How to Use Named Board Layouts
The Issues Kanban board can show a lot of status columns — more than most people want to look at all the time. Layouts let your team save a named, shared set of visible columns and switch between them, while a lighter, personal column toggle lets any one reader hide or show a column for themselves without touching what anyone else sees.
Before you start
- The Issue Tracker has to be switched on for your workspace.
- Anyone who can view Issues can switch layouts and toggle their own columns. Creating, renaming, deleting, or changing which layout opens by default needs the
issues.managepermission — that comes with the Admin and Owner roles, but not with the standard Agent or Reader roles. - Open the board with the view toggle in the Issues filter bar (Switch to board view).
Shared layout vs. personal toggle
These solve two different problems, and it’s worth knowing which one you’re using:
- Who sees it — Everyone on the tenant — Only you
- Where it lives — Saved to the team, like a status — This browser only, per workspace
- Who can create/rename/delete — Anyone with
issues.manage— Anyone who can view the board - What it looks like on load — Named, appears in the Layout picker — An unsaved state on top of whatever layout is active
In other words: a layout is a decision your team made about how to read the board. Toggling a column on or off without saving is just you, temporarily, deviating from that decision. Nobody else’s board moves when you do it, and it doesn’t survive on its own — you either save it or it stays a personal, throwaway state.
The Layout picker
The Layout picker sits in the board’s filter bar, next to the Columns button, and shows the name of the layout currently applied — or All statuses when you haven’t chosen one. While your saved layouts are still loading it reads “Layout” and stays disabled — this is deliberate, so you don’t get told the board is showing “All statuses” for a beat and then watch it swap out from under you once your real layout arrives.
Once it’s live, the picker lets you:
- Switch to any existing layout, or back to All statuses. The layout that’s currently applied carries a checkmark, and the one the tenant opens by default carries a Default badge.
- Save the current set of visible columns as a layout — Save these columns as a layout, or Save as a new layout if you already have unsaved changes.
- Rename, Delete layout, or Open this by default for the layout you currently have open.
If you don’t have issues.manage, the picker still lets you switch layouts; instead of those actions it says “Ask an admin to add or change a layout.”
If you’ve toggled columns without saving, the picker shows an unsaved indicator (a small dot) next to the layout name, and the popover says “The columns on screen do not match this layout.” — a reminder that what’s on screen isn’t what’s actually saved for that layout.
Saving a layout
- Show and hide status columns from the Columns button until the board looks the way you want it saved.
- Open the Layout picker and choose Save these columns as a layout.
- Give it a name — up to 60 characters — and press Save.
A layout has to draw at least one column; with every column hidden, the save action is disabled.
Layout names have to be unique on your tenant — trying to reuse an existing name is rejected as a conflict rather than silently overwriting it, so you won’t accidentally clobber a layout a teammate already saved. You get a “Could not save the layout” message reading A board layout called “…” already exists.
A workspace can keep 25 layouts. Past that, saving fails with A tenant may keep 25 board layouts. Delete one before adding another.
Saving is safe even if you’re mid-edit and the world changes underneath you: if you pick a different layout while a save is still in flight, the board won’t snap back to the one you were saving when that request finally lands.
Switching layouts
Pick any layout from the picker and the board immediately shows that layout’s columns. Which layout you have open is personal and remembered for you — it’s stored in your own browser, separately for each workspace you belong to. It doesn’t change anyone else’s board, and it isn’t something you “save” the way the layout’s contents are. Clearing your browser storage, or opening the board in a different browser, starts you on the tenant’s default layout again.
If a layout you were using gets deleted by someone else, you won’t be left staring at every column blown open — you’re moved to the tenant’s default layout instead. If nobody has set a default, you land on All statuses.
Renaming, deleting, and setting a default
With a layout open, the picker offers:
- Rename — changes the shared name everyone sees. Renaming doesn’t require the columns to be in a saved state; it works even while you have unsaved column changes sitting on top of it. The new name has to be unique too.
- Delete layout — removes the layout for the whole team, after a confirmation that spells out “Everyone in this workspace loses the layout. No Issue changes.” Anyone who had it open gets moved to the tenant default the next time their board loads. You, the person deleting it, land on All statuses.
- Open this by default — makes this the layout readers who have chosen nothing land on. A tenant can only have one default layout at a time; setting a new one replaces the old default automatically. On the layout that already is the default, this reads Stop opening this by default — using it leaves the tenant with no default at all, and unset readers land on All statuses.
All three of these require issues.manage — if you can’t manage Issues, you’ll only be able to view and switch layouts, not change them.
Toggling columns without saving
You don’t need a saved layout to hide a column for a few minutes. Use the Columns button the same way — the trigger shows an “N hidden” badge once anything is off — and the change applies immediately. It’s tracked as a personal, unsaved deviation from whichever layout (or All statuses, if none is chosen) you started from.
That deviation is just “what changed,” not a frozen replacement list. Concretely: when no layout is chosen, if you hide one column and nothing else, and your team later adds a brand-new status, that new status still shows up on your board on its own. Only the column you explicitly hid stays hidden. This matters because it’s the same behavior the board had before layouts existed — turning on layouts doesn’t quietly change what an untouched column toggle does.
A saved layout is the one thing that does freeze the column list. When a layout is applied, it is that layout — not “everything” — that your hides and shows are measured against, so a status added afterwards will not appear until someone updates the layout (or you show it yourself).
Toggling a column back to where the layout already had it leaves no deviation behind. Once you’re happy with an ad-hoc change, the picker lets you save it into the layout you had open (Save to layout name), save it as a brand-new layout, or Discard column changes and snap back to the saved version.
When a layout hides issues you didn’t expect
A layout is an explicit list of the columns someone chose to show — it isn’t “everything except X.” That means when your team adds a new status, existing layouts don’t automatically grow a column for it. Any issues sitting in that new, unlisted status become invisible on boards using that layout.
The board doesn’t let that happen quietly. When columns are hiding issues, the board says so above the board — “3 issues are in columns this board hides.” — and offers a Show every column link that reveals the full set of statuses, including ones no saved layout currently lists, so you can find and re-triage them without waiting for someone to update the layout. That line only appears when the hidden columns actually hold issues.
A separate line covers a different case: issues still sitting on a status the workspace has since deleted. Those have no column to draw at all, so the board reports “N issues are on a status this board has no column for. Use the list view to see them.” — Show every column won’t bring those back, because the status they name no longer exists.
If a layout names only statuses that have since been deleted, the board says “…” shows no column that still exists. Pick another layout or use the Columns button. rather than showing an empty area.