Core concepts

Plane nests your work in layers: a workspace holds projects, a project holds work items, and cycles, modules, views and pages help you plan, look at and write about that work. Teamspaces sit alongside projects and gather the work of one team. Read this page once and every screen in Plane will make sense.

How Plane is organized

At the top level, a workspace contains everything, usually one per organization. Inside a workspace, you create projects for specific products, initiatives or goals. Within a project, you manage work items, the individual tasks your team completes. Organize work items with cycles (time-boxed periods), modules (smaller parts of a project, each with its own lead, members and progress) and views (saved filters and layouts). Pages hold the context and decisions that go with your work.

You can work at whatever level fits the moment. Sometimes you focus on a single work item. Other times you look at a whole project or cycle to see the bigger picture.

Workspace
├── Projects
│   ├── Work items
│   ├── Cycles
│   ├── Modules
│   ├── Views
│   └── Pages
├── Teamspaces   (link projects, with their own views and pages)
├── Workspace views
└── Wiki         (workspace-level pages, grouped in collections)

The building blocks

Workspaces

A workspace is the central hub for everything you do on Plane. It's the top-level space where all your projects and work items live. You usually set up a workspace for a company or client, and everyone in it can collaborate on projects and use shared resources. Treat each workspace as a separate organization or client, which keeps their work apart.

Inside a workspace, you can create projects on your own or invite collaborators to join and share them as a team. Every workspace has a URL slug, up to 48 characters, that appears in every link to your work.

Learn more about Workspaces.

Projects

Projects are the containers for related work items. You might create a project for a product launch, a major feature or an ongoing initiative. Each project keeps everything in one place, so you can track progress and focus on a specific goal. Inside a project, you organize and manage work items, assign team members, set deadlines and break work into smaller parts.

Each project has a short identifier of up to 10 characters, like VIH, which Plane adds to every work item in it. A project is either Public, which anyone in the workspace except guests can join, or Private, which people join only by invite. Features such as cycles, modules, views and pages are switched on or off per project in the project's settings. The person who creates a project becomes its admin.

Learn more about Projects.

Work items

Work items are the core of task management in Plane. Each work item represents a specific task within a project, whether that's a bug fix, a new feature or a to-do. Assign work items to team members, add due dates, set priorities and link related work items together to give context. You can customize work items to fit your team's needs.

Each work item has a unique, project-specific identifier, like VIH-19: the project identifier, a hyphen, and a number that counts up from 1 within the project. Every work item has a title and a state. A work item can also have a parent, so you can nest sub-work items under it. States, priorities, labels, estimates and relations are covered in Work items.

Learn more about Work items.

Cycles

Cycles organize work into time-bound periods, like sprints or phases. Use them to plan work over a fixed interval, so your team knows what's coming up and what needs to wrap up. A cycle belongs to one project and has a start date and an end date.

• A cycle is active while its dates include today, upcoming before it starts, and completed after it ends. A cycle with no dates is a draft.

• Move existing work items into a new or ongoing cycle, or create new work items directly in a cycle.

• Add or update several work items in a cycle at once: select them in the cycle's Add existing work item dialog, or select them in a list and set their cycle in one go.

• You can't edit a cycle after you complete it, and its data is frozen for analytics. When you complete a cycle that still has incomplete work items, either leave them in that cycle or transfer them to an upcoming cycle.

Learn more about Cycles.

Modules

Modules break a project into smaller parts. Each module has its own lead, members and progress, and it can carry a start date and a target date. Group everything for one deliverable in a module, such as the new billing page, a marketing campaign or a microservice, and track that part of the project on its own.

Learn more about Modules.

Views

Views filter and organize work items so you see what matters right now. Instead of configuring filters every time, save your layout, filters and display settings in a view and open it instantly. The same work item can appear in several views at once.

Views exist at three levels. Project views show work from a single project. Workspace views show work items across all the projects you have access to, and come with four built-in views: all work items, assigned to you, created by you and subscribed by you. Teamspace views show the work of one team across its linked projects.

Learn more about Views.

Pages

Pages are where you write notes, add documentation and outline plans. Use them to capture ideas, take notes during meetings or start your day with an organized list. Pages keep project information in one place, so you can return to it whenever you need.

A page lives in one of three places. Project pages hold the notes, specs and decisions for one project. The Wiki holds workspace-level pages for the whole company, grouped into collections. Teamspace pages hold knowledge for one team. You can move a page between these places, and a page can embed work items so the writing stays next to the work it describes.

Learn more about Pages and the Wiki.

Teamspaces

A teamspace brings everything a real-world team works on into one place. It has a lead and members, and it links to the projects that team works in. From the teamspace you see that team's work items, cycles, views and pages across its linked projects. A teamspace doesn't own work items or cycles; those stay in their projects.

Linking a project gives every teamspace member the Contributor role in it, even if they aren't a member of the project. They can see the project and create and edit its work items, cycles, modules and pages, but they can't change the project's settings. See Member roles.

Learn more about Teamspaces.

How the pieces relate

Object	Belongs to	How work items join it
Work item	One project	It's the thing being grouped.
Cycle	One project	A work item is in one cycle at a time.
Module	One project	A work item can be in any number of modules.
View	A project, the workspace or a teamspace	A view matches work items by filter. It doesn't own them.
Page	A project, the Wiki or a teamspace	A page embeds work items.
Teamspace	The workspace	It shows work items from its linked projects.

Common confusions

Cycle or module?

A cycle is about time. A module is about scope. Put the work you'll finish in the next two weeks in a cycle. Put everything that makes up the new billing page in a module, however long it takes. The same work item can sit in one cycle and one or more modules at the same time.

Project page or Wiki page?

Write a project page when the document belongs to one project, such as a spec or a decision log. Write a Wiki page when the knowledge belongs to the whole workspace, such as an onboarding guide or a company policy. If you pick wrong, move the page later.

Project or teamspace?

A project is where work lives. A teamspace is who does it. Create a project for a product, a launch or a goal. Create a teamspace for a real team, like Design or Platform, and link the projects that team works in. One project can be linked to several teamspaces.

Where things live in the app

Plane has three apps in the rail at the left edge: Work, Wiki and AI. The sidebar inside Work changes depending on whether you're looking at the workspace or a project.

Where	What you'll find
Workspace sidebar	Home, Inbox, Your work, Projects, Views, Cycles (active cycles across all projects), Teamspaces
Project sidebar	Overview, Work items, Cycles, Modules, Views, Pages, Intake
App rail	Wiki opens the workspace Wiki

Some items appear only after an admin turns the feature on. Cycles, modules, views, pages and intake are switched per project in the project's settings. A new project starts with Views and Pages on, and Cycles, Modules and Intake off, unless you create it from a project template, which brings its own settings. Teamspaces and the Wiki are switched for the whole workspace. See Workspace features.

Where to go next

• Follow the Quickstart guide to set up a workspace, a project and your first cycle.
• Work through the tutorials for each step in more depth.
• Once the basics are in place, see Initiatives for goals that span projects, Epics for large work items, and Intake for requests that arrive from outside the team.