Setting up the first kanban board
The first time I tried setting up a kanban view in Airtable, I thought it would be as easy as clicking a button and magically seeing colorful cards neatly stacked in columns. It is almost that simple, but I got tripped up because Airtable forces you to choose a field that controls the columns. That field needs to be either a single select or a collaborator field, otherwise the whole view looks like a flat list. I had originally labeled my task status field as text with “to do,” “in progress,” and “done,” but because it was plain text instead of a single select dropdown, all the cards ended up lumped into one giant column called “undefined.” It was one of those five second mistakes that took me twenty minutes to notice because I kept refreshing, thinking Airtable was broken.
Once I changed the field type to single select and assigned each record a status, the kanban view instantly looked the way I wanted. The trick was going back through my old tasks, which had free text values, and mapping them to the structured values. If I had something like “working” in one row instead of “in progress,” that card would just float alone in its own weird pseudo column. The visual mess was kind of funny, like a lost sticky note no one claimed, but also really unhelpful when you are trying to stay organized. 😛
Using drag and drop for task movement
When everything lined up correctly, dragging cards between columns felt satisfying. It makes Airtable feel like Trello, but the data still lives in that more structured spreadsheet base. One thing I didn’t realize is that moving a card from one column to another actually changes the underlying field value. So when I drag a card from “to do” to “in progress,” Airtable updates that record’s status field to “in progress.” That sounds obvious now, but I expected drag and drop to just be cosmetic. Later when I built an automation that looked at field values to trigger Slack notifications, I was confused why it kept pinging me — turns out I was triggering it every time I dragged cards around just for fun.
Something else that bothered me is that Airtable does not always update the view smoothly if your internet is laggy. I dragged one card, and it looked like nothing happened. I dragged it again, and suddenly it duplicated in two columns. I had a moment of panic thinking I accidentally cloned the task, but after a refresh I saw it correctly. Lesson here: trust but verify. Check the actual grid view if you suspect drag and drop misbehaved. 🙂
Dealing with too many columns at once
The more statuses I added, the less useful the kanban view became. It looked fine with three columns (to do, doing, done). But once I added things like “waiting on client feedback,” “scheduled,” “requires approval,” and so on, scrolling sideways became exhausting. Airtable doesn’t warn you about this, it just happily makes the view wider until you’re dragging the scrollbar back and forth like a typewriter carriage.
My fix for that was creating multiple kanban views, each filtered to a smaller set of statuses. For example one view only shows tasks that are between “to do” and “in progress.” Another one is for later stages like approval and completion. That way I don’t need to stare at ten columns at once. The downside is that switching between them also means remembering which filters are active. I once thought a task totally disappeared but it was just hidden because I had the wrong filtered view open. I spent an embarrassing ten minutes searching old revision history before I noticed the filter toggle in the corner.
Tagging and color coding cards
Here is something that made kanban boards more usable for me: assigning colors to records based on conditions. For example I set tasks with a due date this week to show as bright red cards, tasks assigned to me show as green, and anything without a due date shows as grey so I feel guilty about them. You can add these color rules directly when customizing a view. It makes the whole kanban feel alive instead of just a bland grid of cards.
There is a catch though: if you rely too heavily on color, weird overlaps happen. I had two rules, one that colored tasks due this week red, and another that colored tasks assigned to me green. A task that matched both rules ended up defaulting to red, which I found misleading because I thought it was someone else’s task. Airtable doesn’t stack the colors, so prioritizing your rules matters. My workaround was to merge conditions into a single rule, but it took trial and error to figure out which one Airtable chooses first when there’s a conflict. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
Automating kanban actions through zaps
This part is where things got messy. I wanted every time a card moved into the “done” column to trigger an automation that archived the task and also posted in Slack so the team sees progress. The obvious setup was to connect Airtable to Zapier, watch for record updates where the status field equals “done,” then send the Slack message and update Airtable again. In theory it worked. In reality it double fired constantly. I would drag a task to “done,” Zapier would catch the update, but then Airtable would sync the record twice. Result? Two Slack messages for every task completed, which felt like bragging instead of sharing.
The fix was hidden in the settings. Zapier lets you filter triggers more specifically, so I added a condition that said “only trigger when the previous value was not done.” That small setting prevented the false repeat triggers. But I only found it after sitting through several days of duplicate Slack spam that made everyone annoyed with my notifications.
Archiving finished tasks into another view
After a few weeks of real work, the “done” column was a mess of hundreds of cards all stacked. Airtable does not automatically clean this up, which makes sense if you want historical context, but visually it becomes overwhelming. My solution was to add a checkbox field called “archive” and create a separate view that filters only archived tasks. Then I also created a Zap that checks the archive box automatically any time a card moves into done. That way tasks disappear from the main kanban once wrapped up, but still live somewhere else if I need them.
It feels like a workaround, but it does the job. Airtable does let you hide columns, but it does not have a true folder system for finished work, so relying on filtered views is basically the only option. The main problem is remembering to check the archive view once in a while to make sure nothing important accidentally vanished there when I was moving too fast.
Unexpected issues when renaming labels
One of the more annoying bugs I caused myself was renaming my select field labels. Originally they were “to do,” “in progress,” and “done.” At some point I changed “to do” to “backlog.” What I did not realize is that every automation, Zap, and filter that depended on the string “to do” broke. That meant cards that should have gone into the correct bucket started disappearing from automations, and triggers that used to run stopped firing entirely. Debugging was painful because I forgot I renamed the label, and I assumed Airtable or Zapier had broken spontaneously.
The forgotten setting that finally solved it was buried deep inside the automation conditions. When I updated those conditions to match the new label value, everything started working again. It was one of those forehead slap moments because the fix was simple, but only after three hours of digging through logs and test runs I never needed to do.
When kanban view is worth it
At the end of the day, the kanban view in Airtable is good for short term visibility and drag and drop simplicity. It is not perfect when you need long term record keeping or lots of statuses. If I want something teamwide and very structured, Trello or Asana handle it better. But Airtable has the advantage of being close to the data itself, so you can switch between grid, kanban, and calendar like flipping a switch depending on what angle you need. For me, the kanban works best as a slightly prettier layer directly on top of my structured spreadsheet style base. The only problem is every time I change something small, whether it is a renamed label or a drag dropped card, I cross my fingers that none of my other half finished automations suddenly break again
For anyone starting out, it is worth playing with a minimal setup first before loading it full of automations and status variations. Once you are confident the basics hold up under normal daily use, then start layering in the more elaborate filters and automations — otherwise you end up sitting in Slack all afternoon wondering why the same task just posted twice back to back