Your guide to Fulcrum

Fulcrum is where you and the project team keep the plan for your project. You read the scope, you tell the team what matters most, and you ask questions on the work itself.

This section tells you how to get in, and what the front page shows you.

1. You get an account from an invitation

There is no sign-up form. Fulcrum has no way to make an account for yourself. Someone on the project team invites your email address, and the invitation makes the account.

The invitation email has a link. The link opens a Set up your account page. The page shows your email address, and you cannot change it. Give a first name, a last name, and a password.

Your password claims the account and signs you in. Fulcrum then puts you on the thing you were invited to: a questionnaire, the prioritization board, or a proposal. A proposal invitation can also land on your dashboard — Fulcrum sends you there when it cannot open the proposal directly. An older project-plan invitation puts you on the project Overview, with the Features and Timeline tabs.

If you already have an account and you are signed in, the link shows a short confirmation page instead. It names what the invitation is for — to answer questions, to prioritize the work, to view the proposal, or to view the project plan — with an Accept Invitation button.

Points to know:

• An invitation link stops after 7 days. An old link says "This invitation has expired." Ask the team for a new one.
• The email address is part of the invitation. If a colleague sends you their link, you cannot claim it with your own address. Ask the team to invite you.
• An invitation link works one time. After it makes the account, the link is spent. Open it again and Fulcrum says "This invitation has already been accepted." — on your dashboard when you are signed in, and on the sign-in page when you are not.
• An invitation you have not used can still set the password, until you confirm your email. If the team sent you more than one invitation, an unused one opens the Set up your account page again, even when somebody already set the account up. This is deliberate: an account nobody has confirmed is not proved to belong to anybody. After you confirm your email, every invitation link stops setting passwords. It sends you to the sign-in page instead.
• If your link reached the wrong person, ask the team for a new invitation. A new invitation to your address opens the setup page again, and your password replaces theirs. The confirmation email always goes to your address, so only you can confirm the account.
• If you are signed in as a different person, Fulcrum refuses the invitation. It tells you which address the invitation went to, and it gives you a Sign out and switch accounts button. Sign out, then open the link again.
• You can also claim an account with a password reset. A reset proves your email, so Fulcrum does not ask you for a name.

2. Sign in claims everything that waits for you

When you sign in on the sign-in page — on your own, not sent there by an invitation link — Fulcrum accepts every open invitation for your address at the same time. A password reset does the same. A project that you were invited to, but never opened, is on your dashboard.

Two ways in are different:

• The Set up your account form claims one invitation — the one you clicked. If the team sent you more than one invitation, the others wait. Sign in again later, or open each link, and they arrive.
• A link that sends you to the sign-in page takes you back to that invitation. Push Accept Invitation for it. The other invitations wait for your next sign-in.

An invitation that already expired is never claimed. Ask the team for a new one.

3. The confirmation strip

An account that you claimed from the setup form gets an amber strip at the top of every portal page:

Confirm your email to secure your account — we sent a link to your address. You can keep going in the meantime.

You do not have to confirm to use Fulcrum. You can read your proposal, answer the questionnaire, read the plan, and write comments. All of it works.

Confirmation unlocks one page: your profile. Your name, your password, and the light-or-dark setting are there. Fulcrum does not open that page until the email is proved. Push Resend link if the email did not arrive.

An account that you claimed with a password reset is already confirmed. It never gets the strip.

4. The dashboard

The dashboard is the front page. The word Fulcrum at the top left also goes there.

Guide is at the top right of every portal page, beside Dashboard and your name. It opens this guide in a new tab, so the page you were on stays where it is. The link is on the sign-in and password pages too, and the guide needs no account. Log Out is beside your name. One kind of page carries none of this: a proposal opens in its own full-screen view, with only a way back to your dashboard.

If Fulcrum has no name for you, the dashboard asks for one. A Finish setting up your profile panel takes a first name and a last name. Push Save and the panel goes away.

Proposals are at the top. Each proposal shows its version and how long ago the team published it, with a View proposal button. A proposal that is yours to share also carries Share with your team, which passes the proposal on to a colleague. See Proposals.

Projects are below. Each project is one card. The card shows the project name and your company name. If you answer the questionnaire, the card also shows a progress bar and a green Completed badge when you are done.

The buttons on a card are the doors that the team opened for you:

View project is on the card whenever the team opened any project tab for you beyond the questions. It opens the Overview, which is the front page. The Overview shows only what your tabs cover.

One button on each card is highlighted. It is Answer Questions when the team asked you questions, and View project when they did not.

The tabs inside a project follow your doors as well. Each door that you hold is a tab in the band at the top of the page, so you move between them without a return to the dashboard.

Points to know:

• A person with a proposal only sees no project card. This is deliberate. A proposal often goes to an advisor, and an advisor stays out of the project.
• A proposal that your account holds stays on your dashboard. Your account holds a proposal when you set the account up from a proposal invitation, or when you already had an account at the moment the team sent it. A proposal you hold that way is yours: a new version does not take the card away, and neither does a link that stopped working. View proposal opens the current version, even when the card still names an older one. A proposal that reaches you only through a link — one that arrived before you had an account, or one a colleague passed to you — stays only while that link works. If a card you need goes away, ask the team to send you the proposal again. See Proposals.
• Files is a permission of its own. Files is a tab inside the plan, but the team gives it separately. A prioritization invitation does not carry it. If you read the plan and you see no Files tab, nothing is broken. Ask the team. If Files is the only thing the team gave you, your card still shows, with View project on it.
• "No projects available yet" is what you see if you have an account but no project access yet. Ask the team.

5. Your profile

Click your name at the top of any portal page.

• Profile — your first and last name. Your email address is read-only. Fulcrum has no way to change your address; ask the team.
• Appearance — Light, Dark, or System. The choice applies immediately, and it follows your account to every device. It is not a browser setting.
• Password — give your current password, then the new one twice. Fulcrum always asks for the current password, so a person at an unlocked laptop cannot lock you out of your own account.

This page opens only after you confirm your email. Before that, Fulcrum sends you back to the dashboard and asks you to confirm first.

If you forget your password, push Forgot password? on the sign-in page. Fulcrum emails you a link to set a new one.

If you claimed your account with a password reset, and you gave no name, Fulcrum shows your email address where your name goes. Your comments show it too. The dashboard asks you for a name in a Finish setting up your profile panel. You can also give it on this page.

6. Fulcrum remembers your layout

Fulcrum keeps the shape of the screen that you set:

• The width of a panel that slides in from the right.
• The width of the name column on the timeline.
• The columns that you hide on the Prioritize board, and whether you hid the features that you cannot move.
• The hint that tells you how the Prioritize board works. Dismiss it and it stays away. The ? button in the row of controls above it brings it back.
• Compact or comfortable feature cards. The icon-only control (shortcut C) is on Features and Prioritize, and the two pages share one setting. A compact card hides the description and the row of badges below it, so more of the plan fits on the screen.
• The Features page's centered or full-width layout. Its icon-only control has shortcut W; this is independent from compact cards.

The story map keeps both the Size that you choose and whether its pinned Backlog column is showing. See The story map.

All of it is kept against your account, not in one browser. The same account on a phone and on a laptop shows the same layout.

Fulcrum keeps these settings for one project at a time, so a second project starts with the plain layout. The width of a panel is the exception. It is kept for your whole account.

Widths have limits. If you drag past a limit, Fulcrum pulls the width back into the range.

Next: Proposals · The questions · Your plan

A proposal is the document that the team sends you for the work: the approach, the shape of the team, the timeline, and the price.

A proposal is a different thing from a plan. The proposal is the offer. The plan is the work, after the offer. Money is in the proposal only. There is no price anywhere in the plan.

1. Read a proposal

Your proposals are at the top of the dashboard. Each one shows its version and how long ago the team published it. Push View proposal.

Fulcrum can ask you to confirm your email address first — for example, on a browser that it has not seen you on before, or has not seen for a month. It sends a code to your inbox. Put the code in, and the proposal opens. The code is how Fulcrum keeps the proposal to the people it was shared with.

Your emailed link opens once, for whoever opens it first. That browser is the one it belongs to from then on, and every browser after it has to ask for a code. Nobody can tell the two of you apart on that first click, so the first click is free — which means forwarding the email hands over one read of the proposal. After that the link is tied to wherever it was opened, and asks your colleague for a code sent to your inbox. Put them on a link of their own instead; that is what sharing is for.

A proposal opens as a full-screen document. Move through it with the arrows, or with the arrow keys. Hold either arrow to get a list of all the pages, and jump to one.

2. Share a proposal with your team

You do not have to ask the account team to send a proposal to a colleague. You can do it.

On the proposal card, open Share with your team.

1. Give the link a name, for example Exec team. The name is for you, to tell your links apart.
2. Put the email addresses in, separated by commas. Fulcrum drops anything that is not an email address.
3. Fulcrum makes the link, sends each person their own way in, and copies the link for you.

Below the form, each link that you made shows who is on it, if they opened it, and how many times. Add puts one more person on a link that you already made, and emails them their own way in. Remove takes one person off. Revoke closes the whole link.

If a person opens a link that somebody forwarded to them, and they ask to be let in, the request comes here, and Fulcrum emails you. Add them puts the person on the link and sends them their own way in. Decline refuses.

Points to know:

• Somebody with their own Fulcrum account is added to the list when they open your link. They could already read the proposal from their own account, so nothing new is being let through — the list simply stops saying somebody about a person it can name. Remove takes them off the link as it does anybody else, though it does not take away the access their own account gives them.
• A link is pinned to the version that was live when you made it. When the team publishes a new version, the link pauses. The link shows a Proposal updated badge and a Re-share latest button. Push it to point the link at the new version. Everybody on the link stays on it. While the link is paused, Add, Remove, and Revoke are off it — Re-share latest is the one thing you can do with a paused link.
• A revoked link stays in your list, struck through, and nothing widens it again. You keep seeing what you closed, and Add, Remove, Add them and Re-share latest are all off it — a revoked link is not paused, it is finished, so make a new one instead. Decline still works, because clearing a dead link's queue lets nobody in. Until 2026-08-20 Add them was still offered on a revoked link, and pressing it emailed that person a way in.
• You can share only a proposal that was addressed to you. If you read a proposal because somebody put you on their link, the share form is not on your card. You can read it. You cannot pass it on.
• Remove takes one person off the link, and takes the proposal off that person's dashboard.
• Saving the proposal to an account does not put a reader beyond Remove. Inside the proposal, Fulcrum can offer a reader the chance to save it to an account of their own. Remove and Revoke still end their reading: the account keeps the proposal only while a live link still names that person. Somebody on a second link keeps it by that link.
• If the team takes your access away, the links that you made close with it. Everybody that reads by your links stops as well, because a link that you made is not a way around your own access — an account they saved the proposal to included. Your links stay open only if, at that moment, you still hold the proposal another way: a second link addressed to you, a place on somebody else's live link, or proposal access that comes with your project. Until 2026-08-20 the middle one did not count, so two people in the same position could get different answers depending on how they had been named.
• A link that simply runs out of time is different. An expired link still opens for somebody who saved the proposal, and the proposal stays on their dashboard. Running out is not a decision anybody made; Revoke is.
• The team can also stop one person reading a proposal, whichever link named them. If that happens to you the proposal leaves your dashboard and no link opens it — ask the team. If it happens to somebody you shared with, the team chooses at that moment whether to close the links you made as well, so yours may or may not still work.

Next: The questions · Your plan

Before the team can scope your project, they need to know things that only you know. The questionnaire collects them.

Open it from the dashboard: Answer Questions. When you are already in the project, click the Questions tab at the top of the page.

If the team invited you to answer, following either of those links lets them know that you viewed the questionnaire. Fulcrum records the page visit, not an invisible email-tracking image; your answers and completion remain separate progress signals.

1. How the page works

A row of tabs sits at the top of the page, with the project name beside it. The questionnaire is the Questions tab. The row holds only the tabs that the team opened for you. It can hold this one tab only.

The questions are in groups. A header stays at the top of the screen as you move down. It shows how many questions you answered, out of how many, and a bar.

Three kinds of question:

• Open questions take your own words.
• One-choice questions let you pick one option.
• Many-choice questions let you pick more than one.

A choice question can also have an Other box for an answer that is not on the list.

Most answers keep themselves. Fulcrum keeps a typed answer when you press Enter, when you click the arrow, or when you click away from the box. It keeps a one-choice answer as soon as you pick an option. Other is different: picking it only opens a box. On a one-choice question, Fulcrum keeps nothing while that box is empty. A many-choice question keeps nothing until you press Submit.

Write in the Other box. Other with an empty box is not an answer, on a many-choice question as much as on a one-choice one. Submit keeps your other picks and leaves Other unpicked. When Other was your only pick, Submit keeps nothing, and the box stays open for your words. The same holds when you empty the Other box of an answer that you are editing: the pick goes with the words, and an edit that leaves you with nothing is not kept.

Your answer then closes into a small bubble. Point at your own bubble to see Edit and Delete. Edit opens the answer again, and that button becomes Cancel while the box is open. Fulcrum keeps an edit to an open answer when you press Enter, when you click the arrow, or when you click away from the box. It keeps an edit to a one-choice answer as soon as you pick a different option, and it keeps new Other text when you click away. A many-choice edit is kept only by its Save button. Delete removes the answer, and Fulcrum asks you first.

The question text is also a control, but only for a question that you had already answered when the page opened. Click it, and a blank answer box opens under the question; click it again and the box goes away. An answer kept there replaces your old one. A question that you answer during this visit gets that control the next time that you open the page. Until then, use Edit on the bubble.

You see every answer on a question, not only your own. Each bubble gives the name of the person who wrote it and a tag that reads Client or Admin.

The team can add a follow-up question after they read an answer. It sits under its question, marked Follow-up questions, and its number follows its parent — question 3 gets follow-up 3.1. New questions do not come in live; you see them when you open the page again, and the counts then grow to include them.

All | Unanswered | Answered selects which questions stay on the screen. The questionnaire opens on All. Unanswered removes the finished questions, so you see only what is left. Answered shows only the questions that you answered. A question and its follow-ups stay together: Unanswered keeps a finished question on the screen while a follow-up under it is still open, and Answered keeps an open question on the screen while a follow-up under it has an answer. A group with nothing left to show goes away too. When you answer the last one while Unanswered is selected, Fulcrum goes back to All by itself and tells you that all questions are answered.

2. Mark as Completed

Mark as Completed tells the team that you are done. The button then becomes a green Completed badge. You can still change an answer after this. The team sees your progress while you work, so they do not have to wait for the button.

One point to know: the badge comes off when the team adds a question. The button is back, so you can see there is something new and say when you are done again — the team still has the record that you finished the earlier set. A question the team keeps to themselves does not bring it back. A question can also go away again: the team can take one back and answer it themselves. Once you have answered it, they cannot — your answer stays. Until 2026-08-20 the badge stayed on forever, so a questionnaire that had grown since you finished still told you that you were done.

The old note here said that marking complete clears leftover Other text on a question where you finished on a different option. It never did: changing your choice already clears it, so there was nothing left to clean.

3. Talk about an answer

Each answer has a comment thread and emoji reactions under it. Use them to ask the team what a question means, or to explain an answer that needs more than the box. Type in the Reply box under an answer to comment. Click the smiley face to add a reaction; a comment can take one too.

Point at a reaction to see who gave it. Click a reaction that you gave to take it back.

New answers, comments, and reactions from other people come in live on this page. You do not have to refresh.

There is no way to delete a comment here. Ask the team if you want one taken down.

4. Points to know

• The questionnaire is a separate door from the plan. Access to the plan does not let you in here, and access here does not let you into the plan. The team opens each one.
• You see only the questions that the team shares. The team can hide a question or a whole group. Your totals count the questions that the team shares with you.
• This page updates live. Comments on the plan arrive by themselves too. What does not arrive by itself is the plan itself — new features, hours, dates, and approvals appear when you reload.

Next: Your plan

The plan is the scope of the work: every feature, what it covers, how big it is, and where it sits in the order.

Open it from the dashboard: View project. The plan has tabs across the top: Questions, Overview, Features, Prioritize, Story Map, Timeline, Board, Decisions, Files. You see the tabs that the team opened for you.

Questions leads the row while the team has asked you to answer the questionnaire. It takes you back to the questions from any plan tab.

1. Words you need

Won't Have means not in this round. It does not mean never. The team shows this group on purpose, so that you and the team agree on what is out of scope.

2. Overview

The Overview is the summary of the whole plan.

About this project — in your words is at the top. This is your space. Write what the project is, in your framing. If it is empty, the card asks you to write it. This card is always here.

The cards below it match the tabs you have. You see a card only if you have the tab it summarises:

• Scope at a glance — the number of features, the estimated hours, and a bar that divides the hours by priority. Click it to go to Features. You see it if you have the Features tab.
• Timeline — the dates, and either a countdown to kickoff, a Week N of M meter, or Timeline complete. Click it to go to Timeline. You see it if you have the Timeline tab.
• Releases — each release with its feature count, its hours, and its expected date when the team has set one. You see it if you have the Features tab and the plan has releases.
• Discussion — the five threads with the newest activity, and a badge for the comments that you did not read. You see it if you can open a feature.

If you have only one tab, the Overview shows your words and little else. This is correct. The Overview does not show you a part of the plan that the team did not open for you.

Points to know:

• The Overview never filters. The search bar is not on this tab. You cannot narrow these numbers to a part of the plan.
• Cancelled work is not in the numbers. The feature count, the estimated hours, the priority bar, and every release row describe the work that still stands. You find the cancelled work at the foot of the Features tab. Its discussions stay in the Discussion card.
• Your brief is shared writing. The team reads it on their own project page, word for word. It is not a private note.
• There is one brief for the project. Everybody with portal access edits the same one — including somebody who holds only Files, because these are your own words and every door to the portal reaches them.
• Two people who write at the same time no longer overwrite each other. The second save is refused, and the page comes back with your own words still in the box so you can copy what you want to keep before reloading to see theirs. Until 2026-08-19 the second save won and the first person was never told.
• The unread badge counts what you did not open. Your own comments never count. A thread becomes read as soon as you open the feature.

3. Features

Every feature, as cards. The cards are grouped by release, and then by priority for the work that has no release yet. When the plan has releases, that ungrouped work is headed Backlog. Cancelled work is last, below a rule, in a group of its own. A cancelled card keeps the badge of the release that the work came out of.

If the team retires a release, it stops heading a group and its features move down to the ungrouped work. The features are still in the plan. Only the grouping changed, and the same happens on the Timeline.

A release that carries a written summary shows Release notes beside its name. Click the name, or click Release notes, to open the summary above that release's cards. Click again to close it. The notes start closed every time. You read them; the team writes them, and decides when they are ready to share — so a release with nothing here may still be being written up.

A card shows the name, one line of description, the hours, a complexity badge for each role, labels, and the faces of the people assigned.

Search and filters are across the top. Add Filter offers Status, Priority, Release, Approved, Labels, Role, and Assignee. You can build groups of conditions.

Three view controls sit beside the search bar. Releases opens a read-only drawer that lists every live release and jumps to its section on this page. A release with no section in the current results is listed, but does not jump. The icon-only card-density control (shortcut C) hides descriptions, role estimates, and labels so more cards fit. The icon-only width control (shortcut W) switches the Features page between its centered and full-width layouts. Hold the pointer on either icon to see its name and shortcut; its pressed state shows which setting is on. Fulcrum keeps both choices for this project and uses them on your next visit, on any device.

Click a card to open the feature.

Points to know:

• Search needs 2 letters. One letter gives you everything back.
• Search reads names, descriptions, and the comments that you can see. The team's internal notes and task titles are not in the plan, so a word that you know the team uses can find nothing.
• Search and filters reach cancelled work. If the only match is cancelled, you get the Cancelled group, not an empty page.
• Cancelled work stays out of the counts. It is not in the Overview numbers, not in a release total, and not on the Timeline.
• Compact is one choice for two tabs. Features and Prioritize share it. Set it on one tab, and the other tab follows.
• Full width belongs to Features. It is independent of card density, so compact cards can stay centered and comfortable cards can span the viewport.
• The address bar follows what you open. A link taken from this page needs the Features tab at the other end. A colleague without that tab lands back on their dashboard.
• The same feature panel opens from Features, Prioritize, and Story Map. Only the page behind it changes.
• A Timeline row opens the panel only if you also have the Features tab. Without it a row gives you its hover note and is not a link — whatever else you hold, the Board tab included.
• A shared link does not always reopen on the tab it came from. Prioritize, Story Map, and Board each keep their own address. The Timeline uses the Features address, so a reload — or a link you send from a Timeline row — opens the Features page with the panel on top, and it needs the Features tab at the other end.
• The Board's panel is its own. It opens narrower than the panel on the other tabs, and the width you drag there is kept apart from the width you drag here.

4. One feature

The feature panel shows the same things wherever you open it.

At the top: Status, Priority, Release, Assigned, Total hours with a complexity badge for each role, and the Scheduled dates — plus Labels, when the feature has any.

Below that:

• Tasks — a bar with N of M complete and a percentage, if the team broke the work down.
• Approvals — your sign-off, and the team's.
• What it covers — the description.
• Discussion — the comment thread.

Points to know:

• Task titles are not shown. You get the count and the bar. The titles are the team's working notes.
• There is no money on this panel, or anywhere in the plan. No rates, no cost, no budget. Hours and complexity are shown. Price reaches you in a proposal, which is a separate document.
• Everything is read-only, with three exceptions: your approval tick, the pencil on features the team has not scheduled, and the comment thread.
• Set the panel's width. Drag its left edge. The panel stops at half the window. A reset button then shows in the panel header, which gives the panel its usual width back. Fulcrum keeps the width against your account. The Board's panel keeps a width of its own, so a width you set here does not follow you there.

5. Discussion

The thread at the bottom of a feature is shared with the whole project team.

The box at the bottom starts a new thread. Each thread has its own Reply in this thread… box, so you can answer a specific point.

You can attach files. You can use @ to mention a person, a feature, a release, or a role — a role, for example Design. The list of people is everyone on the project team, plus everyone on your side who has any tab on this project — not only the people who build the work. Until 2026-08-20 your side's half of that list held only the people with the Features tab, so a colleague who could read a decision could not be named in it.

You can react to any comment with an emoji. The round face under the comment opens the picker. Click your reaction again to take it back.

Your own comments have an Edit link.

Points to know:

• Everything that you write here is public to the project team. You cannot write a private note. The team's own internal notes never appear here.
• There is no delete for you. You can rewrite your comment. You cannot remove it. The team can remove a comment, and it then leaves the thread while you read it.
• A late edit is marked (edited). The mark shows only when the change comes more than a minute after the comment was sent, so a quick fix leaves no mark. An edit that arrives live changes the text in front of you without the mark; the mark is there after you reload.
• The Discussion updates live. A comment, a reply, an edit, and the emoji counts arrive by themselves. You do not have to refresh.
• The Board and the Questions tab are live too. The Board's cards move between lanes, and new work appears there, with no refresh. On Questions, answers, comments, and reactions arrive by themselves in the same way. Everything else — new features, hours, dates, sign-offs on this page — appears when you reload.
• A comment that arrives by itself has no Edit link yet. This includes your own comment, written in another tab. Reload the page, and the link is there.

6. Sign off on a feature

The Approvals row has a Client approved circle. Click it. Fulcrum records your name and the time. Click it again to withdraw.

Design approved beside it is the team's own sign-off. It is a status line for you, not a button, because it is the team's call.

Points to know:

• You can approve any feature, including work that is scheduled or in progress. This is on purpose. Editing is fenced; sign-off is not.
• Approving and withdrawing both leave a permanent record with your name on it.
• You can filter by sign-off. On Features, Add Filter offers Approved. The pill holds one choice, Approved or Not approved. Pick the other one, and it takes the place of the first.

7. Change a feature that is not scheduled yet

A feature that the team has not scheduled has a pencil at the top right of the panel. You can change:

• the title,
• the description,
• the MoSCoW priority,
• the release.

Your change is recorded with your name, and it reaches the team's board immediately.

Points to know:

• You cannot change hours or estimates. Sizing is the team's.
• The pencil is absent, not disabled, when the feature is scheduled, locked by the team, or archived. There is no message. If you do not see a pencil, the work has started or the team has fixed it.
• To remove a description, clear the editor and save.

Next: Telling us what matters most · Where the work stands · The shared record

The Prioritize tab is where you sort the work. What you put in each column tells the team what to build first.

1. The five columns

Must Have · Should Have · Could Have · Won't Have · Archived

Each column shows how many features are in it, and the total hours.

A coloured bar sits above the columns. Each column has a slot in it, and the slot is as wide as that column's share of the hours. A slot names its column, and gives the count and the hours. Point at a slot to read the same numbers when the slot is too narrow to print them. To the left of the bar you get the total hours in scope. Archived is not counted in that total, and its slot keeps a fixed width, because archived work is off the plan. The bar changes as soon as you drop a card.

A very small column is drawn a little wider than its true share, so that it stays visible. Read the bar as the shape of the plan, not as an exact measure. When nothing is estimated yet, the plan columns' slots are the same width.

Drag a card from one column to another. A note above the columns says it plainly:

Drag features between columns to tell us what matters most. Won't Have means not in this round; Archived takes it off the plan entirely (the team can always bring it back).

There is no Save button. A drop is a save, and it is recorded with your name.

2. Won't Have and Archived are different

• Won't Have keeps the feature on the plan. It says not in this round. The team, and you, can still see it, read it, and talk about it.
• Archived takes the feature off the plan. It is a real archive, not a hide.

Archived is reversible. Drag the card back, or ask the team. Nothing is lost.

One thing does change on the way back. If a feature on the plan already has the same name, the restored feature comes back with (restored) added to its name. The card on screen still shows the old name. Reload the page to see the new one.

3. Some cards refuse to move

A card does not always move. Two reasons:

• The feature is scheduled. The timeline owns it now. It does not move — not to another column, not to Archived, not up or down inside its own column, and not back out of Archived either if the team archived it while it was scheduled. If a scheduled feature needs to move up or down the list, tell us: leave a comment on the card, or raise it at the standup, and we will work out the change with you. Moving it here would either look like a change without being one, or unsettle an order the timeline is holding.
• The team locked the feature. A locked card refuses everything — even the way back out of Archived.

Both of those hold in both directions. Until 2026-08-19 the way out of Archived asked neither question, so a card that refused to be archived could still be restored.

A card like this wears a small Scheduled or Locked badge. Try to drag it and a short message tells you why it did not move.

When cards in the plan columns refuse, Hide immovable appears. Its explanation tells you how many of them are locked or scheduled. Push it to clear the immovable cards off the screen and work with the rest. A locked card in the Archived column is hidden too, but it is not in the count.

While that button is pressed, the numbers describe only the cards you can see. That is true of the column headings, of the slots in the bar, and of the total hours in scope. The total comes back up when you show every feature again.

Hiding those cards does not give the column a second order. Movable and immovable cards share one order, and an immovable card keeps its place in it while it is hidden. A drop at the top of the cards you can see is therefore the top of the visible movable cards, not necessarily the top of the complete column. Push Show every feature again and any hidden cards that were above or between them reappear in those places.

If a card will not move and you think it must, say so in the feature's discussion. The team can unschedule or unlock it.

4. Move many features together

Push Select in the bar at the top, or press S. A row of controls appears, and picked cards can move as one stack.

1. Click cards to pick them. The row counts how many you picked.
2. Use All to pick every movable, unarchived card on screen, or None to clear the lot. All starts over rather than adding to what you had picked, so the picks are in the board's order afterwards however you got there.
3. To choose the exact position, drag any picked card. The card under your pointer leads the stack, and the other picked cards follow it — in the order you picked them, or in the board's own order after All. The whole stack stays together where you drop it. A successful drag saves without reloading the page.
4. If only the column matters, push a Move to letter, or push Archive to take the selection off the plan. These buttons do not choose a position inside the destination, and the page reloads from the server to show the result.
5. Push Cancel, press Esc, or press S again, to leave Select mode.

Points to know

• The cards you cannot move — locked, or already scheduled — cannot be picked. Archived cards cannot be picked, and while Select is on they do not drag either; push Cancel first to bring one back. Select is not a way around section 3.
• The toolbar result does not tell you how many features it skipped. Read the board after its reload.
• A search, or a change to a filter, ends Select mode and clears your selection, because the cards on screen have changed.

5. Tidy the board

Each column has an eye icon that hides the column. The column keeps its slot in the bar at the top, drawn as a dashed outline. Click that slot to bring the column back.

The icon-only card-density control in the bar makes the cards smaller. A compact card drops its description, role estimates, and labels, and shortens a Scheduled or Locked badge to its icon, so more of the plan fits on screen. Its tooltip names the compact/comfortable toggle and shortcut C; the pressed state means compact. Click it or press C again to restore the full cards.

The note above the columns tells you how the board works. Push the × on the note to put it away. Push the ? in the bar at the top to bring it back, and push ? again to put it away.

Hidden columns, Hide immovable, card density, and a note you put away are kept against your account for that project. They follow you to another device, and they are still set on your next visit. Card density is shared with the Features tab: set it in one place and both tabs use it.

6. Points to know

• A drop is a write. There is no undo prompt. To reverse a move, drag it back.
• This tab is open only while the team keeps the window open. They can close it from their side at any time, usually when the scope is settled.
• Search and the filters cover the Archived column too. A card that a search takes off the screen is filtered, not deleted.
• Click a card to read it. You get the description, the hours, the roles, the dates, the discussion, and your sign-off — the same detail every other view of these features opens. Sign off, write a comment, or edit the card, and you come back to this board. You do not need access to the plan tabs to do any of it. The Edit feature pencil appears only on a feature that is not locked, not archived, and not yet on the calendar.

Next: Where the work stands

The Story Map tab draws your plan as a map instead of a list. Read it when you want the shape of the work — what the product does, step by step — rather than the order it gets built in.

You see this tab when the team opens it for you. It is one of the doors they set for you, like Prioritize and Board.

1. How to read the map

Across the top, in blue, are the activities — the big things the product does. Under each activity are its steps, in yellow: the smaller pieces that make an activity work. Together they are the backbone of the map, and they read left to right. An activity card shows how many features sit under it and their hours — the cards you can count in the columns beneath it, and no others. A step card shows its hours once its features are estimated. A card the team has not placed on a step is in no activity's count; it is in the Backlog column instead.

Down the left are the rows:

• one row for each release, and
• below a divider, one row for each priority — Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, Won't Have — for the work that is not in a release yet. A priority row appears only when it holds cards. A project with no releases yet has no release rows and no divider.

A feature card sits where a step column crosses a row. So a card's column tells you which part of the product it belongs to, and its row tells you when you get it. The card carries its name and its hours, and nothing else.

Each row on the left shows how many cards it holds, and their hours once the work is estimated. A release row also shows the date the team expects it, when the team has set one. A row that holds cards shows a green bar with a count like 3/8 — how many of that row's features are delivered, which means Ready or Released.

Points to know:

• A row with nothing in it can still appear. An empty release row is information: it says that release has nothing in it yet.
• A card the team has not placed on a step yet goes in the Backlog column, at the right edge. That column stays with you as you scroll sideways, and it is drawn only when at least one card is unplaced. Backlog in the control bar shows or hides the column without moving a card, and Fulcrum remembers the choice for this project. This is about placement on the map — it is a different thing from the Backlog heading on Features, which means work with no release.
• Colour comes from the priority. A card in a release row is washed in its priority colour. A card in a priority row is white with a priority stripe down its left edge.
• Cancelled work is not on the map. Work the team dropped draws no card, and it is in no count: not a row's, not an activity's, not a green bar's. The map is for the shape of the work that still stands, and a cancelled card here would look like any other. You find the cancelled work on Features, in a group of its own at the foot of the page, each card carrying the release it came out of.
• The map can be wide. Scroll it sideways; the row labels stay with you.

Before the team breaks the work into activities and steps, there is no map to draw. The tab then says No story map yet and fills in later. Nothing is broken.

2. Search and filters

The same search box and Add Filter menu as Features sit above the map, with the map's own controls — Size, Releases, and Backlog — beside them. Add Filter offers Status, Priority, Labels, Assignee, Role, and Approved — plus Release, once the plan has releases — and you can build groups of conditions. Search needs 2 letters, and it reads the same fields it reads on Features.

Points to know:

• The backbone never thins. A search or a filter changes which cards you see. The activities and the steps stay, because they are the map itself. An activity can look empty when it is only filtered.
• A line under the map keeps the count. While a filter is on, it says how many features matched — or that nothing did, and that the activities and steps above are the whole map. So the shape is never all you have to read.
• Empty rows drop out while a filter is on. With no filter, an empty release row says that release is still empty. Under a filter, it would only say your filter missed, so it goes. One letter in the search box is not a filter — nothing moves until the second letter, which is also when the count line below the map appears.
• Your search and filters stay in the address. A link you send carries them, and closing a card brings you back to the filtered map, not the whole plan.

3. Open a card

Click any card to open the same feature panel you get everywhere else: status, priority, release, who is on it, hours, the dates, the description, your sign-off, and the discussion. Your plan describes that panel row by row.

The address bar follows you, and a card opened from the map reopens on the map. Send that link to a colleague with access and they land where you were, not on a different tab.

• A link to work the team has archived does not open here. The map does not draw archived work, so there would be no card behind the panel. Ask the team, or look on Prioritize, which keeps an Archived column.

4. Size

Size — Small · Normal · Large sets how big the map is drawn. Fulcrum remembers your choice for that project, so it is still set on your next visit, on any device.

Use Small when you want the whole product on one screen, and Large when you are reading a particular corner of it. When you are not typing, - steps the size down and + steps it up; the _ and = keys work with those same shortcuts too. The keys wait while a panel is open over the map. Close the card, or the Releases list, and they work again.

5. Releases

The Releases button opens a read-only drawer at the right. The map stays behind it, dimmed, and comes back when you close the drawer. The drawer lists the releases on this plan in their lane colours, and where the map has release rows it is the key to them.

Each one shows its name, its version, and how many features it holds. The hours, the expected date, and the first few lines of the team's write-up appear when the team has set them.

• The list shows every live release, whatever your filter is. It is a key, so a release does not stop existing because nothing in it matched your search. The counts beside each one are filtered, so they agree with the map next to them.
• Click a release to jump to its row on this map. The drawer closes and the page moves to that release. The jump stays on this page, so it works whether or not you have the Features tab.
• A release with no row to jump to is still listed, and says so. It is dimmed and does not click. Under a search or a filter it reads Not in these results; otherwise it reads No section on this page. Before the team has drawn the map — while the page says No story map yet — every release is listed that way, because there are no rows yet to jump to.
• Releases the team archived are not on the map, and not in this list. The work parked on one leaves the map with it: Features still lists that work under its Backlog heading, but the map draws it in no row and counts it in no total.
• If the plan has no releases yet, the list says so. Everything on the map is then in the priority rows.

6. The map itself is read-only

You cannot move a card, add an activity or a step, or change the shape of the map. Nothing here is greyed out, because none of it is here at all — the map is a picture of the plan, not a place to build it.

The card you open is the shared feature panel, so it can carry more than the map does: your sign-off, the discussion, and — on work the team has not scheduled or locked — the pencil that sets the title, the description, the priority, and the release. All three work from here, and each one brings you back to the map. You do not need access to the plan tabs to use them. Your plan describes each one in full.

Until 2026-08-20 the pencil was the exception: it sent you to the Features page instead of opening the form here, and if the Features tab is not one of yours, to a door that turned you away. The same was true of a comment or a sign-off saved from a card — the map was not among the places the app would return you to. Both land back on the map now.

One point to know: the map itself shows hours and no other sizing number. Open a card, and the Total hours row also gives the complexity the team recorded for each role.

To change what the team builds first, use Prioritize.

Next: Where the work stands · Telling us what matters most

Two tabs answer when and how far: Timeline and Board.

Neither tab is where you change the plan. You cannot move a bar on the calendar, and you cannot move a card between lanes. To change what is planned, use Prioritize.

A Board card opens its feature panel. A Timeline row opens the same feature detail only when your access also includes the Features tab: the detail carries the hours, the roles, and the release, which is the scope that tab is for. Without the Features tab, a Timeline row does not open the feature — the hover note is what the row gives you. From an open feature you can sign off, write in its discussion, and add an emoji to a comment.

1. Timeline

A calendar of the scheduled work, week by week.

One bar for each feature, grouped into release sections. Scheduled work that belongs to no release sits in a Backlog group. A Today line runs down the calendar at today's date, and a Today chip sits above it. The line and the chip appear only when today falls inside the window the calendar draws.

Hold the pointer on a row to see the feature's name, its dates, how many days it is scheduled for, and its priority. The note also gives the estimated hours when the team has estimated the feature, and it says Delivered for work that is finished. Click the row to open the feature when you also have the Features tab; without it, the row does not open the feature, and the hover note is what it gives you.

Below the calendar is a list of the features that are not on the calendar yet.

A delivered feature has a check beside its name.

Set the width you want. Drag the divider between the name column and the calendar. Fulcrum keeps the width against your account for that project, so it follows you to another device.

The same search and filters as Features narrow which rows are drawn.

Points to know:

• A filter changes the bars, never the weeks. The width of the calendar comes from everything that is scheduled. The calendar holds still while you filter, so you can compare.
• Two empty messages mean different things. Nothing on the calendar yet means the team has scheduled no work. Nothing on the calendar matches the current search and filters means your filter is too narrow.
• Cancelled work is not on this page. Work the team dropped draws no bar, and it is not in the not scheduled yet list either. Look for it in the Board's Cancelled lane.
• The bars come from the team's saved schedule only. No staffing and no cost data is on this page.

2. Board

The build, as it happens. One lane for each status, and a card for each feature.

A card shows the status, the hours, the release, labels, the people assigned, and how many tasks are complete. A coloured stripe down its left edge shows the priority.

The same search and filters sit above the lanes. Type two or more characters to search. Add a filter for Priority, Release, Label, Assignee, Role, Approved, or Comments → Unread. The lanes redraw, and each lane's count follows. The menu offers no Status row, because the lanes are the statuses. Your search and filters stay in the address, so a link you send opens the same view.

Keep a filter you will want again. Saved, beside Clear all, names the filter you are looking at and adds it to your list. Tick Save for everyone and everybody on your side of the project gets it too. Picking a saved filter puts it straight back.

• Your saved filters are yours and your team's. The Headway team has their own, on their own board, and neither side sees the other's.
• Some of yours may have come from Headway, who can build one for you and share it. It behaves exactly like one you made.
• A saved filter belongs to this project.

Click a card. A panel opens at the right with the full feature: sign-off, discussion, and the pencil on work you can still edit. The lane stays on screen behind it. Opening a feature marks its discussion as read.

What you'll be able to do appears on a feature the team has written a summary for: the user story it delivers, and the things that will be true once it is done. It is written in plain language rather than in the team's own working notes, and you see it once somebody on the team has read it and released it. A feature without one simply does not show the section.

Tick each one off as you see it working. Press a line to confirm it, press it again to take that back, and the count above the list keeps score. The team sees what you have confirmed.

• A tick is yours. Nobody on the team can give one on your behalf.
• Rewording one line does not disturb the others. If the team rewrites the summary as a whole, or accepts a new one Fulcrum wrote, the ticks clear — the list is no longer the one you agreed to.

Comments → Unread is personal to your account. It includes client-visible comments written by somebody else since you last opened the thread; your own comments never count. Open a card from that result and Fulcrum removes its unread dot, scrolls the drawer to the inline Discussion, and refreshes the filtered lanes. Once the thread is read, that card leaves the Unread results. The dot survives the team working around it: a card redrawn because somebody renamed it or moved it keeps its dot, and only your opening the thread takes it away.

Set the panel's width. Drag its left edge. The panel will only stretch so far. A reset button then shows in the panel header, which gives the panel its usual width back. Fulcrum keeps this panel's width against your account; the panel the Features tab opens keeps its own.

The address follows the open panel, so you can send a colleague a link straight to that feature. Close the panel and the lanes come back, with your search and filters still on.

Cards move between lanes as the team works, with no refresh.

Points to know:

• You cannot move a card. The board is the team's record of what they are doing. From the panel you can sign off, write a comment or a reply, add an emoji to a comment, edit a comment of your own, and edit a feature the team has not scheduled, locked, or archived. All of it keeps you on the Board — an edit you start here finishes here.
• Cancelled is a lane, on purpose. Work that the team dropped moves there. It does not disappear, because the reason it stopped is part of the story.
• Click a card to open its panel. Board access is all you need for it.

Next: The shared record

Two tabs hold what you and the team agreed, and everything you exchanged: Decisions and Files.

1. Decisions

The running record of the calls made along the way. The page says it plainly:

The official record of calls made along the way — from standups, demos, and planning conversations. Log the calls made on your side too; when something here looks wrong, say so on the feature it touches.

New decision opens a form:

• a title,
• the date,
• where it happened,
• who was involved — the list of names opens when you click the line,
• the body, in full text — type @ to mention a person, a feature, a release, or a role.

Decisions collapse into a searchable list. Click one to open it in a panel with the full text, and its history of changes once it has been edited. The link is safe to send to a colleague who has access.

Edit your own with the pencil — on the row, or in the panel's header once it is open. You can edit and delete the decisions you wrote, and only those. Your previous wording stays in the history for both sides to read.

Points to know:

• Decisions come with any project-portal grant. Features, Timeline, Prioritize, Story Map, Board, or Files is enough; there is no separate Decisions switch because a decision is a joint record. A questionnaire-only or proposal-only invitation does not open the record.
• A feature named in a decision opens from there. Click the pill and the feature's panel opens on whichever tab you have — your Board, your story map, your Prioritize board, or the plan. Until 2026-08-21 it always tried the Features tab, so it turned away anybody who does not have that one.
• You can change or delete only what you wrote. Somebody else's entry is read-only for you.
• Your edit form is a URL-backed panel. Back closes it to the decision list, and a reload or a return to that edit URL reopens the list with the form still over it.
• Delete is soft. Your entry moves to the Deleted decisions list under the log. Both sides can see that list; it shows the title, not the text. You cannot bring an entry back yourself — the team can restore it from their side. Files attached to the entry are hidden with it.
• Every change is recorded, with the name of the person who made it.
• The @ list is not everybody on the project. Both @ lines offer the same people: the whole team, and the people on your side who can open the Features tab. A colleague who was given another tab only — Timeline, Prioritize, Story Map, Board, or Files — reads and writes this log, but no @ list offers their name.
• "Everyone" fills in the names, not the word. Pick everyone on the who was involved line and Fulcrum writes in the names that list holds at that moment. You can remove a name before you save. Fulcrum stores the names, so the record of who was in the room stays true when the team changes later.

2. Files

Everything shared on this project between your side and the team: files from the team, anything your side uploads, and documents that you write here.

A searchable list, newest first. Click a row. An uploaded file opens in a large preview, with a download button on its row; a written document opens on its own page.

New file gives you two ways in:

• Upload a file — a PDF, a spreadsheet (Excel or CSV), a PowerPoint, a plain-text or Markdown file, or an image (JPEG, PNG, GIF, WebP), up to 25 MB. Anything else — a Word document, an HTML file, or anything over the limit — is refused, with a message that says what went wrong. HTML is refused here because on your side an HTML file is a document you wrote: use Write a document instead.
• Write a document — a full editor that saves as you write, with @ mentions.

Points to know:

• Files is its own switch. If you cannot see the Files tab, your access does not include it — ask the team.
• The team's files are hidden until they share them. A file appears in your list only after somebody on the team turns its Shared switch on. If you expect a file and cannot find it, ask.
• To upload is to share. A file that you upload is visible the moment it lands — to the team, and to your colleagues who hold the Files tab — and the row carries your name. There is no private upload.
• You can edit only the documents that you write here. You can remove anything you added — an upload or a document. Somebody else's file is read-only.
• Delete is permanent — for both sides. Unlike a deleted decision, a deleted file is gone; the team cannot bring it back either.
• Files inside comments and decisions are not in this list. They reach the team through the comment or the decision they are attached to, and they are shared in the same way.

Back to your plan · your account