Overview
A board is a planning surface that groups work for delivery. Boards pull items from approved containers, assign approved resources, and organize work into time-boxed cycles.
Boards are commonly used to represent sprints, releases, quarterly plans, or project phases. Every board must have at least one cycle.
Board settings
Board configuration is split across five tabs under Settings:
| Tab | Purpose |
|---|
| Detail | Name, description, budget, and board-level toggles |
| Access | Role-based permissions for user groups |
| Resource | The pool of user groups whose members can be assigned work |
| Container | Which containers can send items to the board |
| Cycle | Create and manage the board’s cycles |
Detail
The Detail tab captures the board’s identity and high-level controls.
- Name — the display name shown in board lists and navigation
- Description — a rich-text summary of the board’s purpose
- Budget — hours allocated across all cycles (see Budget tracking below)
- Locked — prevents any changes to the board or its cycles
- Archived — hides the board from default views while preserving its data
- Deleted — soft-deletes the board and all of its cycles
Deleting a board also deletes all of its cycles. This cannot be undone from the UI.
Budget tracking
Every board has a budget expressed in hours. The budget is not edited directly — instead, you apply incremental changes that are recorded as an audit trail.
Changing the budget
Click Edit next to the budget value to open the budget change form. Each change captures:
| Field | Description |
|---|
| Change hours | The number of hours to add or subtract |
| Reason code | Why the budget changed — selected from your tenant’s budget reason codes |
| Initials | The initials of the person authorizing the change |
Reason codes
Every budget change requires a reason code — for example, scope increase, new requirement, or client request. Reason codes are configured at the tenant level under Finance and shared across all boards.
The budget audit trail feeds into profitability and scope-tracking reports. Use descriptive reason codes so the history is meaningful months later.
Access control
The Access tab sets board-level permissions by assigning roles to user groups. Three roles control what users can do:
| Role | Permission |
|---|
| View | Can view the board and interact with its data |
| Manage | Can perform any operation within the board — edit cycles, approve time, change settings |
| Plan | Can send work to the board — assign items to cycles |
New boards default to granting all three roles to the “Everyone” group. Restrict access after creation to lock down who can view, manage, and plan work.
Approved resources
The Resource tab defines which user groups form the board’s resource pool. Only members of selected groups can be assigned to work on items within the board’s cycles.
Resources in Ekso can be:
- Users — specific people from the approved groups
- Job roles — placeholder roles like “Senior Developer” or “QA Engineer” used for capacity planning before specific people are assigned
The board manager selects which resources are available for each cycle from this approved pool. Different cycles can have different teams, which is useful when team composition changes between sprints or project phases.
Approved containers
The Container tab determines which containers can send work to the board. Only items from approved containers can be planned into the board’s cycles.
This keeps the board focused on the work it is responsible for delivering. For example, a “Q3 Launch” board might approve the “Next-gen App” and “Support Desk” containers but not “Consulting Services.”
Cycles
The Cycle tab lists all cycles belonging to the board, showing each cycle’s name, description, budget, start date, and finish date. Cycles can be viewed as releases, phases, iterations, sprints, or milestones — the terminology is flexible.
From this tab you can create new cycles and open existing ones for editing. For full details on cycle configuration and lifecycle, see Cycles.
Board vs. list
Containers can be viewed as a flat list or organized into boards. The key differences:
| List view | Board view |
|---|
| Cycles | Not required | At least one cycle required |
| Resources | No resource allocation | Approved resource list |
| Constraints | Basic field constraints | Additional constraints (job role, costs, SKU, time logs, containers) |
| Financial insights | Not available | Cycle-level financial visibility |
| Budget | Not available | Hours budget with change tracking |
| Access control | Container-level | Board-level roles (View, Manage, Plan) |
