Organise the jobs of a project

Six tools, one job each
Groups and their colour dots
Tags
Pins
My note
The archive
Patterns to copy
A checklist for a new project

Six tools, one job each

Each tool answers one question about a job, so they never get in each other's way: one decides where a job is filed, the others how it is labelled, kept in view, explained or put away.

Tool	Answers	One per job?	Where
Group	Which migration wave is this job in?	One, or none	`Job Group`, the Group column, Move to group
Tags	Which pieces of work is it part of?	Any number	`Tags`, the Tags column, Edit tags
Pin	Must it stay in view?	On or off	The Pin column, the job dialog, Change selected jobs … for the ticked jobs
My note	What must I remember about it?	One short text per administrator, your own	The pinned summary card of a job or run, the job dialog, an issue's details dialog
Archive	Is it done with?	On or off	The Arch. column, Change selected jobs … in the Actions menu
Filters	What do I want to see now?	—	Under the column titles and in the tab bar

Groups, tags, pins, My note and the archive work the same on the Jobs, Run History and File Issues tabs; a run keeps the group and tags its job had when it ran, but has a note of its own.

Groups and their colour dots

A group is the backbone of the project: the tree on every tab files the rows under it, and the Power BI report shows the migration group by group. Give each job exactly one.

Name groups for the order they run in — Pilot, Wave 1 Finance, Wave 2 HR — so the tree reads as the plan.
The colour dot beside every group name is chosen in Manage groups. Use colour for state: one colour for the waves still being prepared, another for the wave running now, a grey for the waves that are finished. A glance down the tree then shows where the project stands.
An Import job's group takes the import's date and time, so each batch can be checked on its own before it is merged into its wave with Merge into ….
Show only this group, on a group row's ⋯ menu, narrows all three tabs to that wave at once.

Pins

A pinned job, run or issue moves to the top of the table, apart from the rest: under a Pinned band above the tree or the list, with an orange line down its edge and one under the last pinned row, where the rest begins. They stay in view under the column titles while the rest scrolls under them, as long as they take at most three quarters of the table's height; more than that, and they scroll with the rest. Pin what must not get lost among the rest.

The jobs of the cut-over weekend, while it is under way.
A run with errors you are still looking into.
The file issues a customer asked about.

Unpin them when they are done, so a pin keeps its meaning. Pins are your own: each administrator pins what they are watching, and no one else sees it. To flag a row for the whole team, use a tag such as Needs review, or My note. See Working together: what is shared and what is yours

Deleting a row someone else pinned

When a job, run, file issue or notification you are about to delete is pinned by another administrator, the delete dialog says how many of the rows are and by whom. The delete goes ahead once you confirm it. Each of them then gets a Nextcloud notification naming the row and who deleted it, and their pin goes with the row.

My note

My note is a few lines kept with one job, run or file issue: something important about this one row that is not part of the job's description — a decision, a warning, who to ask, why it waits. Each row has one note of up to 2000 characters.

Your own, as its name says

My note is private to you. Each administrator has a note of their own on the same row; no one else reads, changes or clears yours, and the text filter finds only your notes. What the whole team must know about a job goes in its Job Description or a tag.

Where to write it

The note sits where the row's details are; a hovered summary card shows it, a pinned one lets you write it.

Job

On the Jobs tab, click the job's title to pin its summary card. Write in My note about this Job, beside the Job section. The job dialog has the same field, under Job Description on its Job step, saved with the job by Save — also while the job runs and the rest of the dialog is read-only.

Run

On Run History — or under Running jobs on the Dashboard — click the run's title to pin its card. Write in My note about this Run.

File issue

On the File Issues tab, open the issue's details dialog. Write in My note.

No button to press: a changed note is saved when you leave it — the card closing, the dialog closing or stepping to another row — never as you type. Empty the field to remove the note.
See it at a glance: a row with a note has a small orange triangle in the top-right corner of its title, as a spreadsheet marks a cell with a comment — on the Jobs, Run History and File Issues tabs alike. On the Jobs and Run History tabs, a row with a description has a small blue triangle in the bottom-right corner of its title, the blue of the description box in the job and run dialogs; there, both boxes show their triangle beside their name. Rest the pointer on the title to read the note on the summary card.

Find rows by what their note says

The text filter under the Title column — under File Name on File Issues — reads the notes too, so a word written in a note finds every row that carries it. A note saying "Talk to Janus about this" is found by typing just Janus.

Tab	The text filter reads
Jobs	Title, source, destination and My note
Run History	Title, source, destination, progress, message and My note
File Issues	File name, run title and My note

Keep a few words of your own in notes — waiting, owner, legal — and the filter becomes your to-do list: type waiting to see every row you are waiting on.
The filter combines with the others: legal in the text filter and a wave in the Group filter shows that wave's rows with a legal note.
An archived row's note is found only while the Arch. box shows the archived rows.

What a note does not do

It is the app's own. SMART Migration never reads it, the OCS API never sends it, and it is not in the Power BI report — write freely, nothing about the migration changes.
A run's note is its own. A job's note is not copied into its runs, and a run's note does not change its job; write on the run what concerns that one run.
Copy leaves it behind. A copied job starts with no note.
The archive keeps it. An archived job, run or issue keeps its note, and finds it again when it is shown.
It goes with its writer. When a Nextcloud user is deleted, their notes are deleted with them.

Notes with Hold and Deferred

A Hold or Deferred job is never claimed, and a status alone does not say why. Whenever you put a job off, write the reason and the date to look again — "Deferred until the owner signs off, check 2026-11-01": in its Job Description or a tag where the team must know it, in My note where it is your own reminder. Picking Deferred in the Status column's menu opens a dialog for that note before the job is put off. The Tags filter then finds every job waiting on the same thing, and the text filter your own notes.

A good note is short, dated and signed

A dated note still makes sense months later, so say when and who: "2026-10-12 — owner asked to wait for the legal sign-off (Anna)". Keep the job's description for what the job is; keep My note for what is happening to it, and update or clear it when that changes.

The archive

Archiving puts finished work away: archived jobs and runs leave the everyday tables, counts and filters, but nothing about them changes — a Ready job is still claimed, and an archived run stays in the BI report. The box under the Arch. title shows them again.

Archive a wave once it is signed off, with its runs, so the tabs show what is still to do.

It works the same on the Jobs and Run History tabs:

You want to	Do this
Archive a row	Tick the Archived box at the far right of its row — or Archived in Change selected jobs … in the Actions menu for the ticked rows
Make it active again	Untick its Archived box — or Change selected jobs … in the Actions menu. It is back in everyday work at once
See the archived rows	Click the filter box under the Arch. title: empty shows the active rows only (the everyday view), a bar shows every row, a tick shows only the archived ones

To bring an archived row back, show the archived rows first with the filter box, then untick the row's Archived box. File issues have no archive of their own.

Patterns to copy

Projects differ, but most settle on one of these. Pick the one closest to yours and adapt it.

Project	Groups	Tags	Pins and My note
One tenant, several departments	One wave per department, in the order they move	Owner, `Sensitive`, `Needs review` / `Signed off`	Pin the wave being cut over; note each owner's decisions
A large file share	One wave per top-level share or site	Size class (`Large`), `Legal hold`	Pin the jobs that failed; note what was found
Discovery first, migration later	`Discovery` group, then one wave per migration batch	What the discovery showed: `Clean`, `Needs cleanup`	Note the clean-up agreed with the owner
Recurring sync for digital resilience	One group per protected site	`Daily`, `Weekly`, the owner	Pin the jobs that warned last night; note the cause

Start simple

Begin with groups alone and add tags when a question comes up that the groups cannot answer — "which jobs belong to Anna?", "which ones are signed off?". Two or three well-chosen tags do more than twenty.

A checklist for a new project

Agree the waves
Create one group per wave in Manage groups, named in run order, each with a colour.
Agree a short tag list
Who, what and state — and write it down where the team can see it.
File every job
Move each job to its wave; tag the ones that need it with Change selected jobs ….
Keep the work in view
Pin what is under way, and write in My note what you must remember — on a job set to Deferred above all; what the team must know goes in the job's description or a tag.
Put the finished work away
Archive each wave, with its runs, once it is signed off.