---
title: "Loading Your Taskboards in Azure DevOps"
canonical: "https://support.55degrees.se/space/SP/3928491343/Loading%20Your%20Taskboards%20in%20Azure%20DevOps"
format: markdown
---
> ℹ️ If you are using a Taskboard and want to distinguish between the Tasks on your Taskboard and regular Tasks in ActionableAgile® Analytics - here is a guide on how you can do so.

### About Taskboards

Taskboards are located in the Sprint area of your Azure project.

![Screenshot 2024-04-08 at 16.19.36.png](media://a933a75e-8e2a-474e-9131-39f1e633d4c2)

A common way to use Taskboards is to create Tasks for a story in the leftmost column. The Story will remain there until all the Tasks for it are completed, at which point it will be moved to Done.

![Screenshot 2024-04-08 at 16.20.21.png](media://b0e51f16-4862-411d-9570-df048aa87089)


### What ActionableAgile Analytics Tracks 

In ActionableAgile, the journey of your work items is plotted through transition dates. These transition dates are grabbed from when you move an item from one state or column to another.

If you want to track Stories and the Story sits in the left-most column until all its Tasks are completed and then moves straight to Done, you will not get very granular metrics from ActionableAgile, as the wrong work item is being tracked. You’ll need to** track the Task**, as this will show more **granularity**.

![Screenshot 2024-04-08 at 16.21.16.png](media://d3dbcaf1-91fc-4cf7-b96a-b2efd58358fd)


### Recommended Setup for Tasks

- Track **Tasks as the primary work item** in ActionableAgile Analytics.
- Add a** tag** to each Story Task.

That way you can highlight them with colors or filter them by tag in ActionableAgile® Analytics.

If your Taskboard is set up with the statuses named after the columns, you can visualize the task board in ActionableAgile Analytics.

![Screenshot 2024-04-08 at 16.22.40.png](media://a461bf9d-070f-47d8-9288-c334a5cfbdc9)


### Loading a Taskboard into ActionableAgile Analytics

1. Navigate to the data set drop-down menu and select **Create New Data Set**.
2. Select work item source to pull from **Team**. (You cannot pull from Board as the Taskboard isn’t the same as a regular board in Azure DevOps and thus cannot be loaded in ActionableAgile.)

![Azure create ds by Team.png](media://b4dc5c8f-c7e2-4c53-9e1c-289e32ff5f7c)

Loading via Team will, by default, pull every work item in your project into the data set. You can use filters to refine which data is loaded. 

3. Refine the loaded data (optional), by using Created After or Resolved After in Step 1.
4. **Map your columns and states** to mimic your task board.   
Unless the Taskboard is the only Board you use in Azure Dev Ops, your columns and states will likely be out of order in the mapping stage. Make sure your states are mapped to the correct column. If a column or state has not yet been used, it will not appear in the mapping stage as it contains no data.

![Screenshot 2024-04-08 at 16.24.15.png](media://91200680-ba11-4495-ba25-ade9bb80d287)

![Screenshot 2024-04-08 at 16.26.16.png](media://66b6e934-68e8-4cc8-b81c-4617c3736ed6)

This is why it is important for states to have unique names, so they can be mapped and visualized in ActionableAgile. If all active states on your task board have the same name, they will appear as one in the mapping stage. If you only have one in progress state, this is fine, but if you have multiple, it will be impossible to see the tickets' journey through each stage as the data exists in one data point and can’t be separated.

You may have many states that do not belong to your Taskboard, as we’ve loaded them via Team. Thus, all the states from all work items in this project have been loaded. If you only plan to filter out items apart from the ones on your Taskboard, these can be left unmapped; otherwise, they should be mapped to where they would sit in your workflow.

6. Click Finish to load the data.

### Analyzing your Taskboard in ActionableAgile Analytics

Once the data is loaded into ActionableAgile Analytics, you can analyze them in the following ways.

#### Item Filter

If you only want to analyze your Taskboard Tasks, you can filter them out by using the Item filter and select the tag you put on them. This will filter will then apply to all charts.

![Taskboard-Item filter.png](media://035154ae-66cd-4f74-bcae-e706ad6919b2)

#### Dot Colors

In the Cycle time scatterplot and Aging Work In Progress chart, you can highlight data points based on a tag, by selecting Dot Colors in the chart controls for this chart. Select ‘Tags’ as your attribute and choose a separate color for the tag you’ve put on the Taskboard Tasks. 

![Taskboard-Dotcolors.png](media://5696ef2f-48af-4968-881b-f3c7870c57e8)


### More About Task Boards in Azure DevOps 

You can read more about Task Boards in Azure DevOps here: 

[Customize a sprint taskboard in Azure Boards - Azure Boards](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/boards/sprints/customize-taskboard?view=azure-devops)

[How workflow category states are used in Azure Boards backlogs and boards - Azure Boards](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/boards/work-items/workflow-and-state-categories?view=azure-devops&tabs=agile-process)