Native boards, connected mirrors and two-way sync — the whole of Laya, on one page
Laya is one work layer over the tools your teams already use. Build fast native boards, mirror boards from Jira, Azure DevOps, monday.com, GitHub and GitLab, and combine everything on a single master board — with edits flowing both ways. Built for delivery leads, programme managers and teams whose work is scattered across trackers.
Fast, flexible boards for Kanban and Scrum
Start a board in a two-step wizard and shape it to the way your team works. Every board offers four views of the same work, switchable in one click:
Plan in sprints and epics
Scrum boards come with a backlog, sprint pages and epics; Kanban boards run on continuous flow. Issue templates pre-fill new work, and quick-create (press c) captures an idea without leaving the board.
Swimlanes that scale
Group any board into swimlanes by Source board, Epic, Assignee, Priority or Sprint — drag lanes into your preferred order, collapse the ones you are not working in, and Laya remembers your choice per board.
Detail where it counts
Six-tier priorities from No priority to Urgent, WIP limits per column, due dates, estimates, labels, subtasks and rich-text descriptions with tables, callouts and task lists. Saved views capture a whole filter-and-layout setup for reuse.
New to Laya boards? Read the board anatomy guide or the backlog, sprints and epics guide in the Help Centre.
Mirror any board — the source of truth stays put
Connect a board from Jira, Azure DevOps, monday.com, GitHub or GitLab and Laya renders a like-for-like copy from a synced mirror it keeps current — every column and card exactly where it belongs, on a faster, smoother surface. Nothing is migrated: your existing tool remains the system of record, and the mirror is deleted when you disconnect.
Like-for-like layout
Columns follow the source board’s own configuration, so there is nothing to relearn. Each card carries a source badge and an “Open in” link straight back to the original item.
Live comments
Read and post comments from the card’s side panel on all five providers — they go to the provider’s own comment thread, not a separate copy in Laya.
Clean disconnect
Disconnecting removes the mirrored boards and stored credentials. Issues you imported into native Laya boards stay yours — they simply stop syncing.
Jira and Azure DevOps support OAuth sign-in (Jira can also connect with an API token, or through the Laya Board for Jira app inside Jira itself); GitHub and GitLab connect with OAuth or a personal access token, and monday.com connects with an API token. To choose the right setup, see mirroring vs importing explained and choosing native boards, connected boards or both.
Every team’s work, on one board
A master board combines many sources — boards from Jira, Azure DevOps, monday.com, GitHub and GitLab, plus your native Laya boards — into one live board. It opens grouped into swimlanes by Source board, so leadership sees each team’s lane at a glance while every card stays linked and synced to where it came from.
Status mapping you control
Pin any source’s status to the master column you want it in. Mappings are display-only on the master board — they never rewrite the status in the source tool.
Auto-create new issues
Turn on auto-create and brand-new issues appearing in a connected Jira source are added to the master board automatically. Available for Jira sources today.
Sync all boards
One menu action pulls every provider present on the board in parallel and reports a single aggregated result — no visiting five tools to refresh five sources.
Read the master boards guide for setup steps, status mapping and detach options.
Edits flow both ways — with guard rails
Link an external item to a Laya issue and changes travel in both directions: titles, statuses, priorities, due dates, descriptions, estimates and assignees, with coverage varying by provider. Edits made in Laya push out to the connected tool immediately for all five providers.
Conflicts are handled in plain terms: every change carries a timestamp, and if both sides edited the same item, the most recent edit wins. Echo guards recognise a change coming back as its own reflection, so an update never bounces between systems in a loop.
How changes reach Laya, honestly
- Jira
- Webhooks deliver changes typically within 15–45 seconds; the Laya Board for Jira app pushes within seconds.
- Azure DevOps
- Background polling picks up changes about every minute.
- monday.com, GitHub, GitLab
- Changes arrive when you press Sync now or Sync all boards, or whenever you edit through Laya.
Field coverage is uneven by design of each provider’s API — Jira syncs the most (including assignees and labels), monday.com the least. You can pause sync per board (and per issue for Jira-linked items), and every connection keeps a sync log with per-operation state and a connection health indicator. Read how two-way sync works or see what syncs per provider, field by field.
Board Studio themes and no-code automations
Board Studio is a live-preview drawer for the board’s whole personality; automations are a workspace rules engine that takes the repetitive work off your plate. Neither needs a line of code.
Themes and effects
Six theme presets, four background styles, accent colours, density and font scale — plus per-transition effects: a glow, pulse, confetti burst or a GIF of your choice when a card lands in a column. Effects respect your reduced-motion setting.
A wide array of rules
Compose rules from 13 triggers, 17 conditions and 18 ordered actions — assign, re-status, tag, comment, notify, email, post to a webhook, create linked work and more. Scope a rule to one board or run it workspace-wide.
Test before you trust
Start from ready-made templates, dry-run a rule in test mode, and audit every execution in a per-rule run log. Scheduled rules fire daily, weekly or monthly, and inbound webhook triggers are signature-verified.
See the Board Studio guide and the automations guide for the full option lists.
Docs, Roadmap, Initiatives and Inbox
Boards are the centre of Laya, not the whole of it — the same workspace carries your writing, plans and personal queue.
Docs
Rich-text documents with templates (PRD, meeting notes, decision log and more), folders, tags, version snapshots and a Verified badge that flags when a doc goes stale after its linked work changes.
Roadmap
Five views — Timeline, Now / Next / Later, Portfolio, Sprint and Milestones — with dependency lines, critical-path highlighting, presentation mode and PNG export.
Initiatives
Strategy-level containers with health, confidence and progress at the top, milestones and status updates beneath, and epics linked to the delivery work.
Inbox & My issues
A personal inbox with lanes for mentions, assignments, status changes, comments and due dates — plus a My issues page grouping everything assigned to, created by or followed by you.
The docs, roadmap, initiatives and calendar guide walks through each surface.
Send a live board to anyone — read-only
Flip one toggle and any board gets a public read-only link that needs no Laya account. Turn it off and access is revoked instantly; turn it back on and the same link works again. Before you share, keep internal detail internal:
The public view can carry its own theme and accent colour — a branded personality just for stakeholders — and card detail stays off unless you switch it on. Docs get their own public links (each publish mints a fresh URL), and one workspace-wide link can share your roadmap. See the guide to sharing boards publicly for every option.
Start with the tools you already have
Build a native board in minutes, or mirror your first Jira, Azure DevOps, monday.com, GitHub or GitLab board — no migration required.