Discourse Boards is a core-bundled plugin that enables users to organize topics and tasks into customizable, drag-and-drop kanban boards. The tool supports per-board access controls, configurable columns, and syncs with topic metadata like tags, categories, assignments, and status mcwumbly. While initially experimental and requiring opt-in via “Upcoming changes,” it is now available on Business and Enterprise plans. Users have noted that for self-hosted instances, the plugin may require a recent update to be visible, and admins can manage its availability via the “installed plugins” page nathank, mcwumbly.
Community feedback highlights both excitement and usability gaps. Early users questioned how to discover boards, as the default navigation is limited to typing /boards. Admins suggested adding sidebar links, but this raised concerns about clutter for sites not using boards publicly Andrew_Rowe, putty. In response, developers are working on a conditional sidebar link that only appears if a user has access to or can create boards AlonH, mcwumbly, martin. A recent PR addresses visibility for users who prefer to hide the button martin.
Feature requests and bug fixes were also discussed. Users asked for more than four columns and clarified that hovering over empty board space reveals a plus button to add columns jenmck, martin. Issues with editing board titles and accidental modal closures during form entry were acknowledged, with improvements to form handling suggested jenmck, martin, jenmck. Advanced integration requests include syncing board columns with custom assignment statuses (e.g., “Solved”) and automating topic-to-card creation based on tags or categories Mid. Overall, the plugin is praised for streamlining feedback and project tracking, with ongoing efforts to refine discoverability and core customization options.
Discourse Boards lets you organize topics and standalone cards into configurable, drag-and-drop kanban boards[1] with per-board access control.
Install Guide
This plugin is bundled with Discourse core. There is no need to install the plugin separately.
Discourse Boards allows you to organize topics and tasks on visual boards that you can use for anything from sharing your product roadmap with your community to collaborating on projects with your team or specific groups that you choose.
Each board can be configured with its own columns, constraints, and access controls. Boards can be made public or private to specific groups and individuals.
Card can be backed by topics or standalone as lightweight cards and can be dragged and dropped to reorder them within a column or moved between columns.
Discourse Boards is available on the Business or Enterprise plans.
Roadmaps
Order cards by priority to rank features (suggested → planned → shipped), and let members like/comment on the underlying request topics.
Team collaboration
Turn a category (or tag-filtered set of topics) into a kanban workflow for collaboration among specified groups and individuals like To do → In progress → Done, dragging topics through stages.
Standalone task lists
Create floater cards for quick items that don’t warrant a forum topic — an idea, a chore, a back-burner note — with assignees so a team knows who owns what.
Features
Purpose-built board UI: create and configure boards in-app at /boards, no theme component or code required.
Topic-backed cards: any topic can become a card. Card title, tags, position, and even category/status stay in sync with the topic.
Standalone cards: create standalone cards (title, notes, tags, assignee) that don’t need a topic behind them.
Drag-and-drop: move cards between columns and reorder them within priority-sorted columns, with horizontal auto-scroll while dragging.
Automatic column rules: bind a column to a tag so matching topics flow into it automatically, and configure “Move to” actions (change category, assign/unassign, open/close) that update the topic when a card lands there.
Flexible sorting: each column sorts manually by priority (drag order) or by recency (recently active first).
Board constraints: scope a board to specific categories and/or tags. Out-of-scope topics never auto-appear, and constraint changes preview how many cards would be removed.
Per-board access control lists (ACLs): grant view, edit, or manage per user or group (the same access-control system used for categories), including optional anonymous view.
Topic integration: an Add to board button on topics and clickable board-membership pills that jump straight to the card.
Live updates: boards update in real time when changes are made by others.
Assign & status awareness: assignees (via the Assign plugin) and open/closed status render on cards and re-sync when they change.
Oneboxes: board and card URLs expand into rich oneboxes in posts.
Keyboard shortcuts: navigate, open, and even move cards without touching the mouse.
Board: a collection of columns and cards, with its own URL (/boards/<slug>/<id>), access list, and optional category/tag constraints.
*Column: a stage in a board. Columns can have an icon, a color, a tag binding, a sort order, and optional “move to” actions.
Card: an item in a column. Topic cards mirror a Discourse topic, floater cards are standalone (title, notes, tags, assignee) with no topic behind them.
Constraints: restricting a board to specific categories and/or tags. Topics outside the constraints won’t auto-appear.
ACLs: Per-board access control. View, edit, or manage, granted per user/group (a similar access-control system to the one used for categories).
Getting started
Go to Admin > Plugins, find Boards, and enable the plugin.
Drag & drop moves cards between columns and reorders them (in priority-sorted columns). Moving a topic card to a column whose move-to actions change category/tags/status/assignee will update the topic itself.
If a moved topic would violate the board’s category/tag constraints, you’ll be prompted to apply a constraint fix (choose a permitted category/tag).
If the board’s Require confirmation setting is on, moves that trigger a topic change ask for confirmation first.
Every board a topic lives within appears as a pill on the topic; click it to jump straight to the card.
Configuring columns
Open a column’s settings to set:
Title, icon, color: Choose a preset swatch or any hex color
Tag: Topics tagged with this tag appear in this column (and move with it)
Default sort: Priority (manual drag order) or Recency (recently-active first)
Advanced: Move to category, Assign to…, Status (open/close) automatically applied to the topic of any topic card that lands in this column
Managing boards
The board’s settings let you rename, change constraints, style, and access, and delete. Tightening constraints warns you how many existing topic-cards will be removed (with a constraint preview before you save).
How topic card sync works
If a board has constraints, matching topics are automatically represented as cards, one card per matching tagged column.
Removing the tag, or moving the topic out of scope, removes its card(s) automatically.
Manually placed cards in untagged columns are preserved as long as no tagged column matches.
Assignments (via the Assign plugin) and topic status changes are reflected on the board.
Access control
Who can create and manage boards is set by boards_manage_board_allowed_groups (default: admins & moderators).
Each board has its own ACL: view, edit, manage. For example, grant a group view for read-only visibility, edit to move cards, and manage to reconfigure the board. Anonymous users can only ever get view.
Boards can be shared publicly by granting the anonymous group view (if your site allows anonymous browsing), otherwise board readers must match the ACL.
Note: moving a topic card performs edits on the topic itself (category, tags, status, assign) and requires the actor to have the corresponding topic permissions; assigning requires the Assign plugin and can_assign.
Keyboard shortcuts
On /boards: h/l navigate board cards. On a board: h/l move between columns, j/k move between cards, Enter opens a card, Esc clears. Shift+h/Shift+l move a card to the adjacent column; Shift+j/Shift+k reorder within its column.
Settings
Name
Description
boards_enabled
Enable the Boards plugin across the site. Disabled by default.
boards_manage_board_allowed_groups
Groups allowed to create, manage, and delete boards (access to the “New board” button and board settings). Defaults to admins and moderators; administrators are always included.
Did you update after the announcement? The development of 2026.9 started 11 days ago, but boards was added 4 days ago. So there is a chance you are on a version of 2026.9 without boards. If you updated recently, you should be able to find it in the upcoming changes.
Thanks a lot for the response. Indeed, I might have been too fast posting my question, and making a new update in my instance will likely solve it thanks again
This is an amazing new feature. I’ve just installed and began to play around so lots of new features to explore but this could really be a game changer.
One question or really just what do other folks do to provide user access to the boards? Maybe a cool sidebar block. I realize I can add a link in the menu but it seems like this could be somehow surfaced in some interesting ways
Though it is an interesting idea I think to have something like the Categories sidebar block, which would let a user configure which boards they see over here easily:
I am LOVING this so far! It’s completely opened up so many possibilities for our forum. THANK YOU!!!
Couple bits of feedback:
Could we pretty please have more than 4 columns?
When I create a board and need to go back and edit the board’s title, nothing happens - the original title stays the same, the only way to fix is to delete the board and start over
When I’m making a column (or a new board), the modal disappears if I click outside the modal - this can be frustrating when I am trying to click on the last option in a drop-down menu. This happened to me a few times when I was trying to select from a list of tags, so I had to start all over and create the columns again.
Just a nice to have - it would be neat if I could choose from my uploaded icons, or select from different icon packs.
You can do this by clicking into the title of the “Board settings” modal:
Ah yeah this is quite annoying…I think it’s a general problem with forms in modals for us. Might be a good addition to FormKit (our form tooling) to ask if you are done when closing a modal with a modified/unfinished form in it.
Oh?!? When I had 4 columns, there wasn’t a plus button to the right of the 4th column and I couldn’t figure out how to add another - is there a different way to do it that I missed? That’s very exciting news!
I was doing that, but the board title still wasn’t changing, even after refreshing. I’ll try to see if I can reproduce again, perhaps it was user error on my part!
Boards is an amazing feature and it has already helped me lots in the past while, but now that it is part of Discourse Core I have some feedback points / questions from using it for a bit if that’s okay.
Is it possible to be able to modify or link Assignment status per boards column? I know you can make it close or open the topic, but we have custom statuses like “Working on it” and “Solved” for assignments that we’d like to sync up with boards so that moving something to “Solved” also puts the assignment on solved.
Additionally it would be cool if we could get an extension of the open and close topic for Feedback type categories, so it can mark the topic as solved automatically, perhaps with a “Reason” field that turns into the post that gets marked solved.
Is it possible to automatically add topics as cards if they meet certain criteria, like matching a tag or category? This would turn it into a powerful tool to automatically track incoming forum feedback and such.
We love staying organized with incoming feedback and our main gripe with the assignment system in Discourse was not having a central place to see all of it at once. Boards has the potential to completely solve that in such an elegant way.
Would it be possible to make this optional? In my case I use boards for my own private projects so there’s nothing for the community to see. In which case, it’s a link that goes nowhere.
I made a theme component to hide it for myself, but seems like an easy addition to the plugin itself.
The opt-in through Upcoming changes makes sense for an experimental feature. Once a site opts in for everyone, do boards show up in the sidebar by default, or do admins need to add them manually for each user?
I am really not a fan of hardened buttons on the sidebar, I like to personalize my own sections so I hide it using CSS and moved it on my own custom section.
Discourse Boards is available on the Business or Enterprise plans.
thanks again
