GitLab: Issues, Boards & Project Planning

Issues

GitLab Issues are the primary unit of work. They support labels, milestones, weight, due dates, assignees, and time tracking.

# Create issue via CLI
glab issue create --title "Bug: login fails on Safari" --label bug --assignee @me

# List issues
glab issue list --label "backend" --assignee @me

# Close issue
glab issue close 42

Issue Features

• Labels: colored tags for categorization (Priority::High, Type::Bug, Stage::In Review)

• Milestones: group issues and MRs by sprint, version, or goal with a due date

• Iterations: time-boxed development cycles (like sprints) — available in groups

• Weight: numeric effort estimation (1-5 Fibonacci, or custom)

• Time tracking: /spend 2h to log time, /estimate 5h to set estimate

• Linked issues: mark as blocks / is blocked by / relates to / clones

• Confidential issues: hide from non-members (for security vulnerabilities)

• Service Desk: receive external emails as issues (support ticket system built in)

Issue Boards

Kanban-style boards that visualize issues by label or assignee. Multiple boards per project or group.

• List types: label-based (most common), assignee-based, or milestone-based

• Scoped labels: label::value where only one value per scope is allowed (Status::Open, Status::Closed)

• Board filters: filter by milestone, label, assignee, weight — saved per board

• Epic swimlanes: group issues by epic on the board (Premium/Ultimate)

• Drag & drop: move issues between columns to apply/remove label

• WIP limits: set maximum issues per column to prevent overload

Epics & Roadmaps (Premium)

• Epics: group related issues across milestones — create at group level

• Child epics: nest epics for hierarchical planning (Theme → Epic → Story → Task)

• Roadmap: timeline view of all epics in a group, with start/end dates

• Epic health status: On Track / Needs Attention / At Risk — set manually or inherit from issues

• Burndown/burnup charts: visualize progress against milestone or iteration

Quick Actions

In issue/MR description or comments, use slash commands:

/assign @username          assign to user
/assign me                 assign to yourself
/label ~bug ~"high priority"
/milestone %"v2.0"
/weight 3
/estimate 4h
/spend 2h 30m
/due 2026-06-01
/close
/reopen
/confidential
/copy_metadata #42         copy labels and milestone from another issue
/relate #56                link as "relates to"
/blocks #57
/todo                      add to your To-Do list

Notifications & To-Do List

• To-Do list: auto-created when you are mentioned, assigned, or reviewed — top bar bell icon

• Notification levels: Global, Group, Project — customize per project (Watch/Participate/Mention/Disabled)

• Email notifications: sent for all activity matching your notification level

• Todos cleared when: you take action (comment, approve, close issue)