Install Focalboard

What Focalboard is

A kanban board. You make cards for what needs to be done, drag them between columns like To do, In progress and Done, and see in ten seconds where the work stands. Each card can have an assignee, a date, comments and a checklist.

Besides the board there is a table view and a calendar view of the same cards, so anyone who prefers to think in lists can skip the board. Everything runs on your own machine, and nobody needs an account with anyone else.

Read this before you choose Focalboard

Focalboard was built by the company behind Mattermost and is no longer developed by them. The standalone version, the one you install here, has been handed over to the users themselves, and the code now sits under mattermost-community on GitHub. Mattermost's own continuation exists only as a plugin inside Mattermost.

It shows in the packaging. The Docker image tagged latest was last updated in October 2023. The program works, and we have started it, but it gets no fixes for either bugs or security holes.

The conclusion for a company: feel free to run it on the company's own network for a limited project, since it is simple and does exactly what you want. Do not put it openly on the internet, and do not build your business idea on it. If you want the same kind of board with maintenance behind it, Vikunja is a better choice, and it has a kanban view too.

This is a server program

Focalboard is not started with an installation file. It is a service you reach in the browser, and the easiest way there is Docker. If you do not have Docker, start with Install Docker.

Windows and Linux Mint

The same file on both, and it is short, because Focalboard does not need a database next to it. Create a folder called focalboard in your home folder, that is in C:\Users\ert-namn on Windows and in /home/ert-namn on Linux Mint, and put a text file in it called compose.yaml:

services:
  focalboard:
    image: mattermost/focalboard:latest
    ports:
      - "8000:8000"
    volumes:
      - fbdata:/opt/focalboard/data
    restart: unless-stopped

volumes:
  fbdata:

Open the terminal and go into the folder. On Windows that is PowerShell:

cd $HOME\focalboard

On Linux Mint the program is called Terminal:

cd ~/focalboard

Then start it:

docker compose up -d

If Docker complains that it cannot find a compose.yaml, you are in the wrong folder, nothing else. Then open http://localhost:8000. The first time you register an account, and that becomes your login. We just ran this file and came straight to the registration page.

That address only applies to the computer running the container, because localhost means the very machine you are sitting at. If you pass it on, the recipient opens their own computer and sees nothing. Trying out the boards that way works fine. If the company is going to move cards on the same board, Focalboard has to run on a machine that is switched on and be reached at that machine's address, for example http://192.168.1.42:8000.

All data ends up in a single database file of the SQLite type, inside the volume fbdata. That is why the setup is so simple, and that is also why the backup is extra important. More about that at the bottom.

Three things to do first

1. Register accounts for everyone in the company the same evening. Only the first account can be created without any extra steps, because Focalboard is an invitation-only service from account number two onward. So register the first account yourself, then get the invitation link in the interface and send it to the rest of the company so they can register.
2. Build a board with four columns instead of three: add Waiting on someone else. That is where half of a company's tasks actually sit, and without that column the board looks stuck.
3. Assign an owner to every card right away. A card with no name on it never moves by itself.

The most common trap

Leaving it somewhere that can be reached from the outside. A program that has not received a patch since 2023 should not be exposed to the internet, and that applies no matter how well it works. Keep it on the company's own network, behind the office firewall, and reach it via the computer's IP address when you are in the same place.

The second trap is the backup. All the work sits in a single file, and a single file is easy to lose. Copy it out at regular intervals:

docker compose stop focalboard
docker compose cp focalboard:/opt/focalboard/data/focalboard.db ./focalboard-kopia.db
docker compose start focalboard

Stop the container before the copy, otherwise the file may be in the middle of a write and the copy will be unusable.

Put the copy on another disk or in the company's file area. If you also want to avoid the worry entirely: export the most important boards to CSV from the menu, because a CSV file can still be read in ten years and an SQLite file requires the right program.