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Execution ⏱️ 8 min read Intermediate

Collection Templates, Custom Kanbans & Task Linkages

How to reuse blueprint collections, design custom Kanban boards with sync shorthands, and link tasks with precedence guards.

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KEY TAKEAWAY
You do not need to build repetitive projects from scratch. DoneIsGood lets you save and spawn reusable Collection Templates with intelligent start- or due-date scheduling. For agile workflows, you can tailor Custom Kanban Columns with dedicated sync shorthands for Google Tasks and Microsoft To-Do. To ensure steps happen in the right order, Task Linkages enforce prerequisites with clear visual badges and gentle completion guards.

flowchart TD
    subgraph Blueprint["1. Blueprint Template"]
        T["Reusable Template
(HR, IT Incident, Sprint)"]
        D["Relative Day Offsets
(-3 days, Day 0, +2 days)"]
        P["Precedent Dependencies
(Task B blocked by Task A)"]
    end

    subgraph Spawn["2. Spawning Active Work"]
        S["Template Gallery"]
        A{"Anchor Date Picker"}
        A -->|"Kickoff"| Fwd["Start Date
(Offsets forward)"]
        A -->|"Deadline"| Bwd["Due Date
(Offsets backward)"]
    end

    subgraph Execution["3. Active Execution"]
        K["Custom Kanban Board
(To Do → In QA → Review → Done)"]
        L["🔒 Dependency Guard
(Gentle completion prompt)"]
        Sync["Tasks Sync Shorthands
([qa], #qa, col: qa)"]
    end

    T --> S
    S --> A
    Fwd --> K
    Bwd --> K
    P --> L
    K --> Sync

1. Why Templates and Task Linkages Matter

Whether onboarding a new team member, resolving an urgent IT incident, running a sprint, or managing a client handover, multi-step workflows follow familiar patterns:

  • Repetitive Setup Wastes Time: Typing the same 12 setup tasks every time someone joins the company is tedious and error-prone.
  • Work Gets Done Out of Order: Setting up an employee laptop before their company email or cloud identity is provisioned leads to delays and wasted effort.
  • Rigid Stages Do Not Fit Real Teams: Not every team works in a simple "To Do → Doing → Done" pipeline. Development teams need a QA / Testing stage; editorial teams need a Review & Proofing lane.

DoneIsGood solves these challenges with three integrated tools:

  1. Collection Templates: Reusable blueprints that can generate active working collections on demand.
  2. Custom Kanban Columns: Flexible workflow stages with customizable work-in-progress (WIP) limits and sync shorthands.
  3. Task Linkages (Precedence): Clear prerequisite tracking that protects tasks from being completed before their dependencies are ready.

DoneIsGood includes a built-in Starter Pack of templates designed for common team and personal workflows, while allowing you to save your own collections as custom blueprints.

You can access the Template Gallery anytime:

  • Click the Template Gallery (📐) icon in the collection navigation bar.
  • In the mobile drawer or desktop sidebar, click the Template Gallery button located next to your collections list.

Built-In Starter Templates

The starter pack includes four proven blueprints:

Template Methodology Best For Key Features
HR Employee Onboarding Eisenhower Welcoming and equipping new hires 10 structured tasks across accounts, equipment, and 1:1 check-ins with built-in task dependencies.
IT Incident Escalation (Sev-1) Kanban (5-Stage) Production outages and urgent bug triages Incident bridge coordination, status communication, root-cause resolution, and blameless post-mortem.
Product Release Scope MoSCoW Milestone releases and feature planning Pre-categorised Must, Should, Could, and Won't Have requirements ready for sprint hour budgeting.
Sprint Execution Board Kanban (5-Stage) Agile software sprints and team cycles Backlog, Ready, In Progress (with WIP limit), Review, and Done lanes.

3. Smart Date Anchoring: Kickoff vs. Deadline

When spawning an active collection from a template, tasks should not all land on today's date. Different tasks belong on different days relative to your schedule. DoneIsGood provides two date anchoring modes:

[x] Anchor by Start Date (Kickoff)    [ ] Anchor by Due Date (Deadline)
Kickoff Date: [ 2026-11-01 ]

Mode A: Anchor by Start Date (Kickoff)

Use this mode when work starts on a specific day and progresses forward:

  • Day 0 (Kickoff): Immediate setup tasks (e.g. create user accounts, sign contracts).
  • Day +1: Follow-up actions (e.g. hardware configuration, introductory greeting).
  • Day +7: First milestone review or check-in.

Mode B: Anchor by Due Date (Deadline)

Use this mode when you are working backward from a hard deadline (such as a product release, client event, or audit submission):

  • Final Day (Deadline): Release milestone and customer announcement.
  • 3 Days Before Deadline: Final review, sign-off, and staging checks.
  • 7 Days Before Deadline: Code freeze and preliminary testing.

All tasks with relative day offsets automatically receive realistic scheduled dates without manual calendar adjustment.

4. Saving & Sharing Your Own Custom Templates

Any active collection in your workspace can be saved as a reusable template for yourself, your project team, or your entire company—across all four collection layouts: Eisenhower Matrix, Kanban boards, MoSCoW matrices, and Checklists:

  1. Open the collection you want to turn into a blueprint.
  2. In the collection header, click the settings gear (⚙️) to open Collection Properties (or use the ... More Actions menu).
  3. Scroll to "Save as Reusable Template".
  4. Give your template a clear name, choose a category (e.g. HR & People, Product & Design, IT & DevOps, Client Projects), and enter a short description.
  5. Choose who can use the template under Template Sharing:
    • 🔒 Personal (Just Me): Only visible in your own account.
    • 👥 Project Team: Shared with everyone in a selected Project so teammates can launch consistent sprint or department boards.
    • 🏢 Company-Wide (Corp): Available to everyone in your organization—great for HR quarterly reviews, company onboarding, or product innovation canvases.
  6. Click "Save Template".

Your template appears in the Template Gallery under My Templates, Project, or Company depending on the sharing level you chose. All task checklists, notes, relative day offsets, and task linkages are saved and automatically remapped whenever someone launches a copy. You can also change a template's sharing visibility at any time right inside the Template Gallery.

NOTE

Template & Playbook Governance: By default, any team member can publish templates and company playbooks. If your company prefers to manage this centrally, an admin can turn on Restrict Template & Playbook Publishing in Corp Settings. When this setting is turned on, only Corp Admins and team members with the 'Template and Playbook Admin' role can publish or unpublish shared blueprints and playbooks.

TIP

Want practical examples of how teams use shared templates across an organization? Read our playbook: Running Team and Company-Wide Processes with Shared Templates.

5. Custom Kanban Boards & Sync Shorthands

DoneIsGood supports full customization of your Kanban workflow boards.

Choosing a Preset or Customizing Columns

In Collection Properties (⚙️), select Kanban under Board Layout & Methodology. You can pick from four standard workflow presets or tailor your own stages:

  • 3-Stage Standard: To Do → In Progress → Done
  • 4-Stage with Backlog: Backlog → To Do → In Progress → Done
  • 4-Stage with Review: To Do → In Progress → Review → Done
  • 5-Stage Full Flow: Backlog → To Do → In Progress → Review → Done
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Kanban Columns & Sync Shorthands                    [+ Add Column]     │
├────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ ▲ ▼  [Blue]    [ To Do             ]  # [ todo  ]  WIP [   ]  [ ] Done │
│ ▲ ▼  [Amber]   [ In Progress       ]  # [ wip   ]  WIP [ 3 ]  [ ] Done │
│ ▲ ▼  [Purple]  [ Quality Assurance ]  # [ qa    ]  WIP [ 2 ]  [ ] Done │
│ ▲ ▼  [Emerald] [ Done              ]  # [ done  ]  WIP [   ]  [x] Done │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Freeform Column Controls

With the freeform column editor, you can:

  • Reorder Columns: Click ▲ or ▼ to change the column order from left to right.
  • Rename Titles: Set stage names that reflect your team's real terminology (e.g., Awaiting Client, Security Review, Staging).
  • Color Themes: Assign distinct color themes (Blue, Amber, Purple, Emerald, Rose, Indigo, or Gray) to make lane boundaries clear at a glance.
  • WIP Limits: Set an optional maximum number of active tasks per column. If your team exceeds this threshold, a visual indicator alerts you to clear bottlenecks before pulling in new work.
  • Designate Done: Check Done on any stage that represents completed work. Dropping a task into a Done lane automatically marks it completed.

Tasks Sync Shorthands

When syncing tasks from Google Tasks, Microsoft To-Do, or typing quickly in the Universal Input bar, each column's shorthand token routes tasks straight to that lane:

Shorthand Token Syntax Example Where It Routes
qa [qa] Test payment checkout Routes directly to Quality Assurance
wip Fix login regression #wip Routes directly to In Progress
review col: review - Verify security audit Routes directly to In Review
backlog Draft customer release notes #backlog Routes directly to Backlog
TIP

External Tag Sync: If you tag a task in Google Tasks or Microsoft To-Do with the shorthand name (for example, adding the tag qa), DoneIsGood automatically places it into the matching Kanban column during two-way sync.

6. Task Linkages & Precedence (Blocking Dependencies)

Task Linkages let you define order-of-operation dependencies between tasks in the same collection.

  1. On any task card, open the ... (More Actions) menu and select "Add Note" or "Edit Note" (or double-click the task note preview, or double-click any task chip in Planning Studio / Time Planner).
  2. Scroll to the "🔒 Task Precedence (Blocked By)" section below the editor.
  3. Check the box next to any task that must be finished first.
  4. Click "Save Note".
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ 🔒 Task Precedence (Blocked By)           1 blocking task    │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Select tasks that must be completed before this task can begin:│
│ [x] Provision Google Workspace & Slack Account               │
│ [ ] Configure Laptop and Hardware Security Keys              │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Visual Precedence Badges

When a task has uncompleted prerequisites, it displays a clean, compact lock icon (🔒) on the task chip:

$$\text{Configure Laptop} \quad \text{🔒}$$

  • The lock icon (🔒) signals that dependencies are currently open.
  • Hover for Quick Context: Hovering over the lock icon shows the list of all blocking tasks in a tooltip.
  • Click for Full Details: Clicking the lock icon opens a clear detail window showing each prerequisite task and letting you review status or complete anyway if an offline exception occurred.
  • Once all prerequisite tasks are completed, the lock icon disappears automatically, signaling that the task is ready for execution.

Gentle Completion Guard

If someone tries to check off a blocked task prematurely, DoneIsGood displays a gentle confirmation guard:

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ 🔒 Task is waiting on dependencies                           │
│                                                              │
│ This task is waiting on "Provision Google Workspace" to be   │
│ finished first.                                              │
│                                                              │
│                   [ Keep Waiting ]   [ Complete Anyway ]     │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
  • Keep Waiting: Cancels completion and leaves the task open so you can finish the prerequisite first.
  • Complete Anyway: Gives you the flexibility to override the guard when an exceptional workaround occurred offline.

7. Putting It Together: A Real-World Walkthrough

Here is how templates, custom Kanbans, and task linkages work together in a typical engineering team sprint:

sequenceDiagram
    autonumber
    actor Team as Project Lead
    participant TG as Template Gallery
    participant Mat as Active Kanban Board
    participant Sync as Google/MS Tasks Sync

    Team->>TG: Select "Sprint Execution Board" template
    Team->>TG: Set Start Date to Monday kickoff
    TG->>Mat: Spawn active board with remapped dependencies
    Team->>Mat: Add custom column "QA Testing" with shorthand #qa
    Sync->>Mat: Incoming task "[qa] Test user signup"
    Mat->>Mat: Task routes straight into "QA Testing" column
    Team->>Mat: Complete prerequisite "Backend API deployed"
    Mat->>Mat: 🔒 Dependency badge clears on frontend test task
  1. Kick off with a Template: Select the Sprint Execution Board in the Template Gallery and choose Monday as your start date. All sprint rituals and setup items land on your board with correct initial dates.
  2. Add Custom Lanes: In Collection Properties (⚙️), add a QA Testing lane with shorthand qa and a WIP limit of 2.
  3. Capture from Any Tool: Team members send bugs from their mobile Google Tasks app tagged with [qa]. The tasks land directly in the QA Testing column on your board.
  4. Enforce Sequence: The release deployment task is linked to the sign-off task. Nobody can accidentally mark the release done without seeing the precedence guard.

8. Summary & Next Steps

  • Use Templates for Recurring Work: Save any collection as a personal, project, or company-wide template so you and your teammates can repeat the process in seconds.
  • Anchor by Kickoff or Deadline: Choose forward date offsets from your start date or backward offsets leading up to a critical delivery deadline.
  • Customize Your Board: Use freeform Kanban columns to match your exact pipeline, and assign shorthands for instant task routing.
  • Link Key Dependencies: Protect multi-step handovers with task precedence so prerequisites are never skipped.

Put This Into Practice

Master your workflow with the Eisenhower Matrix and personal AI coaching in DoneIsGood.

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