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About projects (classic)

Projects (classic) on GitHub Enterprise Server help you organize and prioritize your work. You can create classic projects for specific feature work, comprehensive roadmaps, or even release checklists. With projects (classic), you have the flexibility to create customized workflows that suit your needs.

Notes:

  • Projects, the all-new projects experience, is now available. For more information about Projects, see "About Projects."
  • You can only create a new classic project board for an organization, repository, or user that already has at least one classic project board. If you're unable to create a classic project board, create a project instead.

Classic projects are made up of issues, pull requests, and notes that are categorized as cards in columns of your choosing. You can drag and drop or use keyboard shortcuts to reorder cards within a column, move cards from column to column, and change the order of columns.

Classic project cards contain relevant metadata for issues and pull requests, like labels, assignees, the status, and who opened it. You can view and make lightweight edits to issues and pull requests within your classic project by clicking on the issue or pull request's title.

You can create notes within columns to serve as task reminders, references to issues and pull requests from any repository on your GitHub Enterprise Server instance, or to add information related to the classic project. You can create a reference card for another classic project by adding a link to a note. If the note isn't sufficient for your needs, you can convert it to an issue. For more information on converting notes to issues, see "Adding notes to a project (classic)."

Types of project boards:

  • User-owned classic project can contain issues and pull requests from any personal repository.
  • Organization-wide classic project can contain issues and pull requests from any repository that belongs to an organization. You can link up to twenty-five repositories to your organization or user-owned classic project. Linking repositories makes it easier to add issues and pull requests from those repositories to your classic project using Add cards or from the issue or pull requests sidebar. For more information, see "Linking a repository to a project (classic)."
  • Repository classic project are scoped to issues and pull requests within a single repository. They can also include notes that reference issues and pull requests in other repositories.

Creating and viewing classic projects

To create a classic project for your organization, you must be an organization member. Organization owners and people with classic project admin permissions can customize access to the classic project.

Organization owners can control the ability of organization members to create public projects and classic projects, or change the visibility of existing projects and classic projects to public. For more information, see "Allowing project visibility changes in your organization."

If an organization-owned classic project includes issues or pull requests from a repository that you don't have permission to view, the card will be redacted. For more information, see "Project (classic) permissions for an organization."

The activity view shows the classic project's recent history, such as cards someone created or moved between columns. To access the activity view, click Menu and scroll down.

To find specific cards on a classic project or view a subset of the cards, you can filter classic project cards. For more information, see "Filtering cards on a project (classic)."

To simplify your workflow and keep completed tasks off your classic project, you can archive cards. For more information, see "Archiving cards on a project (classic)."

If you've completed all of your classic project tasks or no longer need to use your classic project, you can close the classic project. For more information, see "Closing a project (classic)."

You can also disable classic projects in a repository or disable classic projects in your organization, if you prefer to track your work in a different way.

You can use GitHub's API to import a project board. For more information, see "Mutations."

Templates for classic projects

You can use templates to quickly set up a new classic project. When you use a template to create a classic project, your new board will include columns as well as cards with tips for using projects (classic). You can also choose a template with automation already configured.

TemplateDescription
Basic kanbanTrack your tasks with To do, In progress, and Done columns
Automated kanbanCards automatically move between To do, In progress, and Done columns
Automated kanban with reviewCards automatically move between To do, In progress, and Done columns, with additional triggers for pull request review status
Bug triageTriage and prioritize bugs with To do, High priority, Low priority, and Closed columns

For more information on automation for projects (classic), see "About automation for projects (classic)."

Further reading