Projects and the ticket board
The Board is a shared ticket board for people and bots. Assign a ticket to a bot and it starts working, reports back in comments and moves the ticket along. A project goes further: give a lead bot a goal, approve the plan it drafts, and it works through milestones and tickets in sessions until the goal is done, within the budget and deadline you set.
Use tickets for single pieces of work. Use a project for a larger goal that takes many steps over days.
The ticket board
Open Board in the main navigation. It has one column per status:
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| To do | Not started. |
| In progress | Someone, or a bot, is working on it. |
| In review | A bot finished and a person should check the result. |
| Blocked | Stuck. A failed bot run lands here with a comment saying why. |
| Done | Finished. |
Filter the board with All, Mine or Bots, and by Priority. Long-press a ticket and drag it to another column to change its status.
Create a ticket
- In Board, tap New ticket.
- Enter a Title and Details.
- Pick a Priority: Urgent, High, Medium, Low or No priority.
- Under Assigned to, pick a bot, or leave it Unassigned.
- Turn on Needs review if a person should check the bot's work before it counts as done.
- Tap New ticket.
Bots can create, update, comment on and list tickets too, so you can also ask a bot to "plan this work on the board".
When a bot works a ticket
Assigning a bot, when you create a ticket, reassign it, or when another bot assigns it, starts a run in the ticket's own thread with the bot:
- The ticket moves to In progress.
- The bot works on it and reports in the ticket's comments.
- When the run ends, a ticket that's still open moves to In review if it needs review, otherwise to Done. The bot's reply is added as a comment.
- If the run fails, the ticket moves to Blocked, the bot comments why, and the ticket's owner gets a notification.
Commenting on a bot's ticket wakes the bot, so you can answer its questions or ask for changes right there. Moving tickets between columns by hand never wakes a bot.
The ticket sheet
Tap a ticket to open it. From the sheet you can:
- change its Status, Priority and Assigned to bot,
- assign it to yourself with Me,
- turn Needs review on or off,
- read and add Comments,
- Open the bot's thread to see the full conversation,
- Delete ticket.
Projects
A project has a goal, done criteria, a lead bot, and optionally a budget. The lead bot plans the work as milestones, each with tickets, and nothing starts until you approve the plan.
Start a project
- In Board, tap Projects (the target icon), then New project.
- Enter a Title and the Goal.
- Describe Done when: how you'll know the project is finished.
- Pick the Lead bot.
- Optionally set a Budget in dollars.
- Tap Start planning.
The lead bot drafts a plan in the project chat: milestones with tickets, who should do each one, which milestones need your sign-off, and a written plan. You get a notification when it's ready. Until you approve it, asking the bot to plan again replaces the proposed tickets.
Approve and follow along
Open the project from Board → Projects. The project screen shows:
- the status (Planning, Active, Paused, Blocked, Done or Cancelled) and, when there is one, the reason,
- Approve the plan, while a plan is waiting for you,
- Pause or Resume,
- the Goal, and spend against the Budget,
- Milestones, with tickets done out of the total and Sign off where one waits for you,
- the Plan, the Tickets and a Timeline of every run,
- Project chat, which opens the conversation with the lead bot.
Tap Approve the plan to make the project active.
How a project runs
Once the plan is approved, Casama checks every active project each minute. When nothing is already running for it, it does the next thing:
- Pause if the project has reached its budget or passed its deadline. You get a note in the project chat and a notification.
- Close finished milestones. A milestone that needs sign-off waits for you to tap Sign off.
- Start a session for up to 10 ready tickets in the current milestone, highest priority first. In a session, the lead bot works on tickets or hands them out to other bots, keeps statuses current and updates the plan.
- Wrap up. When every ticket is done, one last session checks the done criteria and marks the project Done. If the criteria aren't met, the project goes Blocked for you to decide.
The lead bot can also pause the project and ask you a question; you get a notification and the project shows Blocked until you answer in the project chat and tap Resume.
Sessions are normal runs, so the usual step and time limits apply. Every run started for the project, including ticket runs and work a bot delegates, counts toward its spend. Progress is kept in the database, so a project picks up where it left off after a server restart.
Who can do what
- Everyone in the workspace can see projects and their tickets.
- The project's owner, workspace admins and people who manage the lead bot can approve the plan, sign off milestones, pause and resume.
Limits
- The app doesn't set a project's deadline or cancel a project yet. Both are available through the API (
PATCH /v1/projects/{id}), which also changes the budget and the plan. - Ticket labels and due dates exist in the API but aren't shown on the board.