A Kanban is a Japanese workflow system. Pioneered by Taiichi Ohno at Toyota, it is popular in automotive manufacturing and software engineering.
The Kanban board is made up of 4 swim lanes.
TO-DO
IN-PROGRESS
IN-REVIEW
COMPLETED
You can assign a new job card to any lane, and then move the card through each of the swim lanes as the status of the work item changes. This allows you and your co-workers to see the current state of the overall workflow and capacity, and what tasks people need to be focusing on right now. It also enforces Quality Assurance, by making sure the job always passes through the IN-REVIEW category.
Once the job has been moved from IN-PROGRESS to IN-REVIEW its useful to assign it back to the original person who created the job, allowing them to review that it has been done correctly, before moving to COMPLETED.
Click the NEW JOB button in the top right to get started. This will open the Edit/Create Job window. You can give the job a title, a detailed description and assign to any of the following cohorts:
User/agent/employee
Customer
Specific saved vehicle
You can specify a priority for the job, either LOW, MEDIUM or HIGH. And add a specific due date, once the job passes the due date it will turn red on the board.
You can also select or create new labels. Labels are helpful to categorize your jobs by function, such as Mechanical, Administrative, Billing etc
When you hit save the job will appear in the TO-DO lane on the job board, and if a user was assigned to the job they'll receive an email alert letting them know there is a new job assigned to them that needs their attention.
When a job is started, the status should be changed from TO-DO to IN-PROGRESS. Once the job has been undertaken and is ready for QA (Quality Assurance), it can be moved to IN-REVIEW and then COMPLETED. You can then Archive the job, so it is removed from the board and placed in the ARCHIVE list. Alternatively, you can delete the job completely.