Most people are now familiar with Trello, the online tool that lets you organise tasks into lists and then easily move items between lists as required (e.g. when progressing tasks from “To-Do” to “Doing” and then finally to the “Done” list.) Its drag-and-drop interface and at-a-glance views are very powerful and make it easy to setup and manage a project workflow.
We’ve added a new Card View in Kahootz Databases that lets you dynamically move cards between lists to instantly update your database. The Card View enhances the existing power and flexibility of Kahootz Databases with live-update functionality and improved ease-of-use.
What’s more, the Card View can be applied to any existing Kahootz Database which has one or more select-one columns, giving you an impressive new way to view your existing data.
How do you use the Card View?
You need at least one select-one column in your database. The options for the select-one column are then shown as lists. Let’s try it.
- Create a new database and add Name (text), Description (long text) and Status (select-one [pending, doing, done]) columns.
- Add a couple of new entries for things you need to do, like “Review Pete’s document”, “Do expenses” and “Try out new Card View”. Make sure they all have a Status of “Pending”.
- Now, when you view the database, you get a new button in the page to change the view, in the top tight of the table. Click on the View button and select the new Card View and your database will be shown in 4 list columns, “<No Value>”, “Pending”, “Doing” and “Done”.
If you decide to do your expenses now, just drag and drop the “Do expenses” card from the “Pending” list to the “Doing” list. Your change is immediately saved in the database. You can immediately see what you’re working on, and what’s still left to do.
Adding more than one select-one column in your database means you can choose which view to use when in the Card View, allowing you to easily swap between them, giving you further ways to view and understand your data.
You can also re-order cards in a list by just dragging and dropping a card to the required place.
The “<No Value>” list lets you see cards that haven’t been assigned a status. This can be like an ideas list for things that you want to quickly jot down and then go back to and identify what you need to do and move those cards to the “Pending” list to start their workflow.
What can you use the card view for?
The simplicity of this interface belies its true power. You can setup Card View databases for things like:
- To-do lists: Using a simple pending/doing/done status column gives you instant visibility of what you’re working on now, what needs to be done and what you’ve already achieved.
- Project assignments: With a select-one column of people in your team, each card can represent a unit of work and you can move cards to the appropriate person’s list so you can quickly see who’s working on what, and so can they!
- Sprint templates for Agile Scrum based projects: Create a select-one column with the following values:
- “Reference / Resources” (important resources that your project needs)
- “Blocked” (list of tasks that are blocked, e.g. due to some external impediment)
- “In Progress” (tasks currently being worked on)
- “QA” (all completed MVPs, assigned by the Scrum Master, ready for QA)
- “Bug Report” (bugs reported during QA phase)
- “Done” (all MVPs that pass QA)
- Candidate tracking: During a recruitment phase, you can create a select-one column that has values for each phase of your selection process and then represent each candidate as a card in the database, and progress them through the process as required.
The posibilities are almost endless! Once you start using Card Views, you’ll think of new and innovative ways to use them in your Kahootz workspaces.
Remember that you still have the power of a Kahootz Database underneath, you can use the existing views to get a different take on your data, use searching and sorting, generate reports and import and export data to and from your database.
