1. Introduction to card links
At its core, the card linking as its name suggests is the ability to link several cards which are related to one another.
Projects involve a lot of work items (cards), which in most of the cases are located on different Kanban boards and workflows. If there is no proper setup between them, the overall visibility is quickly lost.
Linking Kanban cards on different boards helps you to get better visibility and never lose track of your work.
Important:
- Users can link existing cards in the system.
- Users can use an existing card to create new cards and instantly link them with the selected type of relation.
2. Type of card links in Kanbanize
Kanbanize supports several types of connections a user might choose in order to create relationships between different cards:
- Parent/Child relation
With the child/parent relationship between cards, you can slice a big work item or even an entire project into smaller items. This type of relationship enables you to break down a task (parent card) into smaller pieces of work (child cards) and track each child card separately.
- Relatives
If multiple cards belong to the same group of work items, but there is no hierarchy between them you can link these cards with the relative link to group them together.
Relative cards are of the same priority while child tasks are similar to subtasks to the parent card.
- Successors/Predecessors
This relationship creates rules of order in the breakdown of your work via dependencies between the cards. This form of linking, unlike the familiar child, parent and relative relationships, allows the cards to be dependent on each other with an indication of the order in which they will need to be performed. The new link not only implies but also enforces the relationship between successor and predecessor so the successor card cannot precede the predecessor in the order in which they get updated. In this case, the successor will become blocked and immobile until the predecessor is completed.
3. How to link cards in the system?
To learn how to create links between existing cards and how to break down a card, please read the dedicated article.
With Kanbanize, you can not only link cards but also synchronizing some properties between the linked cards.
Important: You can use the same linking capability when working with the Initiatives.
4. How do linked cards get visualized?
All links (if configured this way) get displayed in the Links Overview menu (the bottom right side of the card).
To make the linked cards visible at the closed card view (Img. 2)-> go to the sidebar to the right of your board interface -> select Configure Card View -> checkmark " Show links" (one per row).
(Img. 2)
As a result, each linked card is getting visualized in the dedicated card area and users can get the following information:
-> On hover, you will see details about each linked card in the tooltip. 
-> The Arrow icons beside the card titles of the linked cards show whether:
- the linked card is a parent card (arrow points up)
- the linked card is a child card (arrow points down)
- the linked card is relative ( arrow points right)
- the linked card is successor/predecessor ( curved arrows)
-> The Colour code stand for the position of the linked cards on the Board
- The grey color corresponds to the "Backlog"
- The blue color corresponds to the "Requested" stage
- The orange color corresponds to the "In Progress" stage
- The green color corresponds to the "Done" stage
- The purple color corresponds to the "Archive".
The color codes are very helpful when you want to get an idea about the number of incompleted cards.
TIPS:
-> To locate a linked card from the same board, just click on its representation and the system will instantly shake the item.
-> To easily locate linked cards from different boards, press the CTRL key when clicking the rectangle. A new tab opens up and the system automatically locates the position of the linked card on the respective board.
The card linking capability is an instrument that plays a major role in the implementation of the Portfolio Kanban Management scenario.