Content:
1. Introduction to Blockers and Stickers
2. Blockers and Stickers Management
3. How do users apply card tokens to cards?
4. How to Manage Blockers and Stickers from the Sidebar
5. Stickers and Blockers in Business Rules and Reporting
1. Introduction to Blockers and Stickers
The card blocker allows you to block cards for a specific reason, while the card stickers additionally mark cards with a certain label for categorization.
There are two Security Controls related to Blockers and Stickers management under the "Cards Controls" section.
The control options define who in the account will be able to create, edit, and delete blockers and stickers.
This could be set to Account Owners/Admins*, Account Owners/Admins* and Workspace Managers, or everyone in the account (any user role).
* - An Admin is a user who is not an Account Owner but has the 'Manage Card Elements' admin privilege.
- Description of Blockers:
You can use blocker tokens to block cards according to the specific blocker case that you have defined. Create multiple blocker tokens to make the blocked reasons explicit and to categorize your problematic tasks. Adding blocker tokens makes blocked tasks stand out on the board and helps you minimize your points of failure. Blocking a card is as simple as a drag and drop of the blocker to the selected card. All blocked cards accumulate block time that becomes visible in the card metrics tab.
- Description of Stickers:
Sticker tokens are used in a way very similar to blocker tokens but serve a different purpose. You can use them to mark a task with any label you have created and categorize the cards outside the scope of blockers. Stickers actually complete the token functionality by allowing you to categorize use cases that are important to your workflows and visualize them on the board.
Note: You can simultaneously block a card and label it with a sticker.
2. Blockers and Stickers Management
The Blockers and Stickers management panels are available at a global level in the Administration panel under Card Management. Select Blockers or Stickers, and the system redirects you to the dedicated section.
For easy management, they are separated into two dedicated tabs: Card Blockers and Card Stickers.
Each tab provides the following information:
- Label - this is the token name along with the selected icon.
- Availability level - controls the blockers and stickers' availability on the boards.
- Boards - number of boards where the blockers and stickers have been applied to.
Settings icon - use the three dots icon to permanently delete/disable/replace* a token at a global account level or to edit it.
* Sometimes, a token you have created is not of use anymore, or there are two similar tokens.
To keep your account environment clear, you have to maintain it accordingly. The easiest way would be to delete the token, but then it will disappear from all cards marked with it.
With the replace functionality, you can swap out an unneeded token with an existing one. The redundant token will be deleted, and all cards will obtain the replacement.
How to create a new Blocker/Sticker?
To create a new Blocker or Sticker, just click the New Sticker/New Blocker link on the top right side of the respective panels.
You create Blockers and Stickers in a similar way.
- Create Stickers from the Stickers Tab -> New Card Sticker.
- Create Blockers from the Blockers Tab -> New Card Blocker.
Let's create our first blocker.
(1) Enter any blocker name suitable for your process in the Label text box.
Furthermore, you can define the color and select a dedicated icon that’s appropriate for your new card blocker. In this way, cards that are blocked with this particular blocker will stand out among the others.
(2) To be able to add this token to your cards, you need to assign it to the board first. Select one or more boards from the list below to add the sticker to.
(3) Define the Blocker Availability Level. Note that only Account Owners can control that setting. They can select one of the three possible options:
- Оn demand - When the token becomes available, every Workspace Manager could choose to add it to the boards they manage.
- Auto - When a Token is created, it will be automatically added to all new boards. Workspace Managers could remove it only from the boards they manage.
- Global - When a Token is created, it will be automatically added to all boards and cannot be removed.
Important: If a Workspace Manager creates a token, they will only get the first option.
When you create your blockers and stickers, they get stored in the respective tabs.
Users access them from the Sidebar that belongs to every board in your account.
Note: The Generic Blocker is the one that cannot be removed or edited from the board Sidebar. It is enabled on all boards upon creation.
How to clone an existing Card Blocker/Sticker?
When you open the Blockers/Stickers section from the Card Management tab, you will find a menu that opens up from the three-dot icon, where you can choose to clone an already existing card Blocker/Sticker.
Upon selecting this option, a creation window will appear where the Blocker/Sticker information is already populated from the cloned Blocker/Sticker. You can make any necessary changes and save the cloned version as a new Blocker/Sticker.
Note: if you do not change the name of the Blocker/Sticker, it will be saved with the original name + copy at the end to distinguish between the original and the clone.
3. How do users apply card tokens to cards?
All blockers and stickers that you create and assign to the boards become available in the respective Card Tokens panel in the Board Sidebar.
Blockers
To block a card on your board, open the Tokens panel from the sidebar, then drag and drop the selected blocker to the card. The card will be instantly labeled with the color and the icon of the respective blocker token and will become immovable until its resolution. When there is already a blocker added to a card, if a new blocker is added to the same card, it replaces the last one.
If you open the card, the blocker will become visible in the upper left corner of the card.
To unblock a card -> right-click on it and select: unblock. You can also block a card from the Card Context or Card settings menu as well as directly from the Card Details. To learn more about the ways you can block/unblock cards, please check the dedicated article.
Stickers:
You apply stickers similarly to blockers. Open the Tokens panel from the sidebar -> drag and drop the selected Sticker to the card. To remove the sticker, just right-click on the card and perform the action.
You can label a card with more than one sticker. 
4. How to Manage Blockers and Stickers from the Sidebar
Users with the necessary permission can manage blockers and stickers from the sidebar menu of a board. The system allows you to perform the following actions:
- You can create new Blockers and Stickers:
- Right-click on the existing blocker/sticker to edit it or remove it from the Card Tokens sidebar.
In addition, editing a sticker from the sidebar menu of a board allows you to configure limits for the sticker (note that this is a board-specific setting and can be configured for each board individually):
(1) Board limits control the number of stickers that can be applied to active* cards. This is useful whenever you have a limited capacity of a given resource (e.g. a machine, budget, etc.) which is represented by a sticker. With limits on that sticker, you can ensure that no more than a specific number of work items (Kanban cards) that need the resource, can use it at the same time.
When Board limits are applied to a sticker, a number is displayed next to it in brackets. This number represents how many more stickers are left until reaching the limit.
(2) Card limits control how many times a given sticker can be applied to a single active* card.
This can be useful in cases where a certain work item needs to pass approval or validation, so it would make sense to limit the usage of this sticker to one.
*For the above limits, active cards are considered cards that are in any section besides Done and Ready to Archive on any of the workflows on the board.
Note: If you remove a blocker or sticker from the board list, it will be removed from all visible and archived cards on the respective board. The token will be no longer available in the sidebar.
It will be stored in the Administration panel only. If you want to remove a token at a global account level, you need to perform that action from the dedicated panel in the Administration.
5. Stickers and Blockers in Business Rules and Reporting
The Blocker and Sticker tokens are available as a capability in a variety of product areas.
- Blocker and Sticker tokens in Business rules
The Blockers and Stickers are integrated components in the business rules filters and triggers.
PRO TIPS:
You can configure the business rules to send an email notification on the following newly added events:
- every time when a card is blocked with a specific blocker reason
- every time a card is labeled with a sticker
- You can configure business rules to automatically block а card with a specific blocker reason or label it with a sticker when a system event occurs (create/move/update card; a time-related rule is evaluated as true, etc.)
Notes:
- There is an extra option in the rules configuration, which allows you to select if you want to apply the sticker once or every time when a certain event occurs.
- You can apply an unlimited number of stickers (if the sticker's limits allow it), but for better clarity, only the first 20 stickers will be visible on the card.
- Blocker and Stickers Tokens in the Advanced search panel
The "Blocker" and "Stickers" tokens are added as criteria in the Advanced Search panel.
Refine your search and get a summary report about:
- cards being blocked for a certain reason
- cards labeled with a specific sticker
If you run a report and further configure your search to display Stickers and Blockers, you will be able to see all tokens applied to the cards, displayed in a separate column.
