GreenHopper Tip of the Month: How To Indicate you are Waiting

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Here are 3 ways to indicate you are waiting on other work to be done before you start working on your task.
Say you need to update a page, but are waiting on your designer to give you the polished images, or you are waiting for your PM to get the wireframes approved before you start development, how do you indicate to the rest of your team that an issue is waiting on someone else before you can take action? Check out these 3 options to indicate ‘waiting’ on your GreenHopper board:
Start by configuring your board
For all 3 options, you need to go to the Configure page. To get there, go to your board, and under the Tools menu, click Configure:

OK, we’re ready to change our board…
Option 1: Add a “Waiting” swimlane
Here you’ll simply add a label to any issue that you are waiting on. The swimlane will only appear when issues on your board have that label:
- Click the “Swimlane” tab
- Base Swimlane on “Queries”
- Name the Swimlane “Waiting”,
- Add labels = “waiting”
- Click Add

Now any time you want to indicate that a story is in Waiting, simply edit the labels field on that issue to include “waiting”.

Option 2: Change card color
- Click the “Card Colours” tab
- Base card colours on “Queries”
- Choose your colour
- Add labels = “waiting”
- Click Add

Just like the swimlane, any time you want to indicate that a story is in Waiting, simply add a “Waiting” label.

Option 3 (admins only): Add a “Waiting” column
In the “Swimlane” and “Card Colour” example, we added a “Waiting” label. For option 3, we’ll add a “Waiting” status to the workflow, and move issues in and out of that status.
- First, configure your workflow to add a new status and step
- Head back to GreenHopper to configure your board
- Click the “Column” tab
- Then click the “Add Column” button
- Name the column “Waiting”,
- Drag and drop the column to a point where it makes sense in your flow

Share your ideas
What are some other ways to indicate that you are waiting on someone else before you can take action on an issue? Share in the comments below.
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