Quickstart: your first project in 10 minutes

By the end of this page you'll have a workspace, a project, a handful of work items, a cycle to run them in, a board to watch them move across, and a teammate to share it with. Ten minutes, start to finish.

You don't need to read anything else first. If you want the mental model behind it all, read Core concepts afterwards — it'll make more sense once you've clicked around.

Before you start

You need a Coco Kanban account and a sign-in URL. If nobody has set up Coco Kanban for you yet, see Getting set up.

1. Sign in and create your workspace

A workspace is your organisation. Everything — projects, people, settings — lives inside one.

  1. Sign in.
  2. If you have no workspace yet, you land on the workspace creation screen. Otherwise, open the workspace switcher at the top of the left sidebar and choose Create workspace.
  3. Give it a name (e.g. "Acme"), check the URL slug it suggests, and pick your organisation size.
  4. Create it. You land on the workspace home.

The slug becomes part of every link in your workspace, so keep it short.

📷 Screenshot: the create-workspace form with name, URL and organisation size filled in.

2. Create a project

A project is a body of work with its own members, states and labels — a product, a team, a workstream.

  1. In the left sidebar, click Projects, then the button to create a project. (Or press N then P from anywhere.)
  2. Fill in:
    • Name — e.g. "Mobile App".
    • Project ID — the short prefix on every work item ID. It's derived from the name automatically (Mobile App → MOBILE), and you can override it. Letters and numbers, up to 10 characters. You can't change it later, so pick something you'll be happy typing: MOB, WEB, API.
    • Description — optional.
    • Access — Private (invite only) or Public (anyone in the workspace except guests can join).
    • Lead — optional.
  3. Create the project. You'll then see a screen where you can switch project features on and off — Cycles, Modules, Views, Pages, Intake. Leave Cycles on; you'll use it in a minute. You can change any of this later.
  4. Click Open project.

📷 Screenshot: the create-project dialog showing name, auto-filled project ID, access and lead.

3. Create some work items

A work item is a single unit of work: a task, a bug, a story. Every one gets an ID like MOB-1.

  1. You're on the project's Work items page.
  2. Press N then I — or click the create button in the header — to open the create dialog.
  3. Give it a title. That's the only required field. Add a description if you want, and set state, priority, assignee and due date right in the dialog.
  4. Create it, and repeat until you have five or six. Real ones — the things actually on your plate this week.

Quicker alternative: most layouts have an inline quick add row at the bottom of each group. Type a title, hit Enter, keep typing. Good for dumping a backlog in one go.

If you close the dialog mid-way with something typed, you'll be asked whether to discard it or keep it as a draft. Drafts live at Your drafts in the sidebar (shortcut G J).

📷 Screenshot: the create-work-item dialog with title, description and the property dropdowns along the bottom.

4. Group them into a cycle

A cycle is a sprint: a start date, an end date, and the work you intend to finish in between.

  1. In the project sidebar, click Cycles (shortcut G C).
  2. Click Add cycle. Name it — "Sprint 1", or the week's dates — and set a start and end date.
  3. Create it, then open the cycle.
  4. It's empty. Use Add existing work items to pull in the items you just created, or create new ones directly inside the cycle.

Once the start date arrives, the cycle becomes the project's active cycle and its progress chart starts filling in.

📷 Screenshot: a cycle detail page with work items added and the progress sidebar showing the burn-down chart.

5. Look at it on a board

Same work, different shape. Layouts are per-page and switch instantly.

  1. Go back to Work items (G I).
  2. In the header, open the layout switcher and choose Board.
  3. You get a kanban board grouped by state — Backlog, Todo, In Progress, Done, Cancelled by default.
  4. Drag a card from Todo to In Progress. That's it — the work item's state is updated, and it's recorded in the item's activity feed.

Try the other layouts while you're here: List, Spreadsheet, Calendar, Timeline. Then use the Display menu to group by assignee or priority instead of state. Nothing you do here is destructive — layouts are just ways of looking at the same items.

📷 Screenshot: the kanban board grouped by state, with a card mid-drag.

6. Invite a teammate

  1. Go to Workspace settings → Members.
  2. Click Add member, enter their email, and choose a role:
    • Admin — full control of the workspace.
    • Member — the normal role: creates and edits work.
    • Guest — limited access, for contractors and outside collaborators.
  3. Send the invite. They'll get an email with a link to join.

To put someone on a specific project, open Project settings → Members and add them there from your workspace members.

📷 Screenshot: Workspace settings → Members with the invite dialog open.

You're done

You now have the whole loop: a project, work in it, a cycle to time-box it, a board to run it on, and someone to run it with.

Tips

  • Ctrl/Cmd + K opens the command palette. It's the fastest way to get anywhere or create anything — search for a project, jump to a cycle, create a work item.
  • Cmd + / lists every keyboard shortcut.
  • The G shortcuts navigate (G I work items, G C cycles, G M modules, G D pages). The N shortcuts create (N I work item, N C cycle, N P project). Shortcuts don't fire while you're typing in a text field, so type freely.

Limits & good to know

  • The project ID can't be changed after the project is created. The workspace slug is baked into every link too. Both are worth five seconds of thought.
  • Cycles don't overlap in a project: one active cycle at a time. If you need parallel streams of work, that's what Modules are for.
  • Cycles, Modules, Views, Pages and Intake can each be switched off per project (Project settings → Features). If a section is missing from a project's sidebar, it's turned off, not broken.