Planfix Planner for Beginners: How Task Lists Work
The Planfix Planner for beginners comes down to three ideas: lists that select tasks by conditions, tasks created inside those lists, and drag and drop that changes the task itself. New users often treat a planner as one more board to update by hand, and then drop it. Planners in Planfix work the other way round: the columns, called lists in the interface, display data that already lives in your tasks, so there is nothing to keep in sync. This four-minute video walks through all three ideas.
What you’ll learn: how the Planfix Planner works
- Why the Planner shows task data from the whole system instead of a separate board you update twice.
- How to create a planner and add your first list to it.
- How selection parameters, such as status and assignee, decide which tasks a list shows.
- How a task created inside a list takes on that list’s parameters.
- How dragging a task to another list changes its assignee or status everywhere in Planfix.
How to set up a planner list in Planfix, step by step
Step 1. Create a planner
Open the Planner tab. At the bottom of the panel with the list of planners, click the Add icon, select Planner and give it a name. A planner holds any number of lists, and the section holds any number of planners, so you can keep one planner for your own work and another for the team.
Step 2. Set the list’s selection parameters
Add a list and name it after the work it holds, for example, Williams’ tasks. In the list’s selection parameters, add the conditions that pick the tasks: a condition on status, so only active, not completed tasks appear, and a condition on Assignee, so the list shows one person’s work. Save the list, and it keeps those conditions: from then on, every not completed task assigned to Williams appears there automatically. Create the next list the same way for the next person.
Step 3. Create tasks inside the list
You can create a task right in a planner list, in a short form or a full one. Type a name in the list’s creation field and press Enter, or click the plus icon to open the expanded form. The new task inherits the list’s selection parameters, so a task typed into Peter’s list is assigned to Peter and gets the status the list selects on, with nothing else to fill in. When a list has several standard conditions, for example, two statuses joined by OR, Planfix applies the last one.
Step 4. Drag a task to change its parameters
The key feature of the Planner is that moving a task between lists changes the task: it acquires the parameters by which the destination list selects tasks. Drag a task from Williams’ list to Peter’s, and the assignee becomes Peter. Drag it from an In progress list to a Ready for review list, and the status changes. Because the task itself changes, every other section of Planfix shows the new data too. Hold Ctrl while dragging to add the value instead of replacing it, which works for the Assignee field and for Set of values custom fields. In a task calendar, moving a task to another column changes its planned completion date instead.
Example from the video: a list for each person
The video builds two lists, Williams’ tasks and Peter’s tasks. Both select only tasks that are not completed, so finished work disappears from view; the first list adds the condition assignee is Williams, the second assignee is Peter. Nothing else is needed to split the team’s current work into two columns on one screen.
Next, a task, “Describe the vacation schedule in detail,” is typed straight into a list and picks up that list’s assignee and active status at once. Finally, a task is dragged from one list to the other: the assignee changes, the task shows up in that person’s incoming tasks, and the same change is visible in every other part of Planfix. Three short actions cover planning, delegating and reassigning.
Who it’s for
- New Planfix users: two lists and one drag are enough to see that the board and the task data are the same thing.
- Team leads: a list per person shows who is loaded and who has room, and one drag hands a task over.
- Teams moving from standalone boards: a list with conditions is the board, and Kanban, Scrum and variations are built from the same planner lists.
- Anyone organizing personal work: students and professionals can start with one list of their own active tasks and add conditions later.
FAQ
What is a planner list in Planfix?
A list is one column of a planner. It shows the tasks that meet its selection parameters, and you can display them as a simple list, cards, a table, a schedule, a calendar or a whiteboard.
Can the same task appear in several planner lists?
Yes. A task appears in every list whose conditions it meets, with no duplicates, so it can sit in your own list and on a team board at the same time.
Do I need a separate Kanban board in Planfix?
No. Planner lists with conditions are the board: you build Kanban, Scrum and their variations from lists, and moving a card changes the task’s data instead of only its position.
Start with two lists
Pick two people, or two stages of your own work, give each one a list with its own conditions, and move a task between them to see what changes. Once the lists are in place, the Planner is the single screen where you both plan and edit. When you are ready for the team view, see team workload management in the Planfix planner. New to Planfix? Sign up to try it.
