Limits
A limit says how much of something a board may hold: cards in a list, hours of work, money in open offers. The board shows where each limit stands, the same to everyone on it. Nothing is refused: a card can always be added, and the board says when there is too much.
Use one to finish work before starting more, to see where work piles up, or to keep to a real capacity: an oven that takes 24 trays, a crew with 160 hours, a reviewer with time for four.
Set a limit on a list
Limits are made by a board's owners.
Open the list's ⋯ menu and choose Limit….
Type the number after At most, and click Set limit.
The list's header now shows how much it holds against how much it may: 2 / 3. It is grey while there is room, amber when the list is full, and red when it is over. Point at it to read the limit in words.
To change or remove it, choose Change limit… in the same menu.
What a limit can say
A limit is a sentence, and the editor builds it one part at a time. The grey box at the bottom says it back to you in words as you go: "At most 2 cards for each person in Doing".
| Part | Choices |
|---|---|
| At most | The number. |
| What is added up | Cards, or one of the board's number fields, added up: hours, trays, an amount of money. A card without a value adds nothing. |
| For | The whole list, or each person: then everyone is held to the number by the cards assigned to them. Cards assigned to nobody aren't counted. |
| Counting | Which cards count when cards have subtasks: the cards without subtasks, the top-level cards, or every card. It starts on what the board's lists show. |
| Name | A few words of your own, such as "Roofing crew" or "Oven". Optional. |
| Which cards | The lists the limit is about, and anything else its cards must be: who they are assigned to, their priority, their labels, or a value of one of your own fields. |
Some limits people set:
| What you want | The limit |
|---|---|
| No more than three things in progress | At most 3 cards in Doing |
| Nobody works on more than two | At most 2 cards for each person in Doing |
| The crews have 160 hours this fortnight | At most 160 h of Crew hours in Scheduled |
| The oven takes 24 trays | At most 24 of Trays in Baking today |
| Unpaid orders stay under $1,500 | At most $1,500 of Order total in Awaiting payment |
| No site work without a deposit | At most 0 cards in On site where Deposit paid is not ticked |
| One roofing crew | At most 1 card in On site where Trade is Roofing |
| Each person has four jobs in hand | At most 4 cards for each person in Scheduled, On site or Snagging |
Where limits show
- Beside a list's name: a plain count, such as 2 / 3, or 2 each for a limit that holds each person.
- Under the list's header: a limit that needs words with its numbers, such as Crew hours 166 / 160 h or Roofing crew 2 / 1, and for a limit that holds each person, who has how much: Marco 3 / 2.
- The Rules button above the view lists every limit of the board with where it stands, and says how many are over. It is there in the Timeline and the Outline too. A limit that is about several lists, or the whole board, shows here and not on a list.
- Board settings → Rules has the same list.
A folded list keeps the color of its limit.
Good to know
- Everyone sees the same numbers. A limit counts the whole board, whatever you filter, search for or hide. When your filter hides some of a list's cards, the header shows both: the number of cards you see, then the limit.
- Only owners make, change and remove limits. Everyone on the board sees them, and so do visitors with the board's public link.
- A limit follows the cards at once. Move a card, reassign it, or change its hours, and the numbers change for everyone who has the board open.
- A limit on a number field keeps to the field's decimals. On a field of whole hours, 35.6 becomes 36.
- If something a limit names is removed (its list, a label, a person, a field), the limit is not worked out with what is left of it, because that would quietly be a wider limit. The list of rules says it can't be worked out and why. Change it there, or bring the thing back: undoing a deleted list brings its limit back too.
- A limit can't be about "me" or about dates. It has to mean the same to everyone, on every day.
- Assistants are told the limits and the room left under each, so "don't start anything new while Doing is full" works. See what to ask.
- A board can have up to 20 rules: limits, and rules that tell people, together.