Work items

A work item is one unit of work — a task, a bug, a story, a chore. It's the atom of Coco Kanban: cycles, modules, views, boards and reports are all just different ways of grouping and looking at work items.

Every work item belongs to exactly one project and gets an ID from that project's prefix: MOB-1, API-42.

What you can do

• Create a work item from anywhere with two keystrokes.
• Give it a state, assignees, priority, start and due dates, labels and an estimate.
• Break it into sub-items, or link it to a parent.
• Relate it to other items (blocks, blocked by, related, duplicate).
• Attach files, add links, and discuss it in comments.
• Read the full activity trail of everything that ever changed.
• Save an unfinished one as a draft.

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Creating a work item

The fast way

Press N then I — anywhere in the app. The create dialog opens. (If you're inside a project, it's pre-filled with that project.)

You can also open the command palette with Ctrl/Cmd + K and choose Create work item, or use the create button in the page header.

In the dialog

Only the title is required. Everything else can wait.

Under the title there's a description editor — the same rich editor used by Pages, with / slash commands for headings, lists, tables, code blocks and callouts. Along the bottom of the dialog sit the property dropdowns: project, state, priority, assignees, labels, dates, cycle, module.

📷 Screenshot: the create-work-item dialog — title, description editor, and the row of property dropdowns underneath.

The even faster way: quick add

Most layouts have an inline quick add row: type a title, press Enter, and it appears in that group with the group's value already applied. Drop it into the In Progress column and it's created in progress. This is the right way to dump a backlog — twenty items in a minute, tidy them up later.

Drafts

Close the create dialog with something typed and you'll be asked whether to discard it or keep it. Keep it, and it goes to Your drafts — a workspace-wide list at the sidebar item of that name (shortcut G J). Open a draft later and finish creating it.

Drafts are yours alone. Nobody else sees them.

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Properties

Open a work item — click it in any layout for the peek panel, or open it full screen. The right-hand sidebar holds its properties:

📷 Screenshot: a work item detail page with the properties sidebar on the right.

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Sub-items

Break a big item into smaller ones. On a work item, use Add sub-work item — you can create a new one or pick an existing item to nest underneath.

The parent shows the count and completion of its children. Setting a work item's parent property does the same thing from the other direction.

Sub-items are work items in their own right: they have their own ID, their own state, their own assignee, and they can go into cycles and modules independently.

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Relations

Add relation links this item to another without making it a child. Use it for blocks, blocked by, related to and duplicate of. Relations are symmetric — set "blocks" here and the other item shows "blocked by".

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Links and attachments

• Add link attaches a URL with a title — a design file, a PR, a support ticket, a doc.
• Attach uploads a file. Drag and drop onto the work item works too. There's a maximum file size, shown in the upload area.

Both appear as collapsible sections on the work item, with a count.

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Comments and activity

At the bottom of every work item is a combined activity and comments feed.

• Comments use the rich editor — formatting, code blocks, file uploads and @ mentions of teammates. People you mention get notified. Comments support emoji reactions.
• Activity is the automatic trail: state changes, assignee changes, dates, labels, cycle and module moves — who did it and when. It's not editable, and that's the point.

You can filter the feed to show comments only, or sort it oldest-first.

Subscribe to a work item to get notified about it even if you're not assigned. Assigning yourself subscribes you automatically.

📷 Screenshot: the activity and comments feed at the bottom of a work item, showing a comment and several activity entries.

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Other things on a work item

• Reactions — emoji on the description, for the lightweight "seen, agreed".
• Description history — descriptions are versioned; you can view earlier versions and restore one.
• Copy link — from the item's context menu (right-click a card in any layout, or the … menu). Paste it in chat, in a page, in a commit message.
• Make a copy — duplicate an item, including its properties.
• Archive — only for items in a completed or cancelled state. Archived items leave your board but keep their history, and can be restored from the project's Archives.

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Tips

• Right-click any card in any layout for the context menu: edit, copy link, open in new tab, make a copy, archive, delete.
• Drag between groups to change the grouped-by property. On a board grouped by assignee, dragging a card reassigns it. On a board grouped by priority, it repriorities it.
• Type the work item ID (MOB-14) into the command palette (Ctrl/Cmd + K) to jump straight to it.
• Give due dates only to things that actually have a deadline. A board where everything is late tells you nothing.

Limits & good to know

• A work item lives in one project and one cycle, but can be in several modules.
• Archiving is restricted to items in a completed or cancelled state — you can't archive something that's still in progress.
• Sub-items are not a deep hierarchy tool. For real structure across a release, use Modules.
• Comments and activity can't be edited after the fact — activity is a record, not a document.

Related

• Core concepts
• Views & layouts — how to see many work items at once.
• Cycles · Modules
• Projects — where states, labels and estimates are configured.