Feature Idea: Link to another card

[chenilim]

Summary: Add a content type that is a link to another card. The link should have a "link type" e.g.

• (General / default) Is related to
• Depends on

How important this is to me and why:

Importance: Medium

Use cases:

1. Link a main task card to a set of subtask cards
2. Link to related cards

Additional context / similar features: Should be able to link to cards on other boards too.

Bonus: Cards that are linked to from other cards show the backlinks.

[chenilim]

Also did a quick search, and both Trello and Notion support links to other cards / pages, but mainly in the form of a URL with minimal unfurling.

I think we could potentially go a step further by giving links an optional "link type". E.g. this could make building dependency graphs easier in the future.

Has anyone seen other and better ways of handling links between tasks or dependencies?

[mblennegard]

Another neat thing to have for these links would be the ability to open the link in a sidebar or similar, like in Roam Research, to being able to view both cards side by side.

[LimitlessDonald]

Hi guys, thanks for your work on this cool software. ANy progress with this please?

[chenilim]

Hi @LimitlessDonald, thanks for asking. Yes, short answer is we expect to start working on card links and dependencies towards the middle of this year. In the meantime, if you or anyone else has specific use-cases in mind, please share, as that will help us prioritize features. Thanks! cc @wuwinson.

[digitalirony]

@chenilim For my specific use case is: Master card/ticket with sub tasks/tickets/cards. The master card might have option to set bool/checkbox on sub tasks dependant on their status/progress.

[marcungeschikts]

Specific use case: Be able to group by this new type "Card Link" (today we cannot group by URL) in table view for instance (In this case it could also answer to this other Feature Idea mattermost/focalboard#252)

[chenilim]

@marcungeschikts, thanks for the input! That could indeed be a simple way to show a parent-child relationship (e.g. Epic-Feature) in a table. cc @wuwinson, @asaadmahmood.

[florentBourgeois]

Hi everyone, Good to know that this feature starts to exist.
Coming from Jira software I definitely miss the Master task / sub tasks links. I use this a lot because I split my project into user stories which are features with user oriented description and acceptance criteria. Then those user stories are split into technical tasks with technical description and acceptance criteria ; which are not all assigne to the same person

Those come as one card that can be extended to see the full progress of the user story.
Here is a capture of the agile board I use. Notice on this second picture that cards that have no subtasks are simple cards (below)

One point about this approach is that I use two boards to manage our project. The kanban board depicted on the pictures is associated to a sprint and only contains tasks this specific sprint. The backlog board that contains all the taks that will have to be done in the future and are not placed in any sprint.

Hope that this will bring some ideas to this awesome project developers.

[ffaille]

@marcungeschikts, thanks for the input! That could indeed be a simple way to show a parent-child relationship (e.g. Epic-Feature) in a table. cc @wuwinson, @asaadmahmood.

Hi everyone =)

This is the only missing feature from my point of view ! Any update about parent-child relationship ?

Thanks in advance.

[Oobiewan]

Hi, I would love to be able to link tickets to each other, specifically to show a "depends on" relationship. This would allow one to see if a specific task can be started or another one must be completed first.

[wuwinson]

Thanks for your feedback everyone! Card dependencies is under consideration as part of our cross-team collaboration features. We don't have an ETA on when this will land, but would appreciate any additional feedback you might have. Thank you!

[pauleaster]

Hi all, I have just started to use focalboard for personal sprint organisation and one of the first things that I was looking for was a link to different cards. So I will add my voice to this ticket. In the meantime, is there are work around if we clone focalboard ourselves?

[wuwinson]

Thanks for the feedback @pauleaster! There are some work arounds that aren't ideal, but may help depending on how many items you want to link:

• Checkboxes in card descriptions: If you have multiple subtasks, can list them out as checkbox items within the card description. Card badges on kanban view will help you quickly identify the status of those checkboxes within each card.
• URL properties will allow you to link any URL to your card. You can copy the card URL and paste it on this property to "link" the cards. Add multiple URL properties to link more items to the card.
• Commenting on a card will work similarly to the URL property, but gives you more flexibility on the number of items you can link. Downside is that the links will get mixed in with other comments and cannot be managed like a property.

Hope that helps!

[marcungeschikts]

• URL properties will allow you to link any URL to your card. You can copy the card URL and paste it on this property to "link" the cards. Add multiple URL properties to link more items to the card.

The 2nd workaround could make the job only if :

1. Instead of displaying the URL, it would display the card's title
2. It would be possible to group by URL properties (in board & table view)

[PatrickHuetter]

Hi everyone, Good to know that this feature starts to exist. Coming from Jira software I definitely miss the Master task / sub tasks links. I use this a lot because I split my project into user stories which are features with user oriented description and acceptance criteria. Then those user stories are split into technical tasks with technical description and acceptance criteria ; which are not all assigne to the same person

Those come as one card that can be extended to see the full progress of the user story. Here is a capture of the agile board I use. Notice on this second picture that cards that have no subtasks are simple cards (below)

One point about this approach is that I use two boards to manage our project. The kanban board depicted on the pictures is associated to a sprint and only contains tasks this specific sprint. The backlog board that contains all the taks that will have to be done in the future and are not placed in any sprint.

Hope that this will bring some ideas to this awesome project developers.

I can confirm that. Linking cards with further meta information about the link would be very nice since we also use this a lot within JIRA to show dependencies and related tasks or blocking tasks.

[olivierlambert]

The same for me, this would be enough to us to replace our existing Kanban solution :) (wekan)

Keep up the good work!

[GilDev]

Still eager to see this feature implemented! The cross-team collaboration features mentioned by @wuwinson looks dope! It would really benefit our team’s organisation as Boards is the only tool like that we currently use, and it integrated nicely into our internal chat.

I hope card linking will be possible between different boards, in order to have a “Roadmap” board and a “Tasks” one, where each Roadmap card can be linked to multiple child Tasks for example.

[marcungeschikts]

Focalboard->Mattermost->Focalboard 🤔 Is it good news or bad news? 🤷🏻 👉🏻 Clearer news is welcome 🙏🏻

[KaherdinTristan]

There is a need to be able to link cards together. Good examples are present in this thread. Please just start implementing this. A quick fix is to relate cards as we do in db:s; master/child. Please comeon...

[marcungeschikts]

There is a need to be able to link cards together. Good examples are present in this thread. Please just start implementing this. A quick fix is to relate cards as we do in db:s; master/child. Please comeon.

It seems you did not see this announcement: https://github.com/mattermost/focalboard/#readme