This video introduces Big Picture and Pools – two tightly connected tools that help you set priorities, maintain project overview, and act immediately when covering for a colleague.
Big Picture displays all tasks in a project as visual cards, grouped in horizontal rows by task type. Each card contains key information in a compact format: status, title, priority, logged vs. planned hours, due date, and people involved. Two progress rings in the header give you an instant assessment of where the project stands – both by completed tasks and logged hours.
Prioritization works via drag and drop: what's on the left has the highest priority. You can reorder cards and entire rows – even together with your customer, who as a guest user sees the change immediately. You can also toggle between summary and last comment views, and zoom in or out depending on whether you need the big picture or the details.
Pools extend this concept across projects. Under Planning → Pool, you see all tickets where you're listed as accountable – across all projects. The same drag and drop logic applies, but now across project boundaries. This makes Pools the ideal tool for weekly planning.
The substitution feature is particularly valuable: in the Pool dropdown, you select a colleague's name and instantly see their complete project landscape – prioritized, with status and open items. This lets you take over substitutions in seconds rather than hours.
You have tickets in your projects, but how do you know what's really important? And how do you keep the overview when things pile up?
In this video, I'll show you Big Picture, the visual command center for your projects. Set priorities, spot bottlenecks, take over for a colleague in seconds. All at a glance.
There are two ways to open Big Picture. First: I go into a project and select the Big Picture tab. Then I see all tasks for this project.
Second: through the menu Planning, then Big Picture. Here I have a dropdown in the top right that lets me switch between projects. Handy when I want to quickly jump from one customer project to the next.
Let's look at the layout. Big Picture shows all tasks of a project as cards, and these cards are grouped in horizontal rows, one row per task type. Features in one row, bugs in another, management tasks in the next. This way, you can immediately see where most of the work is.
Each card is a single ticket. And each card shows you the most important information in a compact format. At the top, a color bar for the status: new, in progress, feedback, resolved. Then the title, the priority, the task type. Below that, the time status: how many hours are logged, how many were planned? And you can see whether there's a due date and whether it's overdue.
At the bottom of the card, you'll find the number of comments, a pipeline icon showing whether the ticket is part of the current planning, and small avatars of the people involved. On the right, the person currently responsible. On the left, the stakeholder or project lead.
In the top right of the header, you'll see two progress rings. One shows the proportion of completed tasks out of the total. The other compares logged hours to planned hours. This gives you an instant sense of where the project stands.
Big Picture isn't just for looking. It's for working.
The basic rule is simple: what's on the left has the highest priority. What's on the right is less urgent. And you change the order by drag and drop. Just grab a card and move it left or right.
Let me show you a practical example. You're sitting in a customer meeting and the customer says: the login redesign feature is more important to us right now than the export bug. You open Big Picture, grab the feature card and drag it to the left. Done. The customer sees the change immediately, the priority is clear, and nobody has to send an email afterward about what actually takes precedence.
You can also reorder the rows themselves. If bugs are the most pressing topic in a project right now, drag the bug row to the top. That way, the most important things are always at the top.
Another useful feature: the view toggle at the top of the header. You can switch between two views. Summary shows you the short description of each ticket. Last comment shows you the most recent post including the author. This is especially handy when you want to quickly see where discussions are happening or where questions are still open.
And then there's the zoom. Using the magnifier icon, you can scale the view between 50 and 150 percent. Sometimes it's about seeing all tickets at once. Then you zoom out to 50 or 75 percent and get the complete project in view. And sometimes it's more about details. Then you zoom in and see all the information on each card clearly and legibly. Whatever you need at that moment.
Big Picture always shows you one project. But if you manage multiple customers, you need a view across all projects. That's what Pools are for.
I open Planning and then Pool.
Here I see all tickets where I'm listed as accountable, across all projects. Each row represents a project, and within each row, tickets are grouped by task type again.
The logic is the same as in Big Picture: left is more important, right is less urgent. And I can reorder by drag and drop, but now across projects.
This is especially valuable for weekly planning. You sit down with your team lead and go through the pools together: which tickets will deliver the most value this week? What needs to be done first? Where are customers waiting for a response?
And if you want to jump straight into the details of a project from the pool view: every project row has a Big Picture button. One click, and you're in the Big Picture of that project.
Finally, a scenario everyone knows: a colleague gets sick or goes on vacation unexpectedly. You have to take over their customers. And you have no idea what's going on.
Without Big Picture and Pools, you'd open every project one by one, click through every ticket, trying to figure out what's prioritized and what's not. That takes forever.
With Pools, you simply open your colleague's pool. In the dropdown at the top right, you select their name.
And immediately you can see: which projects are they managing? Which tickets are prioritized? What's open, what's in progress, where are the fires? In seconds, you have the overview and can inform customers without having to spend hours researching first.
This isn't just convenient. It's professional. Your customer notices no difference, even though their contact person isn't available right now.
You've now seen how Big Picture and Pools work together.
Big Picture for the overview within a single project: prioritize, zoom, plan together with the customer. Pools for the cross-project view: weekly planning, managing resources, taking over for colleagues instantly.
In the next video, we'll look at the Pipeline, how you distribute the prioritized tickets to your team and put the weekly plan into action.
