This article explains the fundamentals of vPlan, enabling you to efficiently organize and plan your tasks. Learn how to drag cards, adjust lead time, split and merge cards, and add new cards to existing collections. Enhance your use of vPlan with these basic plan features.
Drag card
List
List
Dragging a card in the list view does not change the planned date. You can drag cards in the list to arrange them according to your priority, regardless of the planned date. To change a card's position, click on the dots on the left side of the card. Hold down your mouse button and drag the card up or down.
Note
These dots won't appear if you have sorted the list by one of your columns. In that case, the column's sorting takes precedence, and you cannot drag cards.
Calendar
Calendar
Dragging a card in the calendar with your mouse can serve two purposes: adjusting the planned date or changing the priority of your planning. Pick up a card with your mouse and drag it to another day, for example. While dragging the card, the shadow indicates where you can release it, and that becomes the new position.
If you want to drag multiple cards, hold down the CTRL key and click on multiple cards. Then, drag one of the cards to a new position, and the other selected cards will also move.
Timeline
Timeline
In the timeline, you can adjust the planned date of your cards by dragging with your mouse. If you pick up the card in the middle, you can move the entire card horizontally. Cards in the timeline can only be moved horizontally.
Kanban
Kanban
In the kanban view, dragging cards determines the priority or changes the status. Use your mouse to pick up a card and drag it up or down to adjust the priority. Or drag the card to another status column to change the status directly. While dragging, the shadow indicates where you can release the card.
Shortening or extending cards
List
List
To extend the duration of a card, change the start and/or end date in the list view. You can easily do this by clicking on the date under the Planned column. With the calendar, you can choose a start and end date.
You can also click on the card's name itself and adjust the planned date.
Calendar
Calendar
Extending the duration of a card is done by changing the start and/or end date in the calendar. You can easily do this by opening the card and clicking on the date in the Planned field.
A card with a start and end date spanning multiple days is displayed on all days in the calendar, but it is one card. The period between the start and end dates shows the card in a lighter color.
Timeline
Timeline
In the timeline, you can pick up the left and right sides of the card with your mouse and drag left or right to extend or shorten the planned start and end dates.
Kanban
Kanban
To extend the duration of a card, change the start and/or end date in the calendar by opening the card and clicking on the date in the Planned field.
Splitting
It is possible to split a card, distributing the activities' duration over multiple days. Splitting can be based on minutes, hours, or days.
Open the card you want to split and click on the Lightning bolt icon in the top right. A menu will appear, where you select the Split card option.
An additional input field appears, allowing you to determine how the card should be split using functions. Enter the desired action in the bar using functions. You can split a card into hours, minutes, or days, represented as:
h (hours)
m (minutes)
d (days)
Before this time unit, write the quantity. For example, 3h is 3 hours, 30m is 30 minutes, and a combination is also possible. For instance, 1h30m is one and a half hours.
Example
If you have a card with an activity estimated at 16h (16 hours), entering 8h in the Splitting field suggests splitting the card into two cards of 8 hours each.
Entering 10h suggests splitting the card into one 10-hour card and one 6-hour card. If vPlan cannot divide further, you will get a card with the remaining hours.
If you want to evenly distribute the hours over a chosen number of days, enter a number with the time unit d (day) to divide the hours per day. For example, if you have a card estimated at 40 hours and want to distribute it over a workweek, enter 5d, resulting in 5 cards of 8 hours per day.
When you enter the function, you will always see below what the result will be. By clicking on the planned date, you can immediately assign a different planned date to the cards. Click on Split to actually implement the result.
Advanced
By using a space between functions, you can determine a whole series of hours per card yourself. If you have a card with many hours and you want to schedule a different number of hours each day, write in the splitting field per day how many hours you want to schedule and separate them with a space.
You can also split backward. This is used when you want to plan backward from the date on which the card is currently planned. For backward splitting, you don't need to do much differently compared to forward splitting. Ensure that you place a minus sign (-) for the desired action.
Keyboard shortcut
In the timeline, you can split strips even faster using a keyboard shortcut. Simply hold down the ALT key (Windows) or Option key (Apple). Hover your mouse over the strip you want to split and click. The strip is now divided into two strips, and the estimated duration is automatically distributed.
Merge cards
You can use card merging when you want to combine a card that has been split, back into one card. Merging cards can only be done in the calendar view of vPlan.
Grab a card with your mouse and drag it onto the card you want to merge it with. Once the card hovers over the other, you'll see an animation tilting the card slightly. Release your mouse button now to merge the cards. The result is a single card that also combines the estimated hours of both cards.
Note
Merging cards can only be done with cards belonging to the same collection. See also: What is the difference between a collection and a card?
Select collection
List
List
In vPlan, there are cards and collections. Collections are a grouping of cards that belong together, such as multiple planable steps within a task. Collections with multiple cards can arise from splitting a card or by planning a collection in a board with multiple stages.
In all vPlan overviews, you can select all cards of a collection by clicking on the dot. vPlan then shows which cards belong to the collection by drawing a line between them. At the top of your board, you see the name of the selected collection.
In the list view, the dot appears to the right of a card when you hover over it. Clicking on this icon displays all cards of the collection with a connecting line between them.
When you have a collection selected, and you change the planned date of one of the cards, vPlan also moves other cards of the same collection. This way, you maintain the planned coherence of your entire task when moving one card.
When you're done with your collection, you can click on the dot again to hide the collection and make other collections active.
Calendar
Calendar
In vPlan, there are cards and collections. Collections are a grouping of cards that belong together, such as multiple planable steps within a task. Collections with multiple cards can arise from splitting a card or by planning a collection in a board with multiple stages.
In all vPlan overviews, you can select all cards of a collection by clicking on the dot. vPlan then shows which cards belong to the collection by drawing a line between them. At the top of your board, you see the name of the selected collection.
In the calendar view, the dot appears to the right of a card when you hover over it. Clicking on this dot displays all cards of the collection with a connecting line between them. Cards outside of this collection become inactive.
When you have a collection selected, and you drag a card to another planned date, vPlan also moves the other cards of the same collection. This way, you maintain the planned coherence of your entire task when moving one card.
When you're done with your collection, you can click on the dot again to hide the collection and make other collections active.
Note
Completed or in-progress cards will not be moved when you move a collection with the dot.
Timeline
Timeline
In vPlan, there are cards and collections. Collections are a grouping of cards that belong together, such as multiple planable steps within a task. Collections with multiple cards can arise from splitting a card or by planning a collection in a board with multiple stages.
In all vPlan overviews, you can select all cards of a collection by clicking on the dot. vPlan then shows which cards belong to the collection by drawing a line between them. At the top of your board, you see the name of the selected collection.
In the timeline view, the dot appears to the right of a card when you hover over it. Clicking on this dot displays all cards of the collection with a connecting line between them. Cards outside the collection become inactive.
When you have a collection selected, and you drag a card to another planned date, vPlan also moves other cards of the same collection. This way, you maintain the planned coherence of your entire task when moving one card.
When you're done with your collection, you can click on the dot again to hide the collection and make other collections active.
Note
Completed or in-progress cards will not be moved when you move a collection with the dot.
Kanban
Kanban
In vPlan, there are cards and collections. Collections are a grouping of cards that belong together, such as multiple planable steps within a task. Collections with multiple cards can arise from splitting a card or by planning a collection in a board with multiple stages.
In all vPlan overviews, you can select all cards of a collection by clicking on the dot. vPlan then shows which cards belong to the collection by drawing a line between them. At the top of your board, you see the name of the selected collection.
In the Kanban view, the dot appears to the right of a card when you hover over it. Clicking on this dot displays all cards of the collection with a connecting line between them. Cards outside the collection become inactive.
When you have a collection selected, and you open a card to choose another planned date, vPlan also moves other cards of the same collection. This way, you maintain the planned coherence of your entire task when moving one card.
When you're done with your collection, you can click on the dot again to hide the collection and make other collections active.
Note
Completed or in-progress cards will not be moved when you move a collection with the dot.
Adding a card within a planned collection
When a card (or multiple cards from a collection) is planned, and you want to add an additional activity in another stage, many users tend to first move the card back to the backlog. Subsequently, an activity is added, and the card is then re-planned. However, in vPlan, you don't need to move the entire collection of cards back to the backlog. You can add a card to the planned collection in the board itself, allowing you to add the new activity as well.
List
List
To achieve this in the list view, first click on the icon on the right side of the card to select the collection of cards. Then, click in the Create new card field. You'll see that the title of the selected collection is automatically taken over. Choose a planned date on the right side. Press Enter, and a new card is added to your collection. You can now open the card to add an activity.
Calendar
Calendar
Select the card that is already planned. Do this by moving your mouse to the right side of the card and clicking on the dot to the right of the card. You have selected the card. You can see this as other cards in your planning fade into the background (they become light gray), and at the top of vPlan, you see which collection you have selected:
Now that you have selected the card, you can add a new card to the existing card by moving to another place in the calendar, going to the top corner of the desired day with your mouse, and clicking on the plus icon in the corner:
A text field opens in which the title of the selected collection is automatically filled. You can adjust or leave the title as is. Press Enter to add the new card to the collection. You can now open the new card and fill it in with all the necessary information.
Timeline
Timeline
If you want to add a new card to an existing collection in the timeline, follow these steps. Make sure you have the function to create new cards enabled in the timeline. Do this by clicking on the eye in the top right corner of the toolbar. In the pop-up that appears, enable the Create new card function and click Close. Click on the gray dot to the right of a card/strip. You have now selected the collection you can work with. In the left list of the timeline, click on Create new card. You'll see that the title of your selected collection is automatically taken over. You can adjust the title (or leave it as is), choose a planned date, and then press Enter.
You have now added a new card within the collection. If you want to add a new activity to this card, open the new card and add the activity there.
Kanban
Kanban
If you want to add a new card to an existing collection in the kanban view, follow these steps.
Click on the gray dot to the right of a card/strip. You have now selected the collection you can work with. Move your mouse to the bottom of one of your kanban columns and click in the Create new card field. You'll see that the title of your selected collection is automatically taken over. You can adjust the title or leave it as is, and then press Enter.
You have now added a new card within the collection. If you want to add an activity, open the new card and add the activity there.