Organize work with Board and List
Free
Use Board to see where work belongs, and List to change several activities without opening each one. Both show the same plan. A website relaunch makes the difference easy to try: Web and Content share a dependency chain, while Prepare training is independent and has no team or stage yet.
Put cards where the work belongs
The board below has Team as its rows, Stage as its columns and Team as its color. Design the pages is in Web / Doing; Write the copy is in Content / Ready.
The animation changes Write the copy to Doing, then Web, and restores the starting plan before demonstrating dependencies. Touch any view to stop it; use replay to start again.
Drag Write the copy to Content / Doing. Its Stage becomes Doing. Drag it to Web / Doing and its Team changes too. The matching cells in the list below change at the same time. These are edits to the activity, visible in every view.
Select Build the site to highlight its predecessors and successors. Select it again to open its details in the app. The embedded example lets you select and move cards; use Open in Tidigar for the full editor and your own copy.
To arrange your own board:
- Choose Board, then Customize View….
- Set Rows to Team, Columns to Stage and Color to Team. Use your own dimensions if they have different names.
- Leave empty rows and columns visible while placing new work. Hide them when you want a more compact overview.
- Save the custom view to return to these choices later.
Edit the same work in a list
Find Write the copy below and change its Stage cell. The card moves to the matching column above. Try changing its title or duration too; neither view owns a separate set of activities.
In the table, click a cell or focus it and press Enter or F2. Arrow keys move between cells; Tab moves to the next cell, and Shift+Tab moves back. While editing, Enter or Tab keeps the change; Escape cancels that cell's edit. Typing in a focused title cell starts replacing its text. The small details button beside a title opens the activity in the app.
Click Start to sort by date, then click it again to reverse the direction. Use Sort in flow order, the small arrow button beside the Activity heading, to bring the dependency chains back together. In the app, New activity adds a row ready for a title; cancel an empty draft with Escape.
Drag a column's grip to rearrange it. Drop a header on the shelf above the table to hide the column; open the view settings and choose Restore hidden columns to show them again. Activity always remains visible. Save the view if you want to keep its column layout.
Watch dependency edits change the dates
Review with legal initially waits for nothing, so it sits at the start of the plan, before there is any copy to review. Later in the animation, it is linked to Write the copy: the Depends on cell names its predecessor and the timeline moves the review after the copy, keeping its three work days. Launch the site then also waits for the review, so its cell reads Build the site +1. Finally, the review is allowed to start halfway through the copy, and the cell shows the overlap beside the name.
All three views show the same plan. Committing a dependency edit in List changes the dates in the timeline; moving a bar changes the dates in List. The story demonstrates relationships and dates, rather than typing into the picker. Stop it by touching a view, then follow the steps below. Replay restores the opening plan and starts both demonstrations again.
Link activities from the list
- Choose the List view and move to the Depends on cell with the arrow keys.
- Start typing a name or reference key, or press Enter to open the list of activities. Typing filters the list and highlights the first match.
- Press Space to tick or untick the highlighted activity. Move with the arrow keys and press Space on each activity you want, or click them.
- Press Enter to keep your choices and leave the cell, or Tab to keep them and move to the next column. Neither ticks anything.
- Press Escape to leave the cell without changing anything.
Tidigar plans the activity once you leave the cell, and one undo returns everything. The list leaves out the activity itself and every activity that already waits for it, so you cannot create a circular chain. Fixed milestones appear in a group of their own.
To remove a relationship, open the cell, untick its predecessor and press Enter. To add several, tick each in the same edit before leaving the cell. Clear the search between names to see the other choices; clearing the search does not untick anything.
If Depends on is hidden, open the view settings and choose Restore hidden columns. Drag the column's grip to place it beside the dates. Save the custom view to keep its column layout. On iPhone and iPad, the app uses activity cards instead of the editable table: open a card to edit its dependencies. Scroll the embedded table horizontally to reach the column on a phone.
How grouping and ordering work
Board groups values, rather than creating dependencies
Rows and columns follow the order of the dimension's values. An activity without a value belongs to the no-value group: Prepare training starts there. Choosing no dimension for an axis removes that grouping. Color is a separate choice; it need not match either axis.
Moving a card changes the values represented by its destination cell. It does not change the activity's dates, progress or dependencies. In particular, moving a card to Done does not mark it 100% complete: Stage and progress are separate fields. Dragging within one cell does not establish a manual card order.
Within each cell, activities are ordered by dependency depth, then start date. An activity with no activity predecessor has depth zero. Each following activity is one level deeper than its deepest predecessor. In Web / Ready, Build the site therefore comes before Launch the site. This keeps earlier steps above later ones even when other work shares the cell. The depth counts activity links across the whole plan, including activities hidden by a filter; a fixed milestone does not add an activity level.
Selecting a card highlights the activity and the paths before and after it. Unrelated activities dim when a chain is present. Press Escape or select empty board space to clear the selection. Grouping two activities together does not connect them; add an explicit dependency when one must wait for the other. Moving dependency chains explains the scheduling effect.
List keeps chains together until you choose a column sort
Flow order puts connected chains first, ordered by their earliest start. Within each chain, an activity follows its visible predecessors; when several can appear next, their dates decide. Independent activities come last, ordered by date. That is why Prepare training appears after the release work even though it starts early.
Indented titles show dependency depth within the visible chain. Where several branches join, the deepest predecessor determines the indent; indentation stops growing after six levels so the title stays readable. This is a reading aid, not a parent-child hierarchy. A filter can hide a predecessor and reduce the visible indentation without removing the actual dependency or changing its scheduling effect.
A column sort removes the chain separators and indentation. Dimensions sort by their defined value order, with missing values last in either direction. Other columns sort by their displayed values. Depends on sorts by predecessor names, with activities without predecessors last.
Editing does not immediately move a row to its new sorted position, so the activity stays under your hands. Click a sort control again, or leave List and return, to apply the order afresh. Sorting is a temporary reading choice; it does not rewrite dependencies or become part of a saved view.
Layout choices and plan edits have different effects
A saved view holds its mode, filters, Board axes and colors, or List column layout. Save changes to a custom view when you want to keep that presentation. Selecting a card, focusing a cell and sorting the list are personal working state. Changing a cell's title, dates, duration, dimensions or predecessors changes the plan itself.
Duration uses the plan's calendar: in a work-day plan it counts working days and changing it recalculates the end. Date and dependency edits can move following work. An empty title, an invalid date, an end before its start or an invalid duration keeps the editor open for correction. See Vacation and working days for how non-working days affect duration.
Filters hide activities without deleting them. With no matches, List asks you to add an activity or change the search. Board can hide empty rows and columns; groups emptied by your drag remain available during that interaction so the destination does not disappear under your pointer.
On iPhone and iPad, the app uses List cards that open activity details instead of the editable table. Use those details to change the same fields. The embedded guide keeps the table at every width; scroll it horizontally to reach columns on a phone. Board can be zoomed and scrolled, with less card detail shown as you zoom out. In Business plans, grouping by Assignee can reassign work and follows team permissions; see Assignments and activity history.
How dependency editing works
A highlight is a search result; a tick is a choice
Typing narrows the available records by name or reference key without changing the plan. The highlighted row is where Space will act. Arrow keys move that highlight; Space or a click toggles its tick. Enter and Tab keep the ticks already made, but never select a highlighted result by themselves. If typing finds nothing, shorten or clear the search. Tidigar does not create a new activity from unmatched text.
The picker starts with the activity's existing predecessors ticked. Searching for another name hides nonmatching options without removing their ticks. This lets you add one predecessor without losing the others. To remove every relationship, clear the search, untick all the selected records and commit the edit.
The choices apply together when you leave the cell
Ticks remain a draft while the cell is open. Enter, Tab or moving focus outside the cell applies them together and schedules the activity once. Escape discards that cell's draft, including both additions and removals. After committing, one undo restores the relationships and dates changed by that edit.
For example, linking Review with legal to Write the copy pushes the review later because its original start is too early. If it already started after the copy, an intentional gap could remain. Removing the relationship leaves its current dates in place; it does not restore the original June 7 start. Use undo when you want to reverse the edit itself.
Several predecessors all constrain the activity, including work outside the current view. A change can also move activities and following milestones elsewhere in the plan. If the change cannot be saved, Tidigar shows the reason and keeps the cell open for correction; resolve the choices or press Escape. See Moving dependency chains for the scheduling rules and date limits.
The picker follows the plan, including hidden work
The search offers eligible activities from the whole plan, followed by fixed milestones in their own group. A view filter does not limit the choice to visible rows. You can therefore connect a Content activity to Web work without changing the filter. Hiding a predecessor later does not remove its constraint.
The activity itself and every activity already waiting for it, directly or through a longer chain, are excluded. Linking to any of those would create a cycle. If an expected choice is missing even with an empty search, check that dependency direction before trying another view. With no eligible records, leave the cell without a selection or create the missing activity separately.
Only fixed milestones can be chosen here. A following milestone waits for activities instead, so its relationships are edited in its own properties. The diamond beside a fixed milestone's name distinguishes that dated anchor from an activity. Read Two kinds of milestone before choosing the direction of the relationship.
A short cell can represent several constraints
The closed cell shows the first predecessor and how many more follow it: Build the site +1 means two predecessors. It does not mean that the build is the most restrictive one. Hover over the summary for all names, or open the cell to inspect the ticks. An activity without predecessors shows a dash.
If the first predecessor allows overlap, the cell shows that choice beside its name. Other predecessors can have their own thresholds; the summary does not show them all. Change those thresholds in the activity card or by right-clicking a timeline arrow. List chooses which records the activity waits for, while the overlap control chooses how far each predecessor must proceed.
The critical line shows the same relationships in a flow view.