WBS — Overview
The work breakdown for your project — phases, activities, tasks and subtasks, numbered and scheduled, read through seven views on one page.
The WBS — work breakdown structure — is the programme itself. Every piece of work on the project sits in one hierarchy: Phase → Activity → Task → Subtask. Each item carries its own WBS code, a status that comes from a workflow, dates, effort and an assignee. Seven views read that same breakdown in different ways, so the planner, the site engineer and whoever runs Monday's look-ahead meeting are all working off the same records.
Open it from WBS in the project sidebar.
One Breakdown, Seven Views
There is one set of work items. What changes is how you read them. The view you pick is written into the address bar, so a link you paste into a message opens on the same view you were looking at.
| View | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Outline | The breakdown as a tree — indent guides, WBS codes, expand and collapse, drag to reorder or reparent |
| Table | The same items as a spreadsheet grid, with per-column filters and inline editing |
| Board | Columns by status, one card per item — drag a card to change its status |
| Timeline | The Gantt: bars, dependency lines, float, critical path, today marker and the baseline |
| Calendar | Month, Week or Agenda, with items spanning the days they run across |
| Lookahead | The next few days as a day strip — the short-interval, site-meeting view |
| Workload | One row per project member, allocated effort against their capacity |
Search, filters, grouping, sorting and display options live in the toolbar above all seven, so what you set up follows you as you switch.
The Hierarchy
| Type | Sits under | Can contain |
|---|---|---|
| Phase | nothing — top level only | Activity |
| Activity | Phase | Task |
| Task | Activity | Subtask, Issue |
| Subtask | Task | nothing |
| Issue | Task | nothing |
Only a Phase can sit at the top level, so an empty project starts with one. After that, the type of a new item is decided by where you put it — add an item under a Phase and you get an Activity, add one under an Activity and you get a Task.
Issues are their own module
The Issue type is the same record the Issues module owns. An issue raised here shows up on its parent task's Issues tab and in the Issues module — it does not appear in the seven WBS views. See Issues.
Where Things Happen
| You want to | Go to |
|---|---|
| Add work, reorder it, reparent it | The Outline view |
| Edit a lot of fields quickly | The Table view |
| Move work along | The Board view, or the status chip on any row |
| Commit and compare a plan | Timeline — set a baseline, then read planned against actual |
| Brief the week | Lookahead |
| See who is over-committed | Workload |
| Open the full record — tabs, dependencies, attachments | Press Space for the peek panel, or Open at the end of the row |
Press Space on a focused row to open the peek panel without leaving the view. It carries the status control, the item's key facts and its actions.
Next Steps
New to the WBS? Start with the Getting Started guide to build a breakdown from an empty project. Then:
- The Seven Views — what each view does and what you can change from it
- Work Items & WBS Codes — the hierarchy, the numbering, and the item page
- Statuses & Workflows — the five workflows and the rules that guard them
- Baselines, Dependencies & Capacity — committing a plan and reading it back