6.2Work items: the outline and the board

The Work items view presents the project's work as a structured outline. You can capture tasks quickly, organize them into hierarchies, or switch to the Board view to manage them visually across different stages.

Adding and structuring work items

To begin building your project outline:

1. Type the title into Add a work item and press Enter.
2. To organize items hierarchically, select a row and use keyboard shortcuts:
   • Press Tab to make the row a sub-item of the item directly above it (up to five levels).
   • Press Shift+Tab to lift the sub-item up one level.
   • Press Alt+↑ or Alt+↓ to reorder items vertically.
3. Alternatively, drag rows directly within the outline to change their order or nesting.

You can edit an item's name and Status directly in place within the outline. An item that contains sub-items automatically displays the collective Progress of its child tasks. When work passes its Due date without being completed, it is marked as Overdue.

To manage multiple rows at the same time, tick the checkboxes beside them. This reveals options to Set status or delete the selected items at once. When a parent item is deleted, its sub-items are deleted along with it. If any item cannot be updated during a bulk change, the system names the specific item.

Using the Board view

The Board displays tasks arranged in columns, with one column per status.

• Drag a card from one column to another to update its status, or select a card and use Alt with the arrow keys to move it across columns.
• Cards that belong to different parent tasks maintain the structural order set in the outline.

The work item page

Clicking an item opens its detail page, providing full information on the task, its schedule, and its participants.

Classification and scheduling

• Kind: Choose whether the entry is a regular Work item or a Milestone (which marks a single target date rather than a span).
• Priority: Set the urgency level of the task.
• Start, Due, and Duration: Setting any two of these values calculates the third automatically in working days, skipping weekends and project holidays (for example, a three-day duration starting on a Friday ends on the following Tuesday). A Duration can be entered alone if target calendar dates are not yet known. Select At specific times to plan tasks using hours of the day rather than full days. If conflicting dates are entered, a notice appears directly below the date fields.
• Labels: Apply tags from the workspace's shared set of labels.
• Effort (hours): Available on items without sub-items, this records the total labor required rather than calendar span (for instance, two people working three days equals six days of effort). This value is distributed across the assigned contributors.

Additional date controls—including Waits for, Deadline, and Dates—are covered in the dedicated guide for task order, dependencies, and the Gantt chart.

Assignments and reviews

• Assigned to: Allocate work to one or more individuals. The picker suggests project members first, followed by known contacts, or any entered email address. If you assign a person who does not have access to the project, you are prompted to share the project or choose Assign without sharing. You may also name individuals who do not possess a Bmator account; no notifications are sent to them.
• Permissions for assignees: Any user listed under Assigned to can modify the item's Status and mark off checklist items, even if their permissions only allow read access to the rest of the project.
• Reviewer: Designate a team member to verify the work. When a reviewer is set, marking the task as done by anyone else routes it to an intermediate review status. Only the designated reviewer or a project manager can accept the work as complete or return it for revisions.

Checklists, activity, and tracking

• Checklist: Add discrete steps to track progress within the task. Checking off these steps directly advances the item's completion. Choose Make it a sub-item on any step to convert it into a full task under Sub-items.
• Comments: Exchange notes and updates directly on the item.
• Follow: Subscribe to receive updates when changes occur on the item.
• History: Review an audit log of every modification, showing what was changed, by whom, and when.