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Board Workflows

The board is Fox's most flexible view. It works out of the box with no configuration, but a handful of workflow patterns turn it from a status-changing utility into a real work management surface. This guide collects the patterns we use most.

Pattern 1: Daily Triage

The problem: New issues pile up in Unsorted faster than you can process them.

The pattern: Spend five minutes at the start of each day moving items out of Unsorted and onto the board with a real status and priority.

  1. Open the project and select Unsorted in the Navigator
  2. Sort by date created so newest issues are on top
  3. For each issue, decide:
  4. Triage-only: Set priority and status, move on
  5. Dismiss: Close with "Won't Fix" or "Duplicate"
  6. Plan: Move to a version or milestone

Daily triage keeps Unsorted shallow and the board up-to-date without requiring extensive weekly review sessions.

Pattern 2: Per-Location Boards for Focus

The problem: A project-wide board is overwhelming when you only care about one initiative.

The pattern: Every Version and Milestone in the Navigator has its own Board — open the location and switch the toolbar's view mode to Board.

Each location remembers its last-used view mode, so a milestone you open as a Board stays a Board the next time you select it. Your column layout is identical; you're just looking at a slice.

Use this during focused work sessions, milestone-specific standups, or whenever the full project view is too noisy.

Pattern 3: WIP Limits via Column Watching

Fox doesn't enforce work-in-progress limits, but you can enforce them yourself by watching column headers. Each column shows effort totals for the issues inside it; when your "In Progress" column starts drifting up, it's a signal to finish something before starting something new.

Combine this with the estimate-vs-actual comparison built into the column header to spot scope drift early.

Pattern 4: Triage Statuses

The problem: New issues don't belong "In Progress" yet, but calling them "To Do" implies you've decided to do them.

The pattern: Add a triage-stage status to the To Do category.

A project might have:

New → Triaged → Ready → In Progress → Review → Done

New is the landing zone for unprocessed issues. Triaged means someone has looked at it and confirmed it's real. Ready means it's been scheduled for work. Splitting these apart gives you a clean view of what's actually been processed vs. what's genuinely scheduled.

Pattern 5: Close via the Board

The problem: Closing an issue with a resolution feels like friction you keep skipping.

The pattern: Configure Done Status Behavior to prompt for a resolution when you move issues to a Done column.

Now closing is a drag-and-drop operation with a single resolution picker. Over time, you build a searchable record of why issues closed — "how many bugs last sprint were actually fixed vs. 'Cannot Reproduce'?" becomes an answerable question.

See The Board → Done Status Behavior and Resolving Issues for the mechanics.

Pattern 6: Bulk Moves with Multi-Select

The problem: A whole batch of issues needs to move at once — into a different milestone, out to triage, or off to "Won't Fix."

The pattern: Use the Board's system-integrated multi-select.

  • Mac — Click the first card, then shift- or command-click to extend the selection. Or drag a marquee across cards with the trackpad.
  • iPad / iPhone — Use a two-finger drag across cards, or a trackpad drag-select.

Once you have a group selected, drag the whole batch to another column for a bulk status change, drag onto a Milestone or Version in the Navigator to move them, or right-click / long-press for context menu actions like Tags, Resolution, or Close.

Pattern 7: Parking Lot Status

The problem: Work that's on hold isn't done but also shouldn't sit in "In Progress."

The pattern: Add a "Parked," "Blocked," or "On Hold" status in the To Do category (not Done — parked work isn't finished).

Move stalled issues into this column explicitly. The visual signal makes blockers obvious and keeps them out of your active-work count. When the blocker clears, drag back to the appropriate column.

Anti-Patterns

A few things to avoid:

  • Too many columns — If your board has more than six or seven statuses, consider whether some of them should be tags or properties instead.
  • Done columns that never shrink — Done-category statuses accumulate closed issues. If your "Done" column is getting unwieldy, either close the issues (Done Status Behavior: prompt resolution or close only) or archive the milestone they belong to.
  • Using the board like a to-do app — If you're not using statuses to represent real workflow states, you're just using the board as an overloaded list. That's fine, but consider whether List view or Outline view would serve you better.

See Also