A kanban board on a laptop.
Image: ribkhan/Adobe Stock

Kanban is one of the most efficient project management tools on the market, because kanban boards offer an easy method of seeing exactly where each piece of the project puzzle is in the timeline. With a glance, you can see what tasks have yet to be started, are in progress and/or have been completed. On top of that, you can drag and drop those tasks into any column of the workflow.

Even better is when the cards and tasks that can be added to a board include options, information, custom fields and third-party integrations. Most kanban options offer such features, but there’s one kanban board that takes it a step further: Redbooth, the collaboration and communication tool.

SEE: Hiring kit: Project manager (TechRepublic Premium)

You probably would have never considered Redbooth as a kanban champion, especially with its greater focus on collaboration features. However, Redbooth offers a pretty cool feature that lifts kanban boards to a new level of efficiency.

This feature isn’t necessarily specific to kanban and is more of a view layout, but Redbooth got this so right that it really does elevate the workflow to an almost unheard-of level of simplicity. In this guide, I’ll show you what I mean.

Jump to:

The Redbooth Workspaces view

In Redbooth, it’s all about the Workspaces view. In the main Redbooth window, you have three main views: Dashboard, Workspace and Reports. Click on the Workspaces view, and you’ll see four tabs: Tasks, Convos, Notes and Files (Figure A). It is that row of tabs that makes Redbooth so efficient.

Figure A

The Workspaces view in Redbooth.
The Workspaces view in Redbooth.

The Tasks tab is your kanban board, where you can add columns to create a specific workflow and then add tasks to each column. Within tasks, you can add tags, assignees, due dates, descriptions, subtasks, dependencies, comments and files. That’s pretty standard fare. Now, although Redbooth might not have all of the card features found in, say, Trello, it makes up for that lack with its other three tabs.

How is the Redbooth Workspaces layout beneficial?

What makes the Redbooth kanban so special is that you can easily switch between your kanban board, conversations, notes and files in order to access even more detailed information about a task or a project. Instead of having to switch views or depend on third-party integrations, you simply click on a tab to read conversations about a project; check out notes; or even upload, download or view files associated with a task or project.

SEE: Kanban: Productivity & Efficiency for Agile Lean Project Course (TechRepublic Academy)

This might sound like an insignificant feature, but if you’re all about efficiency, I’ve found the Redbooth Workspaces layout to be one of the most efficient on the market. I can upload files for a project and not have to hunt through different task cards to find them. I can quickly jump into a conversation about a project or task, without closing the board. I can view and take notes about a task or project with ease.

Although most project management platforms offer these same features, it’s the way Redbooth lays them out that makes the workflow so easy. And yes, you can upload files to a specific task, but what do you do with those files that are relevant to the project as a whole? Some project management tools don’t include such a feature, meaning you’d have to depend on a third-party service to house project-related files.

Assessing Redbooth for your kanban and project management needs

I realize this isn’t a make-or-break feature for those who depend on kanban for project management. But for anyone who prefers to make their project management duties as efficient as possible, you’d be hard-pressed to find a service that offers a workflow as simple and effective as Redbooth.

Give this service a try to see if how they’ve set up the kanban/task view makes your project management efforts considerably more efficient.

Read next: Best digital collaboration tools for your business (TechRepublic)

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