:

• Automatic — the item's creator and assignee are subscribed automatically. When an item is reassigned, the new assignee is subscribed.
• @Mentions — mentioning a staff member with @username in a comment automatically subscribes them.
• Manual — staff or customer contacts can be subscribed to (and unsubscribed from) an item directly.

Automatically-added subscribers can still unsubscribe themselves.

Access Control and Roles

Boards are private to their members. Each member is granted a role that governs what they can do on that board.

Role	View	Create / Edit Items	Manage Settings (statuses, labels)	Manage Members	Delete Board
Owner	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Admin	✓	✓	✓	✗	✗
Member	✓	✓	✗	✗	✗
Viewer	✓	✗	✗	✗	✗

System administrators can access and manage all boards regardless of membership. Non-administrator users only see boards they are a member of.

Note: Board actions are also governed by system-level permissions (see Users and Roles <rbac>). A user needs both the relevant system permission and an appropriate board role. A board must always retain at least one owner.

Board-Related Permissions

Permission	Grants the ability to
VIEW_BOARD	List and view boards
CREATE_BOARD	Create new boards
UPDATE_BOARD	Edit board details and manage groups
DELETE_BOARD	Delete a board
MANAGE_BOARD_SETTINGS	Create, edit, and delete statuses and labels
MANAGE_BOARD_MEMBERS	Add, update, and remove board members
GENERATE_PUBLIC_TOKEN	Generate a public sharing link
VIEW_BOARD_ITEM	View items, comments, and subscribers
CREATE_BOARD_ITEM	Create items
UPDATE_BOARD_ITEM	Edit items, move items, and add comments
DELETE_BOARD_ITEM	Delete items

Visibility and Public Sharing

Each board has a visibility setting:

Visibility	Behaviour
Staff Only	The default. Only board members (and system administrators) can access the board.
Public	In addition to member access, the board can be read via a secure public link without logging in.

Generating a public access token produces a unique, unguessable link and switches the board to Public visibility. The public link is read-only and is intended for embedding a board view — for example on an internal status page or wallboard. Regenerating the token invalidates the previous link. To stop public access, switch the board's visibility back to Staff Only.

Finding Items

Filtering and Search

The board view and item lists support filtering and search to focus on what matters:

Filter	Description
Search	Matches item title, description, and item number
Status	One or more statuses
Assignee	A specific staff member
Priority	One or more priority levels
Group	A specific group
Customer	Items linked to a specific customer
Labels	One or more labels
Overdue	Items whose due date has passed

Sorting

Items can be sorted by position (the manual board order), creation date, due date, priority, title, or last-modified date, in ascending or descending order. Long boards are paginated.

Best Practices

Board Setup

1. Pick the closest template — start from Install Planning or Feature Requests rather than Blank when they fit; you can still customise afterward.
2. Use a meaningful item prefix — for example INST for installs, so item numbers are self-describing.
3. Keep statuses simple — a small, clear set of workflow stages is easier to manage than many overlapping ones.
4. Mark "done" statuses — so completion progress shows correctly in group headers.

Day-to-Day Use

1. Assign every item — clear ownership prevents work from stalling.
2. Set due dates — so the Overdue filter is meaningful.
3. Use @mentions — to pull the right people into an item without manually managing subscriptions.
4. Link related records — connect items to the relevant customer, service, or ticket for context.
5. Move, don't recreate — progress items through statuses so the change history tells the full story.

Troubleshooting

Issue: A user cannot see a board

• Confirm the user has been added as a member of the board.
• Confirm the user has the VIEW_BOARD permission for their role.
• Remember non-administrators only see boards they belong to.

Issue: A user cannot change statuses or labels

• Managing statuses and labels requires the Owner or Admin board role plus the MANAGE_BOARD_SETTINGS permission.

Issue: Items disappeared after deleting a status or group

• The items are not deleted. Deleting a status leaves its items without a status; deleting a group leaves its items ungrouped. Assign a new status or group to bring them back into view.

Issue: The public link does not show the board

• Confirm the board's visibility is set to Public.
• Confirm the link is current — regenerating the token invalidates the previous link.

Issue: Cannot remove a member

• A board must always have at least one owner. Assign another owner before removing the last one.