Kanban Diagram Options - Lanes

The 'Lanes' page helps you to create, modify and delete the primary lanes on a Kanban diagram. You can create the lanes manually, or you can define a property that the lanes bind to, so that the lanes are generated automatically from that property when you click on the Fill from binding button. You can also add lanes that are not bound to the property. For each lane you can define the maximum number of elements that can be placed in the lane before triggering the 'Overfilled' indicator, and the fill color of the lane. You can also define the default lane that new elements are added to.

Access

Ribbon

Construct > Task Management > Kanban > (options to generate and/or open a Kanban diagram) or

Start > Today > My Kanban (displays personal default Kanban diagram)

Then

Design > Diagram > Manage > Kanban > Lanes (on an open Kanban diagram)

Context Menu

On a Kanban diagram, double-click on a lane > Lanes

On any other type of diagram, right-click on background | Kanban > Lanes

Lane Options

Option	Action	See also
Bind Kanban to	Click on the button and select the property to bind lanes to. This will be one of: Element, or Tagged Value (enumeration or string types only), or None (makes all lanes unbound). If you select 'Element', also select one of the properties 'Phase', 'Version', 'Priority' (for Requirement-type elements), 'Status' or 'Author'. If you select 'Tagged Value', also choose to either 'Create' a new tag (and simply type in the name) or 'Select' an existing one. In the latter case, the 'Kanban tagged value selection' dialog displays, on which you click on the appropriate radio button to select either from a list of 'Global Tagged Values', or from a list of 'Tagged Values from a selected element'. Click on the Select Element button to browse for the element anywhere in the model. The Global Tagged Values or those from the element are provided to the 'Tagged Value' field. Click on the drop-down arrow on the right of the field and select the reference Tagged Value from those listed. Click on the OK button. The 'Bind Kanban to' field now displays either the element property or the Tagged Value you have selected.
Fill from binding	If you have chosen an element property to bind the Kanban lanes to, click on the Fill from binding button to fill the lane list with existing values of that property. This will delete all old lanes before creating a new lane for each of the new values. Once the lanes have been created in this way, they can be renamed, reordered and added to.
Name	The name of each lane can be filled automatically using the Fill from binding button. You can overtype the names; these do not have to be unique but they cannot be blank.
Max Items	You can set the maximum number of elements that can be placed in each lane. If someone tries to move an element into a lane that has reached or exceeded its maximum number, the heading of the lane will be displayed in the 'Overfilled' color you define and enable on the 'Appearance' page. This gives an visual indication that action might have to be taken to clear what appears to be a bottleneck in the workflow process.
Color	Several or all of the lanes can have the same fill color, or you can set a different color for each lane independent of the other lanes. Either: Leave the 'Color' value set to 'Default' (set on the 'Preferences' dialog, 'Gradients and Background' page), or Overtype 'Default' with the hex code number for the required color, or Click on the drop-down arrow and select a color from the displayed palette The actual color is shown in the box at the left of the field.	Diagram Gradients and Backgrounds
Default	You can nominate one of your lanes as the default; that is, the lane to which new elements are added if they don't match the binding property. For example, if a Kanban diagram is bound to 'Priority' and has the lanes 'Low', 'Medium' and 'High', with 'Low' as the default, when an element with a Priority of 'Undetermined' is added, it will be placed into the default 'Low' lane. You can only select one 'Default' checkbox; clicking on a checkbox clears any previously-selected checkbox.
Unbound	The Unbound property essentially makes a primary lane the same as a sub-lane. Moving an element into an unbound lane will set the element's bound property to the left most bound lane. Consider a 'Phase' Kanban diagram with these lanes, in order: To Do (Default, Unbound) Implement (Bound) To Do (Unbound) Review (Bound) To Do (Unbound) Deploy (Bound) Newly added elements will be added to the left-most 'To Do' lane with whatever priority value they previously had. Moving them to the 'Implement' lane will then set the phase to 'Implement'. When the implementation is complete, the element can be moved to the 'To Do' lane before 'Review' without updating the element's phase until it is moved into the 'Review' lane.
New	Click on this button to define a new lane on the Kanban diagram.
Delete	Click on a line in the 'Lanes' list and click on this button to delete the lane.
	Click on an entry in the 'Lanes' list and click on this button to move the entry one line up in the list, and one lane to the left on the diagram.
	Click on an entry in the 'Lanes' list and click on this button to move the entry one line down in the list, and one lane to the right on the diagram.

Learn more

Kanban Diagram Options

Notes

Moving an element into a lane automatically sets the appropriate property of that element to the value represented by the lane; for a Tagged Value, if the element does not have that tag, adding the element to the lane adds the tag and sets it to the lane value
Elements on a Kanban diagram are automatically adjusted to match the width of the lane they are in, both when the element is moved into a lane and when the lane width is changed