Features

Everything a small team needs. Nothing it doesn't.

Open-source Kanban where every row is an entity and every move is on the record — self-hosted, no subscriptions, no per-seat math. Here's the whole surface area.

board · card detail

Visiban Software Team board with a card's detail panel open beside it — description, assignee, due date, priority, labels, and custom fields

Built for daily use

The parts you'll only notice by their absence

A board you're in for hours a day shouldn't fight you. These exist to remove the small taxes — a reload, a mouse trip, a dead scroll to find what changed. See every release →

Light theme

Full Light / Dark / System theme support, so the board matches your setup instead of fighting it. System follows your OS appearance live.

Command palette (⌘K)

Jump to any board, search cards, and run board actions without leaving the keyboard or hunting through menus.

Keyboard shortcuts

Full board-chrome coverage with an in-app reference (?) and platform-aware hints — stay in flow instead of reaching for the mouse.

Live activity drawer

A real-time feed of card moves, creations, and member events, so you catch what changed without asking around. Toggle with ⌘\.

Real-time group boards

Boards created, renamed, deleted, or moved appear live on the group page — no reload, no stale list.

Card peek

Hover a card for an instant read-only preview of its description, checklist progress, and last activity — check status without opening and closing the panel.

Card activity timeline

Moves, field changes, comments, checklist events, and attachments in one paginated feed — the full story of a card in one place, useful for incident retrospectives and disputes alike.

Filter chips & shareable links

Active filters render as dismissible chips and serialize to the URL, so a filtered view is a link you can hand to a teammate; saved filters become one-click preset tabs.

Card density

Comfortable / Standard / Dense tiers control how much metadata each card face shows — pack more onto a busy board, or keep a small one uncluttered.

Expiring share links

Set a TTL — Never / 7 / 30 / 90 days — on public board share links, so a link shared for one review doesn't stay open forever. Expired links return 410 Gone.

Mobile & tablet navigation

A drawer-based navigation affordance for viewports too narrow for the full board grid, so a status check from a phone doesn't mean squinting at the desktop layout.

Export audit log

Track who exported each board, and restrict exports to a minimum role per board — visibility into where board data leaves the instance.

See it · Use it · Learn from it · Set it up

A guided tour

The board — what you'll see

Construction board with four status columns and three job-site swimlanes; each swimlane shows its project manager, region, and phase, and cards show due dates, labels, pinned fields, and red blocked markers — **Swimlane Kanban grid**Four status columns, three job sites, every open issue on one screen. Each row carries its own fields — project manager, region, phase — and cards show their due dates, labels, pinned fields, and a red marker when something blocks them.

Card detail for Framing inspection, level 2: assignee, due date, priority, labels, three custom fields (subcontractor, permit number, permit portal link), weight, and a Blocked by relation — **Card detail panel**Assignee, due date, priority, labels, typed custom fields, weight, and relations in one panel, opened over the board — here a framing inspection blocked by a delayed steel delivery.

A card's Activity tab filtered to column moves: created in Backlog, then moved to In Progress, Review, and Done, each with who moved it and how long it spent there — **Movement audit trail**Every column and swimlane change, recorded automatically — who, from where, to where, and how long it stayed. Survives renames and deletes.

Sales Territory (Overlay) board: each account swimlane lists its team and region as row fields, deal cards show pinned values, and the open card lists its custom fields — deal value, forecast, win probability, expected close, and overlay products — **Custom fields on cards and swimlanes**Typed fields where a label isn't enough. Each account row carries its own team and coverage, each deal pins its key values to the card face, and the card panel holds the rest — a currency amount, a dropdown, a percentage, a date, a multi-select.

Construction board with the Framing inspection, level 2 card open: its Relations section shows it is blocked by Structural steel delivery delayed, and on the board the card carries a red blocked marker, as does Concrete pour schedule with a count of 2 — **Card relations**Mark a card blocked by, blocking, or related to another. A blocked card carries a red marker on the board — with a count when more than one card is in the way — so what's stuck shows up while you scan a column.

Daily workflow — what you'll do

Software Team board with three cards selected in the In Progress column across two swimlanes, and the bulk action toolbar showing Move to, Assign to, Priority, Archive, and Delete — **Bulk actions**Select cards across columns and swimlanes, then move, assign, set priority, archive, or delete in one action. Selection persists across scroll.

Sales Territory (Overlay) board focused on the Granite Peak Energy swimlane, with the other account swimlanes collapsed to per-column card counts — **Swimlane focus mode**Focus one swimlane to expand it and collapse the rest to per-column card counts — ideal for standups and single-customer reviews.

Insights — what you'll learn

Analytics view of a ten-swimlane board: a heatmap of card age per stage and swimlane, flagged high or warning against the stale threshold, with a stalled-card table below — **Analytics dashboard**How long cards sit in each stage, per swimlane, as a heatmap flagged against your stale threshold — plus a stalled-card table sorted by time stuck.

Summary view of Sales Territory (Overlay): for each account swimlane, its card count, stage distribution, 7- and 30-day velocity, and 30-day active, done, and average cycle time — **Summary view**Card counts, stage distribution, and 7- / 30-day velocity per swimlane — built for weekly standups and pipeline reviews.

Getting started — how easy setup is

New board dialog with ten built-in templates — Sales Pipeline, Customer Support, Customer Success, Simple Kanban, Product Roadmap, Project Delivery, Content Production, Hiring & Recruiting, Legal & Compliance, Infrastructure & DevOps — plus a blank board — **Board templates**10 templates plus a blank board — Sales Pipeline, Customer Support, Product Roadmap and more — each pre-seeded with columns and a swimlane label.

Site Administration settings: registration mode (Open, Invite-only, Closed) and a file uploads toggle, with Users, Invite Links, and Board Invites in the side menu — **Site admin panel**Manage users, toggle registration mode, deactivate accounts, and force resets — no shell access for day-to-day ops.

Import from Trello, step 2 of 2: counts of the columns, cards, labels, members, checklists, checklist items, comments, and attachments to be imported, and a table mapping each Trello list to a column — **Import from Trello**Upload a Trello JSON export and review it before anything is created — a count of everything coming over, from cards and labels to checklists and comments, and each Trello list mapped to a column.

The full list

Every capability, by area

Board

Swimlane Kanban grid

Columns on the X-axis, customer/team swimlanes on the Y. Each cell is a droppable zone, and a board can have as many columns and swimlanes as your work needs.

Custom fields on swimlanes

Typed fields that belong to the row, not any one card — an owner, a region, a renewal date — pinned right in the swimlane's label column. Admin-only by default, so a sensitive row-level value never reaches members or viewers.

10 templates plus a blank board

Sales Pipeline, Customer Support, Product Roadmap, Hiring, Legal, DevOps and more — each pre-seeded with columns and a swimlane label, or start from a blank board.

Drag-and-drop

Move cards between cells with optimistic updates and automatic rollback on failure.

WIP & weight limits

Set a card-count and a numeric-budget limit per column. When enforced, over-limit moves return a structured error — admins can override in one click.

Collapsible swimlanes

Collapse a lane to hide its cards and reclaim vertical space, with a count badge for what's hidden.

Default board

Mark any board as default — after login you land there directly instead of the board list.

Issue Board Lens Experimental

Point a board at a public GitHub or GitLab repo and pivot its issues into columns and swimlanes — a two-axis view native issue boards don't give you. Live and read-only: no sync, no write-back. Off by default.

Cards

Rich text descriptions

Click-to-edit with a toolbar: bold, italic, code, lists, headings, blockquote, color. Stored as markdown.

@mentions

Type @username to pick a board member; they're notified instantly. Re-editing a mention doesn't re-notify.

Detail fields

Title, priority, assignee, labels, due date, weight, checklist, comments, and attachments — all in one side panel.

Custom fields on cards

Track what a label can't — a deal value, a region, a contract link. Up to 30 typed fields per board (text, number, date, dropdown, multi-select, checkbox, URL), with up to 2 pinned to the card face so the values that matter show without opening the card.

Card relations

Mark a card blocked by, blocking, or related to another. A blocked card carries a red indicator on the board, so what's stuck is visible while you scan a column — no need to open anything.

Movement audit trail

Every move recorded with who, from where, to where, and when. Powers dwell time and stalled-card detection.

Archiving

Archive instead of delete — cards leave the board but restore any time. Analytics use the archive timestamp as the terminal event.

Search & filters

Server-side full-text search with a 300 ms debounce, plus filters for assignee, priority, label, due date, and custom fields. State persists.

Labels

Create color-coded labels per board and apply several to a card for grouping and filtering.

Bulk actions

Select many cards and move, assign, set priority, archive, or delete in one action.

Stable UIDs

Every entity carries a permanent 16-character hex UID — safe to reference in integrations and scripts after renames.

Collaboration

Real-time sync

All mutations broadcast instantly via WebSockets, deferred to transaction commit — no stale state.

Online presence

See who's currently viewing the board in the top-right of the toolbar.

Notifications

For assignments, @mentions, due dates, card moves, and comments. Each trigger toggles independently.

Card comments

Threaded comments visible to collaborators and above. Authors and admins delete with two-stage confirmation.

Organization

Groups & sub-groups

Nest boards in a hierarchy. Role inheritance flows from parent groups to children automatically.

RBAC

Four roles — Admin, Member, Collaborator, Viewer — with strict boundaries, plus a site-admin flag for instance access.

Group Admin cascade

Group Admin grants board-admin on every board in the group — the recommended role for team leads.

Invite links

Named, shareable join links per group with their own role and optional expiry (1/7/30 days). Up to five active.

Starred favorites

Star boards and groups to pin them in the sidebar under Favorites.

Administration

Site admin panel

A built-in /admin for instance owners: manage users, toggle registration, deactivate accounts, force resets.

Registration modes

Open, invite-only, or fully closed — switchable from the admin panel without a redeploy.

OAuth & OIDC login

Google, GitHub, or GitLab via allauth, plus any generic OIDC provider — Keycloak, Okta, Authentik, or your own — alongside password auth. Providers are optional per instance.

API rate limiting

300 req/hr anonymous, 5,000 req/hr authenticated. User search separately capped to prevent enumeration.

Settings

Locale preferences

Date, time (12/24h), and number format (US/European/Indian) applied to due dates, timestamps, and analytics.

Theme

System, Dark, or Light — applied immediately and persisted in localStorage.

Notification preferences

Enable or disable individual triggers, enforced server-side — disabled triggers are never sent.

Security

Change your password and manage linked OAuth providers from Settings → Security.

Data

Export to CSV / JSON

Full board export including cards, comments, checklists, and movement history.

Import from file

Load a JSON or CSV export into a new board. Accepts lowercase/snake_case headers so external files import cleanly.

Import from Trello

Leave Trello without retyping a board. Upload its JSON export, review a preview — pick which labels become swimlanes and whether archived lists come along — and Visiban builds a new board with the lists, cards, labels, checklists, and comments.

Analytics view

Average time in each stage per swimlane, computed from movement history, with cells flagged once they reach the board's stale threshold, plus a stalled-card list.

Summary view

Card counts and 7- / 30-day velocity per swimlane — useful for weekly standups.

Infrastructure

Docker Compose

Single-command dev and prod. Postgres 17, Valkey 8, daphne ASGI, Nginx; prod adds Let's Encrypt TLS.

Kubernetes / Helm

Official chart with configurable ingress, TLS, external Postgres/Valkey, OIDC SSO, and persistent media.

Health checks

Liveness and readiness probes at /api/health/ for Kubernetes.

OpenAPI spec

OpenAPI 3.0 schema at /api/schema/ with Swagger UI and ReDoc; CI validates on every backend change.

Security hardening

MIME-validated uploads, formula-injection-safe CSV exports, loopback-only admin, CORS guard in production.

MCP server

Let an AI agent work your board on your behalf. An open protocol endpoint at /mcp — any Streamable HTTP MCP client (Claude Desktop, Claude.ai, or a custom agent) can read boards and cards, and with a scoped Personal Access Token, create, move, and update them. Same roles and permission checks as the REST API. Off by default.

Ready to see it on your own board?

Self-host in under ten minutes, or explore the live demo.

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