Glossary
Every term in Contals has one meaning, used the same way in the app, the docs and this website. Each definition can be quoted on its own.
Kanban
A way of organizing work as cards that move through columns (lists) such as “To do”, “Doing” and “Done”. Contals is a Kanban tool.
Organization
The top level in Contals: holds billing, admins and policies, and contains one or more workspaces. Created automatically with the first workspace.
Workspace
The home of a team in Contals, with its members, roles and boards – usually one per team, club, church or company.
Board
A board is the unit of work and collaboration in Contals: one board per project, event or ministry, containing lists and cards.
List
A column on a board, usually a step such as “To do”, “Doing” or “Done”. Cards move between lists.
Card
A single task or topic on a board, with a title, description, labels, assignees, an optional due date and comments.
Card number
A short reference like GEM-4 – the board key and the card’s number – to refer to a card in conversation. The number never changes; a board can hide the numbers.
Board key
The short code in front of the card numbers of a board, such as GEM in GEM-4. Board admins can change it; references with an earlier key keep working.
Label
A colored tag defined per board, such as “Volunteers” or “Urgent”, used to group and spot cards.
Assignee
A person responsible for a card. Cards assigned to you appear under “My cards”.
Due date
The date a card should be done by, provided by the Due dates Power-Up; shown as “overdue” or “due today”.
Checklist
A list of small steps on a card, ticked off one by one; each item can have its own owner and due date, and items assigned to you appear under “My cards”.
Custom field
An extra field defined per board – text, number, date, checkbox or a dropdown with colored options – such as “Budget” or “Event date”; it can be shown on the card front, filtered and searched.
Template
A ready-made board to start from, such as a church festival or a youth camp; due dates are counted from the date you choose. Any board can be saved as a template for the workspace.
Power-Up
An optional feature that a board admin switches on for one board, such as the calendar, automation or date polls. Switching it off hides its data without deleting it.
Board filter
Shows only the cards of a board that match conditions such as a label, a person, a due date or a custom field value; filters can be saved for yourself or for everyone on the board.
Saved filter across boards
A personal filter on the workspace’s Filters page that finds matching cards on every board you can open, using labels and fields by name.
Workspace dashboard
A page with open, overdue and done cards and the latest status of every board in a workspace, plus cards per person and stale cards; next to it, a calendar with every due date.
Status update
A short note by an editor on whether a board is on track, at risk or off track; the newest one shows in the board header and on the workspace dashboard.
Since your last visit
A strip above a board’s lists that sums up what others changed since you last looked at the board, with the changed cards marked.
Stale card
An open card without any activity for as many days as the board’s setting says; it shows an hourglass. Nothing is archived automatically.
Summary e-mail
A weekly e-mail – daily if you like, on Team and Business – with what waits for you and what others changed on your boards; empty summaries are never sent, and one click unsubscribes.
Push notification
A message from Contals on your phone or computer, also when Contals is closed. You switch it on per device; on iPhone and iPad it needs Contals on the Home Screen.
Quiet hours
The hours in which Contals sends you no push notifications and holds notification e-mails back until they end – by default 21:00 to 07:00 in your time zone.
Due reminder
A notification before the due date of a card assigned to you, at the moment you chose in your notification settings – or at a time set on the card for everyone assigned.
Full member
A person who can create and organize boards (workspace owner, admin or member). Full members are the only people Contals charges for.
Volunteer
A free workspace role for helpers: volunteers see shared boards, comment, tick checklist items and mark the cards assigned to them as done, but cannot create or restructure boards.
Guest
A free role for people outside the team, such as clients or partners, with access to individual boards only.
Viewer
A free role that can read boards but not change them.
Board role
What a person may do on one board: viewer, contributor, editor or admin. The server checks it for every change.
Private board
A board visible only to the people added to it. New boards in Contals are private by default.
Inbox
The personal list of things that concern you, such as assignments and comments on your cards, with an unread count.
My cards
A list of all cards and checklist items assigned to you across all boards and workspaces.
For you
The top of the home page: your cards and checklist items due today or overdue, the next 7 days, what waits for your answer and what changed on your boards, across every workspace.
Activity
The history of a board: who changed what and when, shown in your language. A board keeps 13 months of it; how far back you see depends on the plan.
Audit log
The record of who changed what in an organization – roles, access, exports, deletions, sign-in settings, billing – and who opened a confidential board; owners and admins filter it and download it as CSV.
Retention rule
A board setting that archives or deletes done cards automatically a chosen number of days after they were completed; off by default.
Starter board
The board “Getting started” that Contals creates after sign-up; its cards explain the basics.
Real time
Changes by others appear on your screen within a moment, without reloading.
Simple view
A way to use Contals with fewer buttons, larger text, controls of at least 44 pixels and plain words; on by default for volunteers, viewers and guests, switchable in the profile.
Offline reading
When the connection drops, Contals shows open boards from a local copy, read-only, and says how fresh the copy is.
Export
A JSON file with everything on a board, workspace or organization, including comments, Power-Up data and the activity of the last 13 months.
Grace period
The 30 days after an account deletion during which support can still restore the account; afterwards the personal data is erased.
Paused organization
A free organization nobody used for 90 days: read-only, with nothing deleted, until an owner signs in again.
EU data residency
Contals stores board data, its database, queues and backups in Cloudflare’s EU jurisdiction; a second, encrypted copy of the backups lies at DigitalOcean in Frankfurt (Germany).
Own AI model
Contals’ AI features run on the language model your organization connects with its own key and contract (OpenAI-compatible, Anthropic or Google Gemini), within a data policy the organization sets.
API token
A personal key for scripts, integrations and AI agents that use the public REST API or the MCP server; it can never do more than the person who created it and can be revoked at any time.
MCP server
The interface through which AI assistants such as Claude or ChatGPT read and change Contals boards on behalf of a person, using the Model Context Protocol and a personal API token.
Single sign-on (SSO)
Signing in to Contals through your organization’s identity provider with SAML 2.0 or OpenID Connect, for addresses on your verified domains.
Two-factor sign-in
Signing in with a second proof besides the first: a code from an authenticator app, a single-use recovery code or a passkey. Organization owners can require it.
Passkey
A sign-in key on your phone, computer or password manager, unlocked with your fingerprint, face or device PIN; it counts as two factors.