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Boards that follow your GitHub Project's Status

GitHub issues don't come with a board of their own. Most teams who want one build it in a GitHub Project, with a Status field for the columns. Until now a GitGumbo board could borrow those column names, but it placed and moved cards by label, so it could disagree with the Project it was named after.

Now a GitHub board can follow the Project itself.

What changed

Pick the Project. Open a GitHub board, choose Follow a GitHub Project, and pick one of the Projects linked to the repository. Projects owned by an organization and by a user account both work.

The columns are the Project's Status options. Add, rename or reorder them in GitHub and the board follows on its next sync.

Cards sit where the Project puts them. Each open issue lands in the column that matches its Status. Issues with no Status, and issues that aren't in the Project at all, go in a No Status column. The ones that aren't in the Project carry a small Not in Project marker, so you can tell the two apart.

Dragging a card changes its Status in GitHub. No labels are written. Drag a card out of No Status and, if the issue isn't in the Project yet, GitGumbo adds it and sets its Status. Drag one back into No Status and its Status is cleared, but the issue stays in the Project. Dragging to Closed closes the issue, as it does on any board.

How current it is

A drag in GitGumbo shows on the board straight away. A Status changed in GitHub takes longer to arrive: GitHub sends no webhook to a repository when a Project's Status changes, so GitGumbo reads every Status on each sync and checks again about every 10 minutes. Expect a change made in GitHub to show within about 10 minutes, or press Sync now to fetch it.

When GitGumbo can't read the Project

If GitGumbo can't read the Project, the board says so with the reason and leaves its columns and cards where they were. It won't empty a board because one read failed. The common reasons:

  • A classic token needs the project scope. Signing in with GitHub already asks for it.
  • A fine-grained token can't read a Project owned by a user account, and needs the Projects permission for one owned by an organization.
  • An organization that restricts third-party apps has to approve GitGumbo first. An organization owner does that in the organization's settings, under Third-party access.