This is a help article about Kanbani – a freeware task planner for Android

Card Form

Unlike the normal and Timeline views that allow you to observe your cards, this screen provides a deep insight into and editing functions on a single card.

The Save Buttons

The form has two Save buttons: one appearing in normal view and another when the Description input is expanded. Both bear similar traits.

On tap, Save button in the normal view commits your edits and closes the form, bringing you back to wherever you were before editing the card. Save in Description also commits your edits (to all fields, not only Description) but the form is not closed – this is useful if you are taking notes and you want to save them and stay here.

When no data in the form was modified, Save buttons are hidden (and normal view’s Back button’s icon is different). Use this to verify that you have not accidentally changed a field before starting the edits.

Remember: while changes are saved immediately in other views, changes in this form are saved only on demand. However, if Kanbani unexpectedly stops (due to low battery, etc.), you can recover lost forms from Drafts.

The Defer Button and Form Drafts

Kanbani goes all out to reduce risks of losing your data. Backup and sync is one thing; another is automatic background saving of forms that you have neither cancelled nor submitted explicitly.

Suppose the app has crashed or your device’s battery has run out while you were editing a card in background. Next time you start Kanbani, you will see an alert on the bottom that will bring the form back. You can also check and recover multiple forms from Settings.

Now suppose you were in the middle of writing a Description when a critical thought pops up in your head. If you don’t want to save the form yet but you have to jot down a new card right this instant, simply tap Defer and come back to editing any time later.

Kanbani keeps an unsaved form forever unless its parent board or list is deleted.

Swipe to Save

In the normal view, calling cards’ menus is a very frequent operation and the pie menu enhances your productivity. Similarly, the single most often action you will do in the form is saving it, and using the button is not very efficient in the long run.

Kanbani adopts the traditional swipe-to-refresh gesture to do the saving. This works even when Description is expanded but the input must be scrolled to the top for this gesture to register (as an alternative, you can swipe outside of the input, such as near the “Description” text on top).

Try it: tap anywhere inside the form and pull your finger towards the bottom of the screen: you will see a thin green line under the Action Bar. As you are pulling farther, the line is progressing towards the opposite edge and when it’s reached – the form is saved and closed (closed even in expanded Description).

Due Date

A card’s Due Date sets a deadline for some action. The form offers additional useful interactions besides the intuitive calendar date/time picker:

• Tap on the “Due Date” label or the date/time text display the calendar.
• Tap on the unchecked checkbox sets Due Date to “today, 0:00”.
• Tap on the “plus” button advances current Due Date by 24 hours. If there’s no Due Date then it’s set to “tomorrow, 0:00”.

By convention, tasks due “any time during the day” have no time portion (or, rather, it’s set to “0:00”). Such tasks are displayed slightly differently in different contexts (e.g. “0:00” is not output in the normal list view).

If set, you will receive a standard Android notification (without sound for date-wise tasks). This mode, sound and replay may be customized. The bell button allows additional notifications at other times.

Description Input

Cards may contain textual information of virtually any length (100,000 of symbols or more, potentially formatted) which may serve as a journal, extended task description, even code (if you have a third-party solution integrating with Kanbani).

To view this information conveniently, the Description input can be “expanded” – the Action Bar and other form controls are hidden so you are left with the text and, optionally, the on-screen keyboard.

Expanded Description has buttons for performing frequent actions. Among them:

1. Read-only mode: hides keyboard, cursor and most buttons. Gives more reading space and prevents accidental modification.
2. Append line: ensures that the text ends on a blank line and puts the cursor on that line (adding a new line if already there). Useful if you need to append new line(s) and the existing text needs to be scrolled.
3. Paste: puts current clipboard content at the cursor position and moves the cursor after the new content. For the Title input, enables bulk mode if it has multiple lines.
4. Go to start/end: moves the caret to the end of text, or if it’s already there – to the beginning.
5. Line operations: extends current selection so that it starts on the closest’s line start and ends on the next line’s end (select 1-2-… lines with repeated action). Helps copying or moving whole line(s), as well as provides a new context menu command: Checklist to add or remove checkbox markers. If you don’t see the menu, long tap on the selection.
6. Single card mode: only for the Title input; switches the form from creating multiple cards (bulk) at once to creating just one (single, the default).

Some buttons may also appear above the input:

1. Save: lets you save the form without closing it. More info here.
2. Open cards here: if unchecked (by default), tap on the card in lists opens the form while tap on the menu button opens the Description. If checked, this behavior is reversed.

In normal view, Descriptions may appear shortened from start or end, with folded lines or not. This is configurable per-board and even per-list.

Rich Description

Enabled by default, rich Description allows formatting to create checklists, links and more. Some items display icons that can be tapped for actions.

Such a format might look unusual but it enables you to employ all the normal text editing commands: copying, pasting, deleting, etc.

Bulk Create Mode

You can create multiple cards at once by switching the Title input into “bulk mode” using a button on the input’s right edge (next to Clear or Paste).

When a form in bulk mode is submitted, a card is created for every non-empty line in Title, with all card properties (Due Date, etc.) identical except for Title.

Switching to bulk mode turns the Title input into a kind of Description input that can be expanded just the same. Switching back folds all entered Title lines into one line putting a space between them (submitting such a form will only create one card).

Displaying of Title

When the form is saved, space characters in the beginning and the end of Title is removed.

If Title ends on a single period (not ellipsis…) – it is not removed but only hidden from normal card views where Title is considered a heading (because the period is traditionally omitted from headings).

By default, overly long Title is ellipsized but this can be customized.

Related Name

This field’s purpose depends on the situation. Usually, especially when multiple people are using one board, it would hold the card’s author (which is taken from the preferences by default). However, it can be also used to store the name of the project to which the card belongs, a client’s name and so on.

When a board contains cards with different Related Names, this field appears under every card in the list (this behavior can be configured). This makes it more convenient than putting such information into Description or Title where it’s harder to extract at a glance.

Cards with Related Name matching the Author in this device’s preferences will output it as “myself” so that you can quickly recognize tasks assigned to you.

Autocompletion (Suggestions)

To allow faster input, focusing the Related Name field displays a popup with Names found in all cards in your boards. If that field is not empty, only Names starting with its value are shown.

For the Title input this popup is displayed if you have entered at least one character.