Workflows, stages, and tasks
What a workflow, stage, and task are, and how a task moves through a workflow.
Cadence runs your work as tasks that move through the stages of a workflow. Before you configure your own, it helps to know what each of those words means.
Task
A task is one unit of work. It has a title and a body, a priority, and a type, and
it carries the state of that work as it progresses. Every task is addressed by a
KEY-N id — its space's key, a hyphen, and a number, such as OPS-42 — which
never changes once the task is created.
A task always sits on exactly one stage of one workflow. Where it sits is what "how far along" means.
Workflow and stage
A workflow is an ordered set of stages, and a stage is one step the work passes
through — Backlog, In progress, In review, Done. A new task enters a
workflow on its default stage. A task moved in from another workflow lands on its
new workflow's default stage, or on a stage you name. It then moves from one stage
to the next as the work advances.
Moving a task from one stage to another is a transition. A transition is not always allowed: a stage can carry rules that gate entry — a check that must have passed, a property that must be set — and the transition is refused until they are met. This is how a workflow enforces that work is not called done before it is.
Stage group
Stages are arranged into stage groups — the columns, or lanes, you see in the workflow's board view. A stage group is a heading over a run of stages; it groups them for display and ordering. Stages within a group have an order, and the group itself has a position in the workflow.
Workflow and board view
The workflow is the thing you configure: its stages, their order, their rules, and whether rules may move tasks on their own. The board view is how the web interface draws a workflow — one column per stage group, with each task shown as a card on its current stage. Opening a workflow in the browser shows its board view. Changing how a column is drawn changes nothing about the workflow itself.
How a task moves
A task moves through a workflow one transition at a time. Each move is either made by a person or an agent — assigning the task, calling a transition — or, where you have configured the workflow for it, made automatically by a rule.
The reference pages describe each piece: Tasks for the task lifecycle, Workflows and stages for the structure, and Stage rules for what gates and drives a move. For the honest account of which moves happen without a person and which still need one, read What moves a task without a person.