Projects, issues, and sprints

A project is a labeled flight case: everything Northwind Studio needs for one delivery travels together, from the brief and raw-file links to the final bug and client review. The project key is stenciled on the outside, so nobody mistakes NWF-12 for somebody else’s job.

Create a project

Open Work → Projects and select New project. Start blank or pick one of 15 templates — search them or filter by category:

Category	Templates
Product & engineering	Software development (scrum with sprints), Bug tracking, Mobile app, Website project
Creative & marketing	Video production, Marketing campaign, Product launch, Brand & design, Content calendar
Client work	Client onboarding, Event planning, Construction & interiors
Operations & people	Hiring pipeline, Employee onboarding, IT & help desk

A template can set up its own board columns (with WIP limits), coloured labels, custom fields, starter issues with checklists, sprints, docs such as a project brief, board automations, and — for IT & help desk — the service desk. On the details step, switch any of these off, choose the sprint length, and decide whether starter issues get due dates spread between the start and target dates.

Give the project a name and a short uppercase key. The key becomes the prefix for issue numbers, such as NWF-12. Choose an icon and color, optionally connect a client organization, name the project lead, set start and target dates, and add members.

Members join the project channel and receive a notification. New projects are private by default — untick Private project to let the whole team find it. A private project is visible only to its members and workspace admins; its board, channel, documents, service-desk tickets, reports, and search results follow that access boundary. Team-visible projects can be joined from the project page.

Project members can be Admin or Member. Project admins manage settings, membership, and service-desk configuration. Workspace admins retain administrative access.

Tip: Maya can connect the project to the client organization at creation time. The organization then shows the project in its own Projects tab, keeping sales history and delivery work linked.

Tour the project

Every project can expose these tabs:

• Overview: status totals, overdue work, due-soon work, active-sprint progress, epic progress, workload, upcoming meetings, and recent activity.
• Board: the project’s customizable kanban.
• Backlog: unscheduled issues and planned or active sprints.
• Issues: a filterable issue list.
• Service desk: customer request types, workflows, queue, reports, and portal settings when enabled.
• Chat: the project channel and its huddle.
• Meetings, Docs, Files, People & settings: the rest of the working room.

Use the project list’s By membership view to separate your projects from the rest, or By organization to see the client hierarchy. Archived projects can be shown separately.

Build issues that explain the work

Select Create issue from any project tab. Zoabase supports Task, Story, Bug, Epic, and Sub-task types. An issue can carry a status, priority, assignee, reporter, labels, story points, start and due dates, sprint, epic, markdown description, members, and watchers.

Open an issue from a board, list, Home, search result, or issue link. Zoabase uses a universal detail drawer: a URL such as ?task=NWF-12 can open the same issue over the current page. That keeps Priya’s place while she edits dates, changes priority, adds an attachment, or checks the history.

The drawer also supports:

• Comments with reactions and attachments.
• Multiple checklists; checklist items may have assignees and due dates.
• File and link attachments, plus color or image covers.
• Sub-tasks with visible progress.
• Linked support tickets.
• Full history of changes.
• Move, copy, share, watch, archive, and delete actions.

An epic groups larger work and reports the completion of its children. A sub-task belongs beneath another issue. Points are estimates used in sprint totals and progress, not time logs.

Tip: Write “Client review — rough cut” as a Story, put frame-specific fixes beneath it as Sub-tasks, and reserve a Bug for something demonstrably wrong, such as broken audio sync.

Plan the backlog and sprints

The backlog separates unscheduled issues from sprint work. Create a sprint with a name, goal, start date, and end date, then drag or move issues into it. Starting a sprint makes it active and moves its backlog-status issues into To do.

The project board can focus on the active sprint while the backlog remains the planning bench. Progress uses both issue counts and story points. When completing a sprint, choose where unfinished work should go: carry it to another sprint or return it to the backlog. Completed work stays with the completed sprint for reporting.

Only one sprint is active at a time within the relevant sprint scope. The separate Sprints destination provides a wider planning view, while the project Backlog keeps attention on one delivery.

Use the project channel

Each project receives a channel. Open Chat inside the project or find it in the communication sidebar. Members can post, thread, share files, attach artifacts, and start a huddle there. Project creation and meeting changes can add system messages, giving the channel a readable delivery trail.

The channel is not a substitute for issue state. Let conversation carry nuance; let issues carry ownership, dates, status, and history.

Read the overview

The Overview answers “Are we on track?” before a status meeting begins. Review open, done, overdue, and due-this-week counts; scan the status bar; inspect the active sprint; and open epics to see child progress. Workload shows how issues are distributed. Upcoming meetings and recent activity explain what is about to happen and what just changed.

For Northwind Studio, Priya can see that the film is 70% complete, Arjun owns most remaining points, two items are overdue, and the client review is tomorrow. That is a useful story before anyone opens a spreadsheet.

Heads up: Changing an issue’s status outside the board clears its pin to a specific custom column. It will appear in the first column mapped to that status the next time the board resolves it.