# Put two columns over one state

Your team's board has *Analysis*, *Development* and *Testing*. Your process has
one state for all three: **Active**. On the native board those are three
columns, and they can be three columns here too: define the columns yourself
and let three of them sit over the same state.

## Before you start

A named board, a work item type on the **General** tab, and a **text field** on
that type to record which column a card is in. The demo process uses
`Custom.BoardColumn`. Adding a field is a process change, so an admin does it
once, either by hand ([Prerequisites](https://anykanban.com/docs/prerequisites/)) or by executing the plan the
organization settings page composes. **AnyKanban never changes your process
without that click.**

You only need the field to put **two or more** columns over one state. Renaming
the columns, or reordering them, needs nothing at all.

## Steps

1. Open the board and select **Settings**, then **Columns** in the left rail.
2. Pick the field under **Column placement field**. The list offers the text
   fields you added to the type, meaning your custom ones. Native and hidden
   fields are never offered.
3. Below it, a strip of tabs lists your columns in board order, seeded from the
   states; the selected one opens its form underneath. Select **+ Add column**,
   name it *Analysis*, and choose its state: **Active**.
4. Use **Move up** in that same form to put it where it belongs. A new column
   arrives at the end of the strip, and the settings will not save a column
   after a completed one. The selection follows the column as it moves, so you
   stay on the one you are editing.
5. Repeat for *Development*. Both now say **Active** under state.
6. Rename the state-named columns to whatever your team calls them, if you like:
   select one in the strip and type over its name. A rename keeps that column's
   WIP limit, definition of done and split setting.
7. Select **Save**.

## What you should see

Three columns where there was one, all over **Active**. Every card that was in
the old column is now in **Analysis**, the first column of its state, because
none of them has been placed yet.

Drag one to *Development*. Its state does not change; nothing about the work
item's workflow moves. What changes is one field: `Custom.BoardColumn` now reads
`Development`. It shows on the work item form only if someone has placed the
field there, and a field created by the plan on the organization settings page
is not. You can always add it as a column to query results, or query it in WIQL:

```
SELECT [System.Id] FROM WorkItems
WHERE [Custom.BoardColumn] = 'Development'
```

Drag it onward to *Done* and both change together, in one write: the state
becomes Done and the placement follows.

On the demo's business-request board the two columns are **Analysis** and
**Build**, both over `In Progress`, and every card in either one still reads *In
Progress* on its state row. *In Review* is renamed **With the requester**, which
needs no field at all: it is still one column over one state.

![Analysis and Build, two columns over the In Progress state](https://anykanban.com/docs/_img/two-columns-over-one-state.png)

## Notes

**The state is always the truth.** A card sits in Analysis because its state is
Active *and* its placement says so. If the placement says something that no
longer exists, because you removed the column or renamed it, the card falls back
to the first column of its state. Nothing is lost and nothing lands where its state
does not allow.

That is also why **editing columns never rewrites your work items**. Rename,
reorder, add or remove as often as you like: no bulk write happens, because no
stored value can do worse than stop choosing.

**Every state needs a column.** The settings refuse to save a layout that leaves
one uncovered, because cards in that state would have no column of their own
and would collect in the **Unmapped** column at the right of the board.

**Completed columns go last.** A column whose state is in the Completed category
cannot have a non-completed column after it. Rollups count by category, so that
arrangement would report cards as done while the board draws work continuing
after them. If the state is not really terminal, the fix is its category in the
process, and the message says so.

**Without the field**, a layout with two columns over one state falls back to one
column per state and tells you which field is missing. It does not half-work.

**One board's columns are its own.** Two boards over the same work item type can
name and arrange their columns differently. A board whose columns are one per
state never writes the placement field at all, so it cannot disturb the ones
that do.