Statuses and workflow
Statuses are the columns on your board and the stages of your workflow. This is the setting teams change first, and the one they are most nervous about changing later.
There is no need to be nervous. Nothing here loses work.
Name and type
Section titled “Name and type”Every status has a name and a type.
The name is for humans. Call it “Waiting on customer”, “In review”, “Ready to ship” — whatever your team already says out loud.
The type is what dotby reasons about:
| Type | Meaning | Counted as |
|---|---|---|
| Backlog | Not committed to yet | Not started |
| Unstarted | Committed, not started | Not started |
| Started | In flight | In progress |
| Completed | Finished | Done |
| Canceled | Dropped on purpose | Excluded entirely |
So you can have three review-ish columns of your own, all typed Started, and every progress bar, burn-up, and rollup still adds up correctly.
Canceled is not failure. Work you decided not to do is excluded from progress rather than counted against it. That is why a project that cancels ten tasks does not suddenly look like it is 40% behind.
Edit the columns
Section titled “Edit the columns”In project settings you can rename, recolor, reorder, add, and remove statuses.
Colors come from a perceptually tuned palette that is already legible in light and dark mode, so the default choice is a good one. Override it if your team has a convention.
Status sets — decide once, reuse everywhere
Section titled “Status sets — decide once, reuse everywhere”A status set is a named workflow you can apply to any project. Four ship in the box:
| Set | Columns |
|---|---|
| Default | Backlog · Todo · In Progress · Done · Canceled |
| Kanban | Backlog · Ready · Doing · In review · Done · Dropped |
| Bug tracking | Triage · Confirmed · Fixing · Verifying · Fixed · Won’t fix |
| Content | Ideas · Outlined · Drafting · Editing · Published · Shelved |
Mark one as the default and every new project is born speaking your language. No retyping “In review” in project number nine.
You can also build a set from a project you already like — Save as status set turns it into a template — or copy the statuses straight from another project.
Applying a set is a reviewed diff, never a silent overwrite
Section titled “Applying a set is a reviewed diff, never a silent overwrite”This is the part that matters.
When you apply a status set to a project that already has tasks in it, you see exactly what will happen before anything moves:
- every status kept, with its new name if it is being renamed
- every status added
- every status removed — and how many tasks are in it right now
- where each of those tasks will land
You can re-point any of them before confirming. A pure rename says “No tasks will move” and means it.
If the set changes later, the projects that used it say so, rather than quietly drifting away from the template.
Deleting a status cannot lose work
Section titled “Deleting a status cannot lose work”Remove a column and dotby asks what happens to the tasks in it. Two answers:
- Move them to a status you pick, or
- Archive them, which is reversible.
Either way you are told how many tasks are affected before you commit. There is no silent dumping into whichever column happened to be first.
Some statuses cannot be deleted at all — the one new tasks land in, and the one your project depends on as an anchor. dotby tells you which and why instead of failing with an error afterwards.
Keep finished work out of the way
Section titled “Keep finished work out of the way”Two different tools, often confused:
Fold a column. Collapse any column to a slim vertical strip with a live count. Done stops burying the board, cards still drop onto it, and progress numbers do not change. Admins choose which statuses start folded; anyone can fold or unfold whatever they like, and the choice is remembered.
Hide closed work. The Closed button clears completed and dropped tasks from any board, list, or timeline in one click. A count shows what is hidden, progress numbers do not change, and finer switches keep completed sub-tasks visible under still-open parents.
Hiding closed work rides your filters, so you can share the URL or save it into a view and everyone sees the same thing.
Auto-archive
Section titled “Auto-archive”Old finished work can be filed away automatically. Set a period for completed tasks and a separate one for canceled tasks — they are rarely the same, because “done six months ago” and “dropped six months ago” age differently.
Archived tasks are never gone. They collect in one place per project, newest first, and come back to their original column in one click.
- Projects and views — how columns become a board.
- Task properties — everything a status is not.
- Workspace settings — auto-archive and the archive itself.