# Hand

The Hand tab is your central dashboard showing your personal work queue, ongoing conversations that require your attention and your bookmarks.

> This video will give you a good introduction of how to use the Hand and its associated features:
>
> [Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Raovt6o5fpI)

# Card Hand

In Codecks Hands are personal todo lists. They can contain any Card you want to work on, independent of project, milestone, priority — or whether you own the Card at all. That important review waiting on your feedback or a Document Card owned by a teammate can sit right next to your own tasks. You can freely drag and drop Cards to sort them in any order that you want. Like in a Card game you can think of them as your short list of Cards that are relevant right now and will be played next.

> You will generally want to tackle Cards in the order of their priority in a
> Run or in a deck, but - as we all know - priority is not always the driving
> factor for working on tasks. You might work on multiple related Cards that you
> want to handle in one go, even though not all of them might have the highest
> priority right now. Or you're at the end of the work day and you want to work
> on something short before finishing the day. Your Hand gives you quick access
> to the set of Cards that you want to work on next - whatever those are.

A Card can live in several people's Hands at the same time, so the same review or shared Document Card can be on everyone's todo list who wants to tackle it. Importantly, adding a Card to your Hand does **not** make you its owner unless it was unassigned — your Hand simply reflects what you intend to work on, regardless of who the Card belongs to. Starting progress on a Card automatically moves it to the front of your Hand.

In front of your Hand, you'll find the **done pile** which contains all your recently done Cards. As you set Cards to done, they'll be automatically moved out of your Hand into the done pile. The top of the done pile will feature the most recently done Card, but clicking on it allows you to inspect all the Cards of the pile. Below the pile you'll see a small badge showing the **number of Cards** and the **total effort** you've completed since the start of the current week — hover it for the equivalent numbers from the previous week. You may clear your done pile as you like (we recommend daily or weekly).

Your Hand has a limit of how many Cards it can contain. The minimum number is seven Cards, which represent your **top Cards**. Beyond those seven top Cards, your Hand may also contain up to 21 additional Cards (the exact setting can be customized in your organization settings). The default setting is set to 14 (7 top Cards and 7 additional slots).

The Hand icon on a Card's header reflects its Hand status at a glance:

- **Highlighted:** the Card is in **your** Hand.
- **Solid:** the Card is in somebody else's Hand, but not yours.
- **Dashed:** the Card is not in any Hand.

If a Card is in one of your seven top slots, the highlighted icon will also feature a small number specifying the exact spot.

## Hand Management

![Quick Hand View](https://manual.codecks.io/_astro/CardHand.BzSAPC1D_1dJd40.webp)

On any opened Card you can click the Hand icon at the top to open the **Quick Hand** view. This allows you to quickly inspect the relevant Hand — the Card owner's, or your own if the Card has no owner — and drop the Card into any of the slots. You may even re-arrange the order of other Cards in the Hand. You can discard Cards from the Hand by clicking the disCard action that appears when hovering over a Card or by dragging the Card into the lower "Cards not in Hand" section.

When exiting the quick view by clicking outside the panel or pressing `ESC` you will be put back right at your previous location so that you never lose context.

Selecting multiple Cards and clicking the _Hand_ bulk action will open the _quick Hand view_ with all the selected Cards being added to the view. This allows you slot in multiple Cards at once. You can even select Cards that are owned by multiple people and the quick Hand view will feature a user tab for quickly switching between the different relevant Hands. If you hold down the `CTRL/CMD` key before clicking the [Hand bulk action](https://manual.codecks.io/bulk-actions/) the quick view will be skipped and all Cards will instead be directly appended to their owner's Hand. If all the selected Cards are already in a Hand, the action will instead discard them from all their Hands without opening the quick view.

When creating a new Card you can choose to add it to the owner's Hand right away by toggling the Hand icon on top the Card-creation dialogue. The Card will be appended to the owner's Hand. This action won't be available if they don't have any open Hand slots available anymore.

> How and when exactly to do Card Hand assignments is up to your own team culture.
>
> - For teams that are using the full feature set of Codecks, your Hand will represent what you're _doing next_, whereas Cards in [Runs](https://manual.codecks.io/runs/) represent what you're _doing in one or several weeks_, and other Cards in your decks represent what you'll be _doing at some undefined point in the future, possibly never_. In this case your team might choose to plan Runs together but then handle the Hand assignments individually. Everybody picks new Cards for their Hand organically as they work through the Run.
> - You might be using a Kanban approach (talking about the process methodology here) where Cards are continuously picked from the decks directly without using any Runs. You might still be using milestones to mark important release dates but use the Hands to communicate short-term goals.
> - The Hand is also great for freelancers that might not be deeply integrated into the process model of the rest of your team. It allows you to micromanage their work queue by picking and arranging Cards directly in their Hands. This allows them to log into Codecks and already see their sorted assignment list right away without having to dig into the decks or Timeline view or necessarily learning about the overall project structure.
> - On an individual level you might choose to pick new Cards for your Hand once per week. Or you may clear out your Hand and done pile at the start of each day and then restock it with what you have planned for the day. Seeing the done pile fill up through-out the day can be super motivating!

> **Your Hand as a Focus Tool**
>
> The hand is designed to hold the next few things you plan to tackle, not everything you might theoretically work on. Keeping it small makes it easier to pick what to work on next without scanning through hundreds of backlog cards.
>
> Some teams set explicit hand limits (max 3-5 cards), others just use the visual weight as a signal. When your hand feels cluttered, it's a good prompt to finish something before adding more.

> **The Hand as Your Dashboard**
>
> The hand screen is designed to be your home base in Codecks. You see your next tasks, your current run or milestone, ongoing conversations that need your input, and due dates.
>
> We've found it's crucial for team members to quickly answer "what should I work on next?" without digging through multiple screens or filtering through hundreds of backlog cards. The hand keeps that information surfaced and organized.

## Your Conversations

![Click on this tab to see all your Codecks conversations](https://manual.codecks.io/_astro/YourConversations.CX-mwgmy_2venqt.webp)

This section gives you quick access to all the ongoing conversations (reviews, blocks and comments) that you're involved in. Your ongoing conversations will appear in this section until the conversation has been closed or you opted out of the conversation.

By toggling the **Show all** button on the right side you can see all the ongoing conversations in the project, including those that you're not currently part of. Next to it, a **Show Snoozing** button appears whenever any of your conversations is currently snoozed (see [Conversations](https://manual.codecks.io/conversations/#snoozing-conversations)). Click it to switch the list to just those snoozing conversations so you can review or wake them up.

## Your Runs

![Preview of Run section](https://manual.codecks.io/_astro/Run.ats-xti-_Z1c3jll.webp)

This section will show all Cards owned by you in all your current [Runs](https://manual.codecks.io/run/). It will show all Runs that you have access to. This depends on whether there's an overlap with the projects you have access to and the projects that are used in the Run Configuration.

The Runs are ordered as follows:

- If you own no cards, in a Run, the Run will be shown in the bottom group
- Both groups are ordered by the end date of a Run, the closer the end, the higher up it will be

For each Run, Cards will be grouped by Zone as defined by the Run's [manual order](https://manual.codecks.io/sorting/#manual-order-and-zones).

You can use drag and drop to move Cards within the section or to your Hand above.

Clicking on the Run's name will open the full Run view in the Timeline.

## Pinned Milestone

![Preview of Pinned Milestone section](https://manual.codecks.io/_astro/PinnedMs.CdYm-YaR_26anMo.webp)

You can pin any [Milestone](https://manual.codecks.io/milestones/) by opening it and looking for the pin icon 📌. Once pinned, this Milestone will show up in your Hand under the `Pinned Milestone` section. This section will show all your owned Cards of this Milestone. The Cards will be grouped according to the Milestone's [zones](https://manual.codecks.io/sorting/#manual-order-and-zones). You can use drag and drop to move Cards within the section or to your Hand above.

Use the `See full Milestone` button at the top right to manage both Zones and see all the Cards of the Milestone.

## Team Hands

Beyond the quick Hand view you can also inspect the Hands of other team members directly from the Hand tab in the **Team Hands** section. Click _manage_ to set which team member's Hand you want to see and the order in which they should appear. This gives you a quick overview of what other team members are working on right now and planning to do next. You may even change the Card order of Cards inside of your team member's Hand by simply drag and dropping Cards. Make sure to establish with your team how and when this is appropriate to do.

![Click on this button to see all your Codecks team hands](https://manual.codecks.io/_astro/TeamHands.DO7nn9A-_2lbMOb.webp)

If a Card inside a Hand is not accessible to you (e.g. it is a ghost Card - see below - or is inside a project to which you have no access), it will be shown as _inaccessible_ Card featuring the icon of our rogue figure. Accordingly your own private Cards are never shared with your team members and shown as inaccessible to your team members, even if you add it your own Hand. They will see that the Hand slot is occupied by a Card but not be able to get further information. This still relays information the information to them that you're busy with something, but not what exactly.

In addition, both your Hand as well as each Team Hand offer to pick a [Default Inbox Deck](https://manual.codecks.io/decks/#default-inbox-deck) via the button at the top right. You can always set your own Inbox Deck from your personal Hand. To set the Inbox Deck for a teammate from their Team Hand you need to be a Producer somewhere in the organization — handy for setting people up so their newly created Cards land in the right place from day one.

## Bookmarks

Bookmarks allow you to keep a shortlist of any set of Cards, even those that are not owned by you. You may use these to quickly access document Cards that you need to look up often. You can bookmark an unlimited amount of Cards and rearrange them freely by drag'n'dropping Cards into place.

A Card can be added to the bookmark list by clicking the bookmark button on the bottom right side of each opened Card. You can also bookmark new Cards right away by toggling the bookmark icon when creating a new Card.

**Ghost Cards** (see below) will always be bookmarked automatically so you won't lose them. Archiving a Card will also remove them from the bookmark tab. To retrieve archived bookmarks you can hit the "Open bookmarks in search view" at the right of the panel and include archived Cards in the search panel.

## Activity

![Click on this button to see all your Codecks activity](https://manual.codecks.io/_astro/Activity.EYs9JFxr_1PMh5E.webp)

The activity button in the left action bar allows you to inspect all your recent activity. Use the button on top of the activity list to enable/disable activity types. By default all activity types are shown. Enabling a filter will only show activities of that type. You can switch to the activity list of other team members by using the user selection box in the top right of the screen.

You can also access the activity list of an individual team member by clicking the activity icon that appears on hover in the top right corner of each Hand inside the Team Hands section.

## Your Cards

![Click on this button to see all your Codecks Cards](https://manual.codecks.io/_astro/YourCards.C0vm8rP-_3myOL.webp)

Beyond the Cards inside your Hand, you may see all Cards assigned to you throughout all visible projects and decks by clicking the button featuring your portrait on the left hand side of the Hand tab. As anywhere you can also use the shortcut `q` to access this view quickly.

## Ghost Cards

![Ghost Card](https://manual.codecks.io/_astro/GhostCards.BEaCb5ZC_Z10DNW1.webp)

If you don't specify a deck during the Card creation process, the Card becomes a private ghost Card. That means that the content of the Card is hidden from all other team members. You can't share it via comments or by passing the URL around. You can use these Cards to keep personal notes (_e.g. if you want to edit your radical design proposal before shocking the rest of the team_).

To convert a ghost Card into a regular Card, just put it into a deck. This makes the Card findable by your teammates and lets them appreciate your creation. Note that this isn't reversible: i.e once a Card is in a deck you can't turn it into a private Card anymore.

You can recognize ghost Cards by the cute ghost icon at the bottom of the Card. If you're wondering why a Card is not showing up for somebody else, making sure that you didn't create a ghost Card is a good thing to check first.