Boards and Fields¶
A board is where one kind of work lives. It has columns, it has fields, and it has people who can see it.
Columns¶
Desk Center → Workflows → (board) → Columns
A column has a name your team chose and a category the software reads. The categories are fixed — Open, Active, Review, Done, Cancelled — and every report, the archive and every automation reads the category rather than the name.
| Operation | What happens |
|---|---|
| Rename | Nothing else changes. Nothing is keyed on the name. |
| Reorder | The board's left-to-right order. |
| Add | Choose a name and a category. |
| Change a category | Applies to every item in that column, including finished work. Changing a column to Done starts the archive clock for everything in it. |
| Remove | You are asked where its work goes. Nothing is stranded. |
Review is not a fifth kind of Active
Review means waiting on somebody who is not us — an approval, a customer reply, a part on order. If your team invents a column for that, give it the Review category rather than Active, or it will count as work in progress for as long as the wait lasts.
Fields¶
Desk Center → Fields defines them; Workflows → (board) → Fields attaches them.
A field is a question the work item asks. Defining it in one place and attaching it in another is deliberate: the same Order number can be asked on three boards and mean the same thing in all three.
Fields come in the usual shapes — text, number, date, a list to choose from, a yes/no. A field can be required, which is a decision of the board rather than of the field: the same field can be required on one board and optional on another.
Contact fields are the same idea for the people rather than the work: what you record about a customer, under Desk Center → Contact Fields.
Types¶
Desk Center → Types
A type is a named set of fields — Complaint, Installation, Quote. When one board carries several kinds of work that each need different questions, a type carries its questions onto whichever board the work lands on, on top of whatever that board already asks.
A type never changes behaviour. It does not move work, it does not change columns, it does not decide who sees anything. It only adds questions.
Fields first, then types
A type is a set of fields, so an account with no fields has nothing to build one from. That is also the order the menu is in.
Settings that belong to the board¶
Desk Center → Workflows → (board) → Settings
- Archive window — how long finished work stays visible. Overrides the account's.
- Who can see this board — see Who Sees What.
Settings that belong to the account¶
Desk Center → Workflows → Settings
- Default board — where work goes when nothing else decided.
- Key prefix — the short code in front of every item's number (
SUP-412). Assigned once, at birth, and never changed, so a link anybody pasted keeps working. - Archive window — the default for boards that do not override it.
- Email notifications — the account's ceiling. See Notifications.
- Attachment storage — what the account has used and what it may use. Read only; see Attachments and Storage.
Archiving a board¶
A board that is no longer used can be archived. Its work stays, and stays searchable; no new work can be filed on it. It is the board-level equivalent of cancelling a work item rather than deleting it.