Mabato User Guide

What is Mabato

Mabato is a backlog manager built around a tree. A tree project starts as a single vision: one node that describes what you want to achieve. You grow it by splitting nodes into smaller children until the pieces are small enough to work on, with no fixed hierarchy of epics and stories. A project can also be backlog-only or board-only, without a tree; see Projects for the details.

The backlog is the ordered list of the tree's current leaves, the nodes that have not been split any further. You rank them, pick them up on the board, and track their progress from open to done. Finished work is grouped into releases, and a release report summarises what was delivered. Teammates, comments, mentions and notifications keep everybody in the loop.

Chapters

• Getting started
  What Mabato is, signing in, languages, theme and navigation.
• Projects
  Creating projects, project types, team, visibility and closing.
• The tree
  The vision node, splitting, quick-add, colours, progress and acceptance criteria.
• Backlog
  The ordered backlog: ranking and adding tasks.
• Board
  The Kanban board: columns, status changes, grouping and card colours.
• Task details
  The detail view: description, assignee, category, comments and mentions.
• Releases
  Creating releases and the release report with its export.
• Finding things
  Searching across projects, quick filters and My Tasks.
• Notifications
  Mentions, the notification centre and integration failures.
• Integrations
  Outbound calls on status transitions: placeholders, limits and failures.
• Using the API
  API tokens and the API reference.
• Troubleshooting & FAQ
  Common problems and answers.

API reference

The API reference lives on the developer address of your installation. Ask the person who runs your installation for it, and read Using the API first to create an API token.