Trello is a mainstay in productivity software. It’s a classic and well-implemented instance of a Kanban board, but what if I told you we could create this kind of system within Obsidian, so you don’t have to leave your notes?
This is possible with Obsidian’s Kanban plugin.
One of the most popular and powerful plugins in the app, it brings a full-featured Kanban experience to Obsidian. I’m going to be covering the capabilities of the plugin in this article, as well as talking about some use cases it suits, some of which I’ve used myself.
Let’s get started…
Features of the plugin
This plugin turns a markdown note into a series of columns, called lists, which contain cards, which are short notes or tasks, creating a Kanban board.
Cards are added just like any other list, through the input box, and the plugin makes the addition of information on the card very seamless:
- A date picker appears to select due dates, and a tag picker appears to add tags. These are displayed independently, underneath the rest of the card content, with options to disable showing dates and tags inline in the card, as well as a natural language option for the dates.
- Add links like anywhere else in Obsidian — your cards can refer to files in your vault and are usable as normal links, allowing for you to click to view the note related to that card, in the current tab or in a new tab.
There are also options to customise the width and display of the lists and cards. You can set whether a list marks cards as completed when they’re moved there, and there’s also a button that archives all completed cards. This archive process is non-destructive, you simply have to view the markdown source file to see the archived cards under a heading there.
Kanban includes most of the features required within a complete offering of this system. The fact that it’s available entirely in Obsidian makes it appealing because people don’t have to worry about context-switching between apps to see all their information.
So now that I’ve covered the features of this plugin, it’s time to dive into the various ways that it can be used…
Uses of the plugin
I’ll start with the use of the plugin that I have experience with…
Writing on Medium has grown to be quite an important part of my life at the moment. I’ve been managing the content that I have to produce in a Kanban board that divides the content ideas into different places I publish to, including Medium, Twitter and my newsletter Fundamentalised.
Organising ideas in this way is helpful because you can rearrange cards within the lists. I use this to plan the order in which I’m going to release my content so that I know what I’m writing when a certain day rolls around.
There’s also massive potential for task management when using this plugin.
The lists can correspond to status, project, or any other category that you want to divide your tasks into. You can drag tasks between lists very easily, which leads to frictionless tracking of tasks between categories. It’s for this reason that a lot of people use Kanban software for product roadmap tracking, as you can maintain lists like ‘To-Build’, ‘In Progress’ and ‘Shipped’.
The due dates feature is another aspect that makes this plugin ideal for task management. You can assign dates to different cards as well as organise their order and position in different list. Combining these two allows you to keep track of when tasks need to be submitted against another variable, such as task progress, or task delegation.
Overall, Kanban is one of the most useful Obsidian plugins there is, especially for those who manage projects or their own tasks within the app. I hope you’ve learned something new that you can put into practice. Thanks for being here!