Project Dashboard and progress

Project Dashboard is the health view for one project. Open it when you need a quick answer to questions like: Is the project moving? What is still open? What became overdue? Which sections are carrying the work? Who is overloaded? What changed since the last review?

Dashboard does not create a separate version of the project. It reads the same project canvases you see in List, Kanban, Calendar, and Timeline, then summarizes them into progress, charts, risks, and activity.

Useful companion articles:

• Understand projects for the project model behind Dashboard.
• Organize canvases and sections for the section rules that drive progress.
• Project dates, status, and notifications for dates, status, and notifications.

What Dashboard shows

Dashboard can include progress, total canvases, overdue canvases, canvas subtask counts, burndown, section distribution, workload, canvas tag distribution, top risks, and project activity.

Use it before a weekly review, launch readiness meeting, client delivery check, classroom project review, or cleanup session. The best Dashboard habit is simple: open it first, notice the one or two numbers that feel wrong, then switch to List or Kanban to fix the actual canvases.

How Project progress is calculated

Project progress is based on top-level project canvases in sections marked complete.

If a project has 20 top-level canvases and 8 of them sit in complete sections, progress is 40%. If those 8 canvases have many unfinished subtasks, the project progress can still read 40%, because subtasks are a separate signal. If a canvas has every subtask checked but still sits in Review, it does not count as complete unless Review is marked complete.

This is the rule to remember:

This makes progress easy to explain in a meeting. You are not asking every canvas to prove it is done in a different way. You are saying, "These sections are done-work sections. Canvases there count as complete."

Mark complete sections carefully

Open the section menu in Project List or Kanban and mark the section complete when canvases in that section should count as finished work. Common complete sections include Approved, Ready, Published, Done, and Shipped.

More than one section can be complete. A product launch might count both Approved and Published as complete. A client project might count Approved and Handoff as complete. A content calendar might count Scheduled and Published as complete if both mean the team no longer needs to work on that canvas.

Do not mark a section complete just because the name sounds positive. If Review still needs action from legal, design, or a client, keep it incomplete. If Blocked contains work you are intentionally not doing yet, keep it incomplete too.

Set complete sections later

You can mark complete sections after the project already has canvases and history. This is useful when a project started casually and only later needs serious reporting.

For example:

1. A team runs a launch for two weeks with sections named Planning, Build, Review, and Ready.
2. During the readiness meeting, they decide that Ready is the first section that should count as complete.
3. When Ready is marked complete, existing top-level canvases in that section count toward Project progress the next time the project stats refresh.

Burndown can also become meaningful after this change when ALLO has available section-movement history. You do not need to delete canvases, recreate them, or drag every canvas out and back in just to teach Dashboard what "complete" means.

Read the progress cards

The progress card shows the percentage of top-level project canvases in complete sections. Treat it as a project-stage signal, not a promise that every tiny checklist entry is done.

The total canvases card shows how many top-level canvases Dashboard is counting. If the number feels too low, check whether important work is nested as sub-canvases or hidden outside the project. If it feels too high, check whether placeholder canvases, old review rooms, or duplicate imports should be archived, moved, or renamed.

The overdue card shows project canvases with dates that have passed. Use it as a triage list: either the canvas is truly late, the date should move, or the date no longer matters and should be removed.

The subtasks card shows progress inside canvases. It is useful for spotting work that looks close from the project section but still has open checklist items inside the canvas.

Read burndown

The burndown chart shows remaining project canvases over time. It is strongest when the project has real movement: canvases enter sections, move through review, and eventually land in complete sections.

Use burndown for questions like:

If the chart says there is no burndown data, check three things first: the project has top-level canvases, at least one section is marked complete, and canvases have moved into or out of those sections over time. A brand-new project or a project with no completed-section movement can have little to chart.

Use section, workload, and tag charts

Section distribution shows where canvases sit across the workflow. If most canvases are stuck in Review, the problem may be reviewer capacity, unclear approval rules, or a section that means too many things.

Workload shows who is carrying project canvases. Use it before assigning more work to the person who is already holding half the project.

Canvas tag distribution shows how project canvases are categorized. If a launch has almost every canvas tagged High risk, the tag is not helping. If no canvases have tags, filters and Dashboard slices will be less useful.

Read top risks

Top risks help you find canvases that deserve attention before they become the whole meeting. Risks can include overdue canvases, stale canvases, stuck canvases, and canvases with incomplete subtasks.

Open risky canvases from the Dashboard, then fix the source of the risk. That might mean moving a canvas to the right section, updating a stale Due date, assigning an owner, closing subtasks, or leaving a comment that explains why the work is intentionally paused.

Top risks are not a blame list. They are a shortcut to the canvases most likely to need human attention.

Use project activity

Project activity shows what changed in the project. Use it when the Dashboard number moved and nobody remembers why, when a section suddenly looks empty, or when a teammate asks who changed a date or status.

Dashboard activity can focus on project-management events or show broader activity. During a status meeting, start with the project-management view. During an investigation, switch broader so you can see more context.

Activity is especially helpful after a cleanup pass. If someone moved a section, copied canvases, changed project status, or updated dates, the activity trail gives the team a shared memory instead of a Slack archaeology project.

Example: launch readiness

A launch project has sections Planning, Creative, Review, Approved, Published, and Follow-up. The owner marks Approved and Published complete.

Before the launch review, Dashboard shows 62% progress, 4 overdue canvases, and a flat burndown line for the last three days. The top risks point to Legal review, Homepage QA, and Sales enablement copy.

The team opens List, filters to overdue canvases, and finds that two dates are real blockers while two are stale placeholders. They update the stale dates, move Sales enablement copy from Review to Approved, and leave comments on Legal review. Dashboard now reflects the cleanup, and the meeting can focus on the two real blockers.

Example: client delivery

A client project uses sections Prep, Kickoff, Implementation, Client review, Approved, and Handoff. The team marks Approved and Handoff complete.

The client can open a shared review canvas but not the whole project. That is expected if they were only given canvas access. Internally, Dashboard still counts the canvas because it belongs to the project. If the client needs to see the whole delivery flow, add them to the project with the right access instead of sending individual links one by one.

If the numbers look wrong

If progress looks too low, check whether the right sections are marked complete and whether finished canvases are actually in those sections.

If progress looks too high, check whether a section such as Review, Ready soon, or Blocked was marked complete by accident.

If total canvases looks wrong, check whether work is nested as sub-canvases, filtered out in your current view, outside the project, archived, deleted, or duplicated.

If overdue looks wrong, check the canvas dates. A stale date is still a date.

If Dashboard looks empty, switch to List and confirm the project has canvases, clear filters, check your project access, and refresh after recent section or permission changes.