Story / Epic support via linked tasks

[Wastus]

I'm coming from a scrum background so I'm used to having a story or epic which requires several tasks to be completed and that the tasks are linked to one story.

This is in our tool visually helped by the fact that stories and tasks are grouped together horizontally and then vertically. (In that tool you have to create a folder (a story binder) and place everything belonging to that story in that folder for this to work)

So for example story "Implement Awesome Feature" needs "Create architecture", "Implement class Awesome", "Unit Tests for Awesome" and "Write Documentation". And the story "Fix Security Issues" needs "Remove Backdoor", "Implement better Backdoor" and "Write Press Release".

This would look like:

Story                     | Todo                      | In Progress             | Done
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Implement Awesome Feature | Unit Tests for Awesome    | Implement class Awesome | Create Architecture
                          | Write Documentation       |                         |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fix Security Issues       | Implement better Backdoor | Remove Backdoor         |   
                          | Write Press Release       |                         |

Currently I'm using tags and the search to view one story and the linked tasks, but there is already the relation section (which I'm not clear about what it is good for), so I'd love to be able to say "this is a task for story "Implement Awesome Feature"" and get an automatic sorting with some visual separation between stories.

I know there are sub-tasks, but those aren't suited for tasks where multiple people are involved.

[basementuniverse]

This is a good suggestion, and while I haven't been able to implement swimlanes or epics/stories in the current version, I hope to implement something along these lines in the near future.

The Kanbn CLI app actually already supports swimlanes (plus custom filter columns and multiple board views - see here: https://github.com/basementuniverse/kanbn/blob/master/docs/index-structure.md#views), but it's yet another feature that I haven't exposed in the vscode-extension. It's on my roadmap for the next version though.

In the meantime, I have added some features that might help you get a little bit closer to the requested functionality:

1. We can add custom fields in the project options - trying adding the following to the top of your index.md:

   ---
   customFields:
     - name: Story
       type: string
   ---

   This allows Kanbn to sort and search using a custom field called 'Story'.
2. Now, you can add the custom field to any of your task files (.kanbn/tasks/*.md), e.g.:

   ---
   Story: Implement Awesome Feature
   ---

3. This field should now display on each task card. You can also search on this field using story:<search-term>. When you view or edit the task in the Task Editor, you should see a text input for this field allowing you to edit it easily.

I realise this is essentially no different than using tags, but by doing the above you can at least have a separate field on each task dedicated to the story/epic name. Then, once I've added swimlanes, you'll be able to define a lane for each story.

Also, just to clear up any confusion, the Relations section is for adding links to other tasks. If, for example, one task is blocking another or depends on another task, you can add a Relation that says blocks my-other-task. Eventually I want to use Relations to create a timeline view with basic dependency resolution to automatically re-order and schedule tasks... but that's a plan for the next next version 😉