The Toolchain
Attach GitHub issues, GitHub Projects boards and Plnnrly projects to a workspace or project as tabs in Plexus, and choose whether a workspace shares each with its projects.
The Toolchain is where you attach outside tools — GitHub issues, GitHub Projects boards and Plnnrly projects — to a workspace or a project. Every tool you attach becomes a tab on that scope's tab strip: a repository's issues become an Issues tab, a GitHub project becomes a Board tab, a Plnnrly project becomes a Plnnrly tab.
The catalogue
Open it with the Settings button at the right end of a project's or a workspace's tab strip — it lands on Toolchain directly — or from the scope's Settings… entry (a project's in its ⋯ menu, a workspace's in the workspace menu) and pick Toolchain in the page list.
The page is a catalogue in sections, one per kind of tool, each tool a card with its name, a one-line description and a badge:
| Section | Tool | What one instance is |
|---|---|---|
| Issue tracking | GitHub issues | One repository, written owner/name |
| Project boards | GitHub Projects | One GitHub project (the boards, tables and roadmaps under an organization or a user) |
| Work management | Plnnrly | One Plnnrly project — its work items, board and sprints — in an organization you connected under Settings → Integrations |
A card reads Available until you attach an instance and Installed · n once you have, where n counts the instances on this scope plus the ones a project inherits. The button on the card is Install the first time and Configure after that; both open the same dialog.
Configuring a tool
The dialog has two halves.
The picker. For GitHub issues, a search field over the repositories your connected GitHub account can see — type to filter, pick a row, and it is attached. On a project the field starts on the repository the project's origin remote points at, when that remote is on GitHub. For GitHub Projects, the same search over the projects of the repository's owner, or of any user or organization you type. For Plnnrly, an Organization picker over the organizations you connected, then a search over that organization's active projects — see Plnnrly. A repository the search cannot list — a fork under an organization you are not a member of, say — can still be typed as owner/name below the results. A repository or a project that is already attached shows as such and cannot be picked twice on the same scope.
The attached instances. Each row names the instance and has Detach. Detaching forgets that one row and nothing else — no session, no link, nothing on GitHub — and re-attaching is one click, so it does not ask first. On a workspace, each row also has a Share with projects switch; see the next section. On a project, the instances the workspace shares appear as well, read-only, marked From the workspace.
Workspaces and projects
Tools live at two levels, and the split exists for one reason: a workspace of ten services that share one issue tracker should attach it once, while a workspace of ten unrelated apps needs ten. So:
- A tool attached to a workspace is, by default, shared with every project in it.
- A tool attached to a project belongs to that project alone.
- A project's tab strip shows the workspace's shared tools first and its own after them — so a project can add a tracker of its own beside the inherited one.
Two switches decide how far a workspace's tools reach, and both are on by default:
| Switch | Where | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Share with projects | Workspace → Toolchain, on each attached tool | Every project that inherits the workspace's tools gets a tab for this one. Off, no project sees it — the tab stays on the workspace view only, and the other tools on the workspace are unaffected |
| Inherit the workspace's tools | Project → Toolchain | The workspace's shared tools appear on this project beside its own. Off, only the tools attached to the project itself are used |
A project sees a workspace tool when the project inherits and that tool is shared. Neither switch touches the tools themselves: turn one back on and the tab is back.
The workspace view
Click a workspace's row in the sidebar and the right pane opens the workspace view, shaped like the project view:
- a Dashboard tab — the global dashboard pinned to this workspace;
- one tab per tool attached to the workspace, whether or not it is shared;
- the Settings button at the right end, opening the workspace's settings on Toolchain.
The workspace's ⋯ menu gains Open for the same view, and the chevron keeps doing only what it did — collapsing and expanding the workspace. On a workspace's Issues, Board or Plnnrly tab, Start session opens the New session dialog without a project chosen and asks which one.
What is and is not gated
Nothing on this page needs a plan: attaching, detaching, both switches and the pickers are local configuration. What a plan unlocks is the tabs themselves — fetching and changing what they show. See Issues.
Related
- Issues — the Issues tab, opening and editing an issue, and starting a session from one
- Boards — the Board tab of a GitHub project
- Plnnrly — the Plnnrly tab, and connecting an organization
- Settings — the workspace and project settings the page lives on, and Applies to
- Concepts — workspaces, projects and sessions