Projects

What it solves

One piece of work is usually split across a board in one tool, hours in another and invoices in a third, and every time someone asks how it is going you have to gather three places. Projects is where everything starts: it keeps the tasks, the hours and the invoices of one job in a single project, and the rest of the catalog hangs from it.

Creating a project takes a name and little else. The key in front of each task number (PJKT-12, for example) is generated for you if you leave it blank, and if the job is billed to someone you pick the client in the same wizard. The board is born with its columns.

Who it is for

For teams that deliver work to clients, such as agencies, studios, consultancies or product teams, and that today keep tasks on a board, hours in a spreadsheet and invoices by hand. Also for one person who wants pending things out of their head: projects and tasks are unlimited and free.

How it looks: the board

Each project opens on a kanban board with the project columns, which you can customise. You move a card by dragging it to another column; if you prefer the keyboard, Space picks the card up, the arrows choose the column and Space confirms. Every move shows an Undo notice and goes onto the window undo stack, so a wrong drag costs nothing.

A column can carry a work-in-progress limit: its meter warns you before you go over. The same tasks also read as a list, and the Team edition adds the Gantt chart. You change view without changing data: a task is the same task whether you see it as a card, a row or a bar in time.

Every task, with its context

A task is more than a title. It carries a description, an owner, a priority and start and due dates; with both dates it also shows on the roadmap. It breaks down into subtasks, links to others (blocks, is blocked by, related to), accepts file attachments and collects the hours spent on it.

From the task sheet, Log hours opens time logging, and a bar compares what was reported with the estimate if the task had one. That way the hours stay attached to the work that explains them.

Your work, without touring boards

My work gathers in one list what is assigned to each person, and the row of tabs switches organisation or merges them all. Narrow it with This week or Overdue and filter by project, priority or status: starting the day means opening one screen, not ten boards.

For the overall picture, the project summary shows the organisation figures (projects, tasks, trend and team load) and a sortable table with each project progress ring; subprojects count inside their own.

Sharing with people outside

So that a client or a collaborator in another organisation sees only the project that concerns them, you share the project, not the account. First a link between the two organisations is set up and the other side accepts it; then an administrator chooses the permission: read only, read and comment, or full access. Stop sharing cuts access at once.

A finished project is archived instead of deleted: it stays under Archived with its whole history and is reactivated from its settings.

From code to task

If your team uses GitHub, write the task key in the commit, in the PR title or in the branch name and they are linked to it. The PR status of each task (open, in review, approved or merged) is computed from its PRs. It needs GitHub connected on the project.

Roadmap, planner and sprints

With start and due dates, tasks appear on the roadmap, which also draws milestones (a single date is enough for a milestone). The weekly planner places them by day, and dragging a task to another day reschedules its date. Roadmap and Gantt are Projects extensions of the Team edition; the Planner is free on every edition.

Sprints, with their burndown chart, are not part of free Projects: the catalog assigns them to the Planner, the Projects extension, and they are worked in the Sprints tab of each project.

Editions and price

Free costs 0 EUR, goes up to three people and has no cap on projects or tasks: it includes the board, My work and time logging. Team costs €7.95 per person per month, removes the people cap and opens what a team needs to get work done: roadmap, Gantt and the approvals and billable hours of Time. Pro, at €14.95 per person per month, adds what it takes to run the business: Finance, CRM and Client portal.

How it differs

Compared with keeping the board, hours and invoices in separate tools, here hours are logged on the task itself and reach the project cost and its invoice. And since the catalog is modular, you start with Projects for free and add apps when you need them. If you would rather not open the screen, you can also ask Kern, or any agent client you have connected, for the state of your work in one sentence.