Running your project

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Build project workflow with states

Issues within a project can transition through various states to reflect the progression of work in your project. This movement of issues through states constitutes the project workflow.

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State groups

Plane provides five sets of state groups to categorize all your project states:

• Backlog: Useful for issues not yet prioritized by project members. Issues in this group require more work or discussions before they move forward. Plane creates a default state in this group called “Backlog”.
• Unstarted: Useful for issues planned to be picked up by project members. Issues in this state represent upcoming work for members. Plane creates a default state called “To-do” in this group.
• Started: Useful for issues picked up by project members. Issues in this state represent work that is currently happening in your project. Plane creates a default state called “In-progress” in this group.
• Completed: Issues in this state represent completed work in your project. Plane creates a default state called “Done” in this group.
• Cancelled: Issues in this state represent cancelled work in your project. Plane creates a default state called “Cancelled” in this group.

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Add, edit or remove states

Each state group can contain multiple states, which can be created and ordered according to your project’s workflow. These options can be found under the States tab inside Project > Settings.

To add a new state, click on the ”+” button beside the state group of your choice. After adding the state, you can rearrange it with other states in the group.

You can also choose to mark the state as the default for the project to ensure all new issues without a state are assigned to this state.

To remove a state, ensure no issues are assigned to the state you want to remove.

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Estimates

An ordered set of points, Estimates quantify the effort needed per issue using points you declare as a proxy.

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Set up estimates

By default, no estimate system is added to your project. Find the Estimates tab in Project / Settings to do that.

Start by choosing an estimate system from the two below.

• Points

  Use this if you prefer progressive numbers to estimate effort. You can choose from Linear, Fibonacci, or Squares or create your own progression with Custom.

• Category

  Use this if you would like to estimate effort by alphabetical text. Typical examples include T-shirt sizing or easy-to-hard estimate systems.

When you are done, you can enable estimates by toggling on Enable estimates for my project. You can also change the type of the system by clicking the pencil icon next to each system you have set.

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Manage labels

Similar to states, labels on projects aid in filtering, differentiating, and categorizing issues within your project. You can create and control as many issue labels as needed.

You can access these options under the Labels tab inside Project > Settings.

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Connect integrations

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Set up automations

Within your project, you can set up automations to perform the following tasks:

1. Auto-archive closed issues: You can configure an automation to archive issues that are closed in your project based on a customizable time period. Once set up, the automation will move all issues matching the time period to archives.
   
2. Auto-close issues: You can configure an automation to close issues that are open in your project based on a customizable time period. Once set up, the automation will move all open issues matching the time period to the selected closed state.