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The Unplanned sidebar on the right of the board is the backlog you plan from. It lists the work items the board loaded that are not on the timeline — because they have no dates, because they are not assigned to any row the board shows, or because Old as Unplanned is on and their start date falls before the beginning of the timeline window. Dragging a card out of the sidebar onto a row is how work gets scheduled. On a real project the backlog is long, so the sidebar has its own filters: a funnel with saved queries and swimlanes, a resolved-items toggle, a search box, and an optional grouping by parent work item. All of them narrow the sidebar list only — the tasks already on the timeline are never hidden by a sidebar filter.

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Show or Hide the Sidebar

The toolbar button Show unscheduled items in sidebar toggles the whole sidebar. It is on by default; switching it off hands the freed space to the timeline, which then spans the full width of the board. See Toolbar Controls for the rest of the toolbar.

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Filter with the Funnel

The funnel at the top of the sidebar carries the label Unplanned. Click it to open the filter menu:
The Unplanned sidebar's funnel menu listing Unplanned, Queries and Swimlanes, with the Queries submenu open showing a QUERIES group containing Not draft, a GLOBAL QUERIES group containing Unassigned and Unscheduled, and a PROJECT QUERIES group containing Awaiting Review, Planned for Version 1.0 and Not (Heading Task)

The funnel menu open on Queries, whose submenu groups the saved queries into Queries, Global Queries and Project Queries.

The two submenus are mutually exclusive: choosing a saved query clears an active swimlane filter, and choosing a swimlane clears an active query filter. Use Unplanned to get back to the unfiltered backlog.

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Saved Queries in the Submenu

The Queries submenu lists saved queries under group headings:
  • Queries — the queries defined on the widget itself, under the Queries parameter, each with the Name you gave it.
  • Global Queries — saved queries available across the Polarion instance.
  • Project Queries — saved queries belonging to the project the board is in.
So a filter your team already maintains in Polarion — one that excludes drafts, or lists only unassigned items — is available in the sidebar without being redefined on the board.
Adding a Query to the widget parameters is the way to offer a board-specific backlog cut that does not exist as a saved query in Polarion. Give it a Name, and it shows up in the Queries group of the submenu.

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Swimlane Entries

The Swimlanes submenu holds one entry per row of the board, labelled exactly as the row is: the user’s display name in assignee mode, or the enumeration option in enumeration mode. Picking one leaves only the backlog items that belong to that row, which is how you plan one person’s or one team’s work without reading the whole backlog. See Configure Swimlanes for how the rows are defined.

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Show or Hide Resolved Items

Resolved work items are hidden from the sidebar until you ask for them. The toggle at the left edge of the sidebar header, next to the funnel, switches them on and off.
A resolved item that is already scheduled stays on the timeline — the toggle governs the sidebar list, not the board. Resolved tasks on the timeline are drawn in grey and are read-only; see Colours and Load Thresholds.

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Search the Backlog

The Search… box in the sidebar header filters the list as you type, a moment after you stop. The search is case-insensitive and matches the text of the card — work item ID, title and the fields shown on it — as well as the parent heading a card is grouped under. Search combines with the funnel filter and with the resolved toggle: the list shows the items that satisfy all of them. Clear the box to drop the text condition.

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Read the Item Count

Under the search box, the sidebar states how much of the backlog you are looking at: The second form is the quickest check that a filter is still active. The footer of the board gives you the other half of the picture with Items loaded and Scheduled.

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Group Cards Under Their Parent Work Item

By default the sidebar is a flat list of cards. Setting Load Parents in the widget’s Unplanned Sidebar section to 1 or more makes Scheduler walk up the parent links of each backlog item and group the cards under a heading for the parent work item.
1

Open the Widget Parameters

Open the page that hosts the board, click Expand Tools, then Edit. Select the Scheduler widget and choose Edit widget parameters.
2

Set Load Parents

In the Unplanned Sidebar section, set Load Parents — 0 by default, which means no grouping. Increase it to load the parents of the backlog items, and set Parent Roles to the link role or roles that lead from a backlog item up to its parent. Grouping also needs at least one role in Dependency Roles, in the Work Items panel — with that parameter empty no parent is loaded, whatever Load Parents says. Save the page.
3

Read the Grouped Sidebar

Reload the board. Cards are now sorted by parent and each group carries a heading naming the parent work item. Items with no parent are collected under a heading reading -- NO PARENT --.
The Unplanned sidebar with parent grouping switched on: cards are listed beneath parent work-item headings DP-450, DP-453 and DP-454, under a header reading 21 out of 28 work items
Grouping is useful when the backlog is a set of children under a few epics or features: instead of scanning IDs, you plan one parent’s children at a time.
Loading parents means loading more work items per board. Raise Load Parents only as far as your hierarchy actually needs — one level is enough to group children under their immediate parent.

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Verification

Working through the sidebar you should see:
  1. Show unscheduled items in sidebar hides and restores the sidebar, and the timeline widens when it is hidden.
  2. The funnel opens a menu with Unplanned, Queries and Swimlanes.
  3. Picking a saved query or a swimlane shortens the list, and the count line changes to N out of M work items.
  4. Unplanned restores the full list and the count line returns to N work items.
  5. Typing in Search… narrows the list a moment later; clearing the box restores it.
  6. The toggle at the left of the sidebar header adds resolved items to the list and removes them again.
  7. With Load Parents above 0, cards appear under parent headings, with -- NO PARENT -- for the rest.

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See Also

Last modified on August 31, 2026