Guide for Using the Whiteboard & Plan

Ashley Siao
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In V4, your Tasks, Milestones, and Constraints don't have to live on a Plan. This guide explains how to use them anywhere on the Whiteboard and how to find work that doesn't have dates yet. The linked Knowledge Base articles show you the steps.

Before you start

Start with the Migrate from V3 to V4 article. It walks you through preparing your V3 Workspace, turning on V4 sync, and choosing how to bring your work into V4. Once your Workspace is on V4, use this guide to put your live records to work beyond the Plan.

Your Tasks aren't limited to the Plan

In V3, Tasks lived on the Plan and were shaped for it. In V4, Tasks, Milestones, and Constraints are records in your Project, so their cards can sit anywhere: on a Plan, on a Board, in a Table, or in open Whiteboard space. Wherever a card sits, it is the same record. A status change made on the Whiteboard shows up on the Plan and in Project Insights right away.

Outside a Plan, you can resize a card freely. Shrink it to a small square to place it over a site map or floor plan, or enlarge it to show a long title and description. Inside a Plan, resizing a card left or right changes its duration, so it works differently there.

Learn more:

Create live records on the Whiteboard

You create Tasks, Milestones, and Constraints the same way anywhere in the Workspace: drag them from the Toolbar or use the T, M, and C shortcuts. They don't need to start on a Plan. This makes the Whiteboard useful for pull planning, kickoff sessions, and early sequencing, before work has dates or a place on the Plan.

You can also convert existing whiteboard notes into live records. The note becomes a card on the spot and joins your Project data.

Each type does a different job:

  • Tasks hold a piece of work with dates, a duration, a Team, a status, and progress.
  • Milestones mark a key date, such as a contractual commitment or a major handoff. They have a dark card and a diamond icon.
  • Constraints flag something outside your team's control, such as a permit, a delivery, or an inspection. They have their own Created, Required, Promised, and Resolved dates, which feed the Constraint Log.

Learn more:

Connect and organize work on the Whiteboard

Dependencies drawn on the Whiteboard are stored in your Project, not as lines on one Workspace. If the dates on two connected cards conflict, the warning appears right away, even before the work is placed on a Plan, so you can resolve it while the team is still in the room.

A few other tools help you work with cards outside the Plan:

  • Clone a card to show the same Task in two places on the Workspace. A clone stays connected to the original, while a duplicate is a new, independent Task.
  • Add Labels to cards, notes, and shapes, so Whiteboard content can be grouped and filtered the same way as your Plan.
  • Use Focus Mode to dim everything except one Team, status, or Label without moving anything.

Learn more:

Activities on the Whiteboard

If your Project imports a master schedule, its Activities can sit on the Whiteboard too. On a Plan, Activities are slimmer than Tasks so they don't crowd your field plan. On the Whiteboard, you can resize them like any other card. Use this when you want to show master schedule context next to a site map or a pull planning session.

You can also drag Activities from the Whiteboard into a Plan, or from one Swimlane to another, and they move to their correct dates. Their dates stay tied to the master schedule. If you move one to a new date, it shows chevrons that mark the change as a suggestion for your scheduler, not an edit to the schedule itself.

Learn more:

Find Tasks that don't have dates yet

Cards created on the Whiteboard don't always have dates yet. Reports are built around dates, so these elements don't appear in most report views by default. That's by design, but it also means they are easy to lose track of.

To find them, open the List view in Project Insights and use the Without dates filter at the bottom of the list to include elements without dates. For Constraints, apply the same filter in the Constraint Log. You can combine it with other filters, such as Team or Workspace, to narrow the list. Then open each element in the Editor to give it dates when your team is ready to place the work.

The same Type filter also includes deleted elements, which is useful when you need to find and restore something that was removed by mistake.

Learn more:

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