---
title: "Boards — Clock Clerk user guide"
description: "The Boards screen: the list of boards, a project's board with its columns and cards, a card's panel with its comments, and which buttons the project's managers and its members each have."
url: "https://clockclerk.com/guide/screens/boards"
---

Screens

# Boards

The list of boards you can open, and each project's board: its columns, a card for each task, and a panel for each card with its details and its conversation. How a team plans with it, and how tasks are imported onto it, is in [Plan work on a board](https://clockclerk.com/guide/workflows/plan-work-on-a-board.md).

![The board of Grid Telemetry Platform for a Manager, under Boards · Northwind Utilities, with Discussion, Project details and Import tasks. Four columns, each with a drag handle, its name, a count and a ⋯ menu: Not started holds Load testing; In progress holds Ingest service hardening and Sensor schema v3; Blocked and Done say No cards. Each card shows its status, its dates, a bar of hours logged against the estimate, and Move to…. Each column ends in + Add card, and the row ends in + Add column.](https://clockclerk.com/guide/img/board-manager.webp)

A project's board, for its manager.

## Who sees it

Everyone who books time: **Boards** is in the menu under **Collaborate**, beside **Messages**, for every role. What a board shows depends on how you stand on its project:

- **The project's managers**, meaning administrators and the Manager and Finance users whose grant gives them **Manager** access to the project, see every card and have every control on this page.
- **Members**, the people ticked on the project's team, see the cards of the tasks they can book time to: those open to all members, and the restricted ones they have been selected for. They can move those cards, open them and comment. A member an administrator has given **Can create tasks** can also add cards and rename and describe the ones they see.
- **Anybody else** is refused the board: opening its address says *You don't have access to this area*.

A User with **Manager** access to a project is a member on its board, not a manager: managing a board takes the Manager, Finance or Admin role as well as the grant. Client guests do not have boards.

## The list of boards

![The Boards page for a User: under Atlas Freight, EDI Gateway; under Northwind Utilities, Customer Portal and Grid Telemetry Platform. The menu shows My Day, My Week and My Expenses, and Messages and Boards.](https://clockclerk.com/guide/img/boards-list.webp)

The list of boards, for a User on three projects.

Grouped by client, in alphabetical order: the projects you are on and, for a Manager, Finance user or administrator, the active projects you manage. Choose a project to open its board. With none, the page says *You aren't on any projects yet. A project's board appears here once you are added to it.*

## A project's board

- **The head:** **Boards**, back to the list, the client's name, and the project's name. **Discussion** opens the project's conversation in **Messages**. Its managers also have **Project details**, the [project's page](https://clockclerk.com/guide/screens/projects.md), and, where the plan includes integrations, **Import tasks**.
- **Columns,** one per stage, left to right. Each head has the column's name and how many cards it holds, colored by its category: **Not started**, **In progress**, **Blocked** or **Done**. A card's status is its column's category. An empty column says *No cards*.
- **For the project's managers,** each column also has a drag handle and a **⋯** menu with **Rename…**, **Change category…**, **Move left**, **Move right** and **Delete…**, and the row ends in **+ Add column**.

On a narrow screen the row of columns scrolls sideways.

![The same board of Grid Telemetry Platform for a User on its team: only Discussion in the head, no column menus, no Add card and no Add column. Not started says No cards, because Load testing is restricted to other people; In progress holds Ingest service hardening and Sensor schema v3, each with a drag handle and Move to….](https://clockclerk.com/guide/img/board-member.webp)

The same board for a member: they see the cards they can book time to, and move them.

## A card

Each card shows the task's name, its status, its **Owner** if it has one, its dates, and the hours logged, as a bar against the task's estimate where it has one. A card with a conversation says how many comments it has. Where you can move cards, a card has a dotted drag handle on its left and a **Move to…** menu listing **Top** and **Bottom** for every column, the keyboard's way of doing what a drag does. A move changes the card's column and so its status, and nothing else. The card's name opens its panel.

## A card's panel

The panel opens down the right of the board, which stays in view behind it:

- The column, the name, and the facts: **Stage**, **Owner**, **Dates** and **Hours**, logged and estimated.
- **Description**, as plain text, or *No description.*
- **Edit name and description** turns them into a form with **Name**, **Description** (up to 4,000 characters), **Cancel** and **Save**. `Ctrl` + `Enter` (`⌘` + `Enter` on a Mac) saves too; `Enter` in the description starts a new line.
- **Edit dates, estimate and owner** opens the task's form on the project's page, where its visibility is set too.
- **Discussed in:** the other conversations you can read whose messages reference this card. It is not there while an administrator has Messages turned off, when the card's comments still work.
- **Comments:** the card's conversation, with a box to write in and **Send**. Type `#` to reference a task or `@` to mention somebody. A message's own **Edit** and **Remove** appear where you may use them.

**Close**, `Esc` or a click on the board closes the panel. A card's address can also be shared: the **Imported** tab of Import tasks links to each imported card that way. Deleting a task keeps its comments: they move into the project's conversation, marked with the task's name.

## Import tasks

For the project's managers, on the Team and Enterprise plans and during the trial. The first time it opens **Link a source**: a connection, a board or project in that source, and how its columns and people map onto this board, saved with **Save link**. Once linked, it opens the source's items, with **Available** and **Imported** tabs, **Change link** and **Unlink**. The steps are in [Plan work on a board](https://clockclerk.com/guide/workflows/plan-work-on-a-board.md). The connections themselves are added by an administrator on [Integrations](https://clockclerk.com/guide/screens/admin-integrations.md).

## Buttons and when they appear

| Button | What it does | When you have it |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Discussion | Opens the project's conversation in **Messages**. | On every board you can open, unless Messages is turned off. |
| Project details | Opens the project's page. | The project's managers. |
| Import tasks | Links the project to a source, or picks items to import from it. | The project's managers, on the Team plan and up and during the trial. Not on the live demo. While your organization is read-only, every change in it is disabled: **Save link**, **Change link**, **Unlink**, **Restore**, importing the ticked items and marking them as not for timesheets. |
| Drag handle, Move to… | Moves a card to another column or place, and so changes its status. | On every card you can see. |
| + Add card | Adds a card, by name, at the bottom of the column. | The project's managers, and members with **Can create tasks**. |
| Edit name and description | In a card's panel: renames the task or changes its description. | The project's managers, and members with **Can create tasks**, on the cards they see. |
| Edit dates, estimate and owner | In a card's panel: opens the task's form on the project's page. | The project's managers. |
| Send | In a card's panel: adds your message to the card's conversation. | Everybody who can see the card. |
| Remove (on a comment) | Removes the message, after a second press, leaving a note of who removed it and when. | Its author, and the project's managers. Only the author can **Edit** it. |
| Column handle, ⋯ menu, + Add column | Reorder, rename, recategorize, move and delete columns; add one at the end. | The project's managers. |

Deleting a card is done on the project's page, with **Delete** beside the task, and is refused once time is logged to it. While your organization is read-only, the board can still be read, and any change is refused.

## When Boards is turned off

An administrator can turn Boards off for the whole organization, when it only tracks time. While they are off, **Boards** is gone from the menu, from **Jump to**, from Home and from a project's page, and opening /boards or a board's address takes you to Home. On [Messages](https://clockclerk.com/guide/screens/messages.md) a conversation has no **Open board** or **Open card**, and a task referenced in a message is its name alone. A card's conversation is still there to read, but takes no new messages. Trying anyway is refused with *An administrator has turned Boards off for this organization. Everything already in it is kept, and comes back when it is turned on again.*

The tasks stay: you still book time to them, and their managers still add, edit, delete and import them on the [project's page](https://clockclerk.com/guide/screens/projects.md). Nothing is deleted. When Boards is turned on again, every card is in the column it was in, a task added meanwhile is in the first column of its status, and every comment is where it was.