# Build a board that matches a team's own board

Pick **New board → A team's own board, as a query**, choose a team, and
AnyKanban writes the query that returns what that team's native Kanban board
actually shows.

The board is proposed a name made of the level and the team, such as
*Backlog items for Claims Intake*. The level comes first, spelled as your
process spells it. Change the name before you create the board if you want
another one, or later in the board's settings.

It is the answer to *"we like our board, we just need it to do one more
thing"*: you start from parity and then change one thing: span two teams, add
a project, board a type that sits on no backlog level. None of that is possible
on the native board, and on a query board it is one edit to the query. To span
teams or projects, first use **Move to…** to file the board in the project
list, because a board filed under a team shows only that team's work.

## What "matches" means, exactly

**The items and their order.** Not the columns.

- **Items.** The query carries the team's own area scope, including whether
  that team includes its sub-areas, which is its own setting and is honored
  either way, plus its backlog iteration and the work item types of the level.
- **Order.** The backlog's own, through the process's ordering field, exactly
  as the native board and the backlog agree on it.
- **Columns.** AnyKanban builds columns from the work item **states**. A team's
  custom column layout is stored in hidden fields that belong to that team's
  board; the new board does not copy it. If your team has renamed or split
  columns, name them again in the board's settings, where they are yours.
  Renaming and reordering need nothing more. Putting several columns over one
  state needs a custom field on the work item type to record which column a
  card is in, which an administrator adds first; [Prerequisites](https://anykanban.com/docs/prerequisites/)
  says how. A board that reads one team's backlog can instead be told to wear
  that team's own columns, split columns and swimlanes, as
  [Who sees which boards](https://anykanban.com/docs/share-and-navigate/who-sees-which-boards/)
  describes.

The confirmation screen says this before anything is created, so it is never
something you discover afterwards.

## What was measured, and why it matters to you

The rule above is not what the documentation implies. It is what a real
native board was observed to do, item by item:

- **Closed items do not age out.** An item closed 200 days ago is still on the
  native board, so it is on yours. There is no "last 30 days" window to
  reproduce, and a board that invented one would show you less than you are
  used to.
- **A team's board is scoped by its backlog iteration**, not only by its area
  path. Most teams leave this at the whole project, where it changes nothing,
  which is exactly why it is easy to miss. If your team has narrowed it, the
  generated query says so.
- **Removed items are on no board.** They are not filtered out by a clause;
  their state simply belongs to no column, on the native board and on
  AnyKanban's.

## After it is created

The query holds the team's scope as it was on the day you created the board,
and it is fixed then: you can read it in the board's settings, but you cannot
edit it there. To adjust it, open **Advanced** on the confirmation screen
before you create the board.

What happens when the team later changes its area paths or its backlog
iteration depends on where you filed the board. The confirmation screen
proposes **A team's group**, named after the team you picked. That is always
the team the query was written for: pick another team in the list and the
group follows it, whichever list you chose. A board filed under the team you
picked follows it: each time it opens, AnyKanban reads the team's current area paths
and backlog iteration, leaves out any card outside them, and says how many it
left out. When that leaves no card at all, the empty board says the items are
outside the team's area or iteration, never that the query returned nothing.
Both name the team as Azure DevOps shows it to you. Where it does not show you
that team, or the list of teams could not be read, they speak of the board's
team without naming it. The list of teams is read once while the page is open,
so a team renamed in the meantime keeps its old name there, as in the board
list's groups, until you reload the page.
A board moved to the project list with **Move to…** belongs to no
team, so it does not move with the team: the query is the contract, and to
follow a changed scope you create the board again from the same template.

You do not have to be a member of the team to file a board under it. The board
is listed for people who may read work items in one of the team's area paths:
in the team's own group for its members, and under **All team boards** for
everyone else. It is always listed for you, because you created it, and you can
go on changing it, as can the team's administrators and project administrators
(see [Who sees which boards](https://anykanban.com/docs/share-and-navigate/who-sees-which-boards/)).

Everything else is an ordinary AnyKanban board: WIP limits, swimlanes, card
styling rules, the level selector, the dashboard tile.

## Related

- [Create a named board](https://anykanban.com/docs/get-a-board/create-a-named-board/): what the settings offer once
  the board exists.
- [Board another level of the same query](https://anykanban.com/docs/get-a-board/board-another-level-of-the-same-query/):
  the level selector, and why a filtered query behaves differently from this
  one.
- [Build a board across several teams' sprints](https://anykanban.com/docs/get-a-board/board-across-several-teams/):
  the next step for most people who start here.