Getting Started

Go to Kanbanify on the Shopify App Store and click Install. Review the permissions: Kanbanify reads orders, customers, and staff data to build your board and assign work. No customer-facing data is exposed.

You’ll land on your board immediately, and a 14-day free trial starts automatically.

Your First Board And Setup Guide

Kanbanify auto-creates an Orders board when you install, so you don’t start from a blank screen. The board remains usable while a three-step setup guide helps you confirm how Kanbanify should fit your workflow.

1. Choose what to manage

Orders is always included. Choose one of these options:

• Orders only — use Kanbanify for regular Shopify Orders.
• Orders and Draft Orders — also enable a separate Drafts board.

Draft Orders require the corresponding Shopify permissions. If those permissions are missing or the Drafts board cannot be enabled, your Orders board and any Orders setup progress remain available. Ask a store owner to update permissions, then retry from the guide.

Choosing Orders only later does not delete or disable an already-enabled Drafts board.

2. Confirm your workflows

The guide shows the current stage sequence for each selected board. Confirm each board independently:

• Use these stages accepts the sequence exactly as shown.
• Customize stages opens that board’s Workflow stages Settings section directly. Change the stages and save to return to the Orders board and continue setup.

Your setup becomes Configured after you choose board coverage and confirm every selected workflow. An empty shop can finish configuration; you do not need an Order or Draft Order first.

3. Try the workflow

Use the normal board controls to move a real Order or Draft Order between stages. On an Order card:

• Drag the dotted handle on the left into the stage that matches the Order’s status.
• On a touchscreen, press and hold the handle before dragging.
• If you prefer not to drag, open the card’s Move to stage action.

The first successful cross-stage move after configuration marks the setup Activated. A failed move or reordering a card within the same stage does not activate setup.

The try step also provides Choose what appears on Order cards, which opens and focuses the existing Card details Settings section without changing setup progress, and Browse how-to guides, which opens the Kanbanify how-to collection in a new tab.

You can dismiss the guide at any time without changing board data. Before activation, use the page-level Setup action to reopen it at the next incomplete step or review the Configured state. After activation, the Setup action disappears. An open guide may show Activated until you dismiss it, after which there is no reopen action.

Set Up Your Stages

Stages are the columns that represent your production workflow. The seeded stages are a starting point, and each Orders or Drafts board keeps its own sequence:

1. From the setup guide, choose Customize stages for the board you want to change. You can also open that board’s Settings directly later.
2. Rename existing stages.
3. Add more stages if needed.
4. Save.

New Orders and Draft Orders follow the first stage of their corresponding board automatically.

You can have as many stages as you need and change them at any time. If you switch on auto-tagging, each stage also becomes an order tag visible in the Shopify Order List, so you can filter or search by stage across your whole store — even outside the Kanbanify board.

Configure Order Card Details

Orders and Draft Orders boards keep separate card settings. To customize the cards on the board you are viewing:

1. Open Settings, then expand Card details.
2. Turn each detail on or off:
   • Customer shows the customer’s identity.
   • Internal due date shows and lets you edit the internal production due date. This detail is available only on Orders boards.
   • Line items shows the first line item. Choose how it appears:
     • Line items — text only shows its quantity and name.
     • Line items — thumbnail shows its product image.
     • Line items — thumbnail & text shows both.
   • Vendor shows vendor names from the order’s line items.
   • Tags shows order tags and lets you edit them directly on the card.
3. Save your changes.

Only the first line item appears directly on the card. If its image is missing or cannot load, Kanbanify shows the quantity and name instead. Cards with more loaded line items keep their existing details control.

Text only is the default line-item display mode for existing and new boards. Turning line items off keeps the selected mode, so the same choice returns when you turn them on again.

The Uncategorized Stage

If you have pre-existing orders, the leftmost column will be Uncategorized. It’s a reserved system column — you can’t rename or delete it — that catches every order not yet associated with one of your custom stages.

Why do orders land here? Because they existed before you defined your Kanbanify stages. Once Kanbanify is installed, new orders flow into the first stage automatically.

A 5-minute grace period prevents brand-new orders from flickering in the Uncategorized column before Shopify webhooks assign them properly.

If you install on a store with existing orders and see a lot of them in the Uncategorized column, that’s normal — you just need to assign them to the right stage.

The Fulfilled Stage

The Fulfilled stage is a read-only system column that appears automatically when Shopify reports an order as fulfilled. You don’t move orders into it manually — Kanbanify detects the Shopify fulfillment status and places the card there.

Key behaviors:

1. 72-hour visibility: Fulfilled orders remain visible on the board for 72 hours after fulfillment, then age out automatically. This keeps your board clean without deleting history.
2. Locked cards: Cards in the Fulfilled column have all actions disabled (no dragging, no reassigning, no completion). They’re a read-only record.
3. From the board: If you enable Order Completion in Settings, fulfilling an order directly from the board moves it to the Fulfilled column once Shopify confirms the status change.

Moving Orders And Draft Orders Across Stages

Drag the dotted handle on the left of an Order or Draft Order card from one stage to another. On a touchscreen, press and hold the handle before dragging. When dragging is not convenient, open the card and use Move to stage. These are the same normal board controls used to observe setup activation.

If you already have a lot of Uncategorized orders to associate with a stage, you can make bulk changes:

1. Go to the Order list.
2. Select the orders you want to associate with a stage.
3. Click the three-dots button.
4. Click the Change Kanbanify stage action in the Apps section.
5. Select the target stage.
6. Click the Change stage button.

Mobile & Tablet

Kanbanify works on phones and tablets. Press and hold a card’s dotted handle before dragging it on a touchscreen, or use Move to stage instead. The full board remains horizontally scrollable at narrow widths. Install the official Shopify mobile app and Kanbanify will be there.