Everyone sees everything
One giant board for the whole organisation. Each department wades through the others' work to find its own — and stops looking.
Cross-department project management · Self-hosted
One project. Many departments.
Every one accountable.
Crosdesk is built for organisations where several departments deliver one project or one feature together. Each department sees its own work, the plan is computed from working-day estimates, and a scorecard tells you which department is landing on time — and which one is slipping, or stuck waiting on another.
- 13reports, computed on request
- 2capability flags — not a permissions maze
- 0hours logged, by anyone, ever
- 1Docker image on your own servers
The problem
Shared projects fail at the handoffs between departments.
Most tools are built for one team. Put three departments on one project and the same three things go wrong, every time.
Nobody sees the whole plan
Each department keeps its own tracker. The plan lives in a spreadsheet someone updates on Fridays, and the dependencies live in people's heads.
Slips are found at the deadline
When the date moves, nobody can say whose part slipped, whether they were late or blocked, or what the original promise even was.
Crosdesk's answer: departments decide visibility, the plan is computed and kept as a baseline, and every department's slice is graded against it.
Departments
A department decides who sees what.
Every task belongs to one department; every project and feature to one or more. People see the work of the departments they are in — and the whole plan of any shared project their department is part of, because a plan you can only half-see is not a plan.
- Visibility is departmental. No "everything" page. Your lists are your departments' work, so they stay short enough to read.
- Shared projects show the whole shape. Design sees the API Engineering is building, because its screens wait on it.
- Groups decide capability. Two flags — manage projects and manage sprints. Doing your own department's work needs no permission at all.
- Strangers get nothing. Work outside your departments answers "not found", never "forbidden" — so nobody learns it exists.
Who sees what, in a software company
One checkout redesign, shared by Product, Design, Engineering and QA. Finance is not on it.
| Person | Design tasks | Engineering tasks | Shared checkout plan | Releases |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Product manager | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Designer | ✓ | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Engineer | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| QA engineer | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Finance analyst | — | — | — | ✓ |
| Workspace admin | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Releases are a statement about the whole workspace, so everyone sees them.
Sprints per department
Each department runs its own sprints on its own cadence — one at a time, never overlapping — while sharing the projects above them.
One person, many workspaces
An account is global; a membership is per workspace. Admin in one organisation, reader in another, side by side in two tabs.
Invitation-only
No self-serve signup. Admins invite people into the departments they belong in; SSO signs them in but never grants a membership.
Deactivate, never delete
People who leave are disabled, not erased, so the record of who did what — and the audit trail — stays whole.
Department scorecard
Which department is performing — and which is lacking its timelines.
Open any shared project and the scorecard grades each department's slice of it, against the dates the plan gave it. Sorted by who needs attention first.
- Strong
- 85%+ of finished work landed on its planned date, and close to its own estimates.
- Steady
- Delivering, with some slippage. The ordinary state of a healthy team.
- Strained
- Missing its dates often enough to be worth a conversation.
- Blocked
- A quarter or more of its slice cannot proceed. Not a grade — go clear the dependency.
- Too early
- Fewer than two tasks finished. One task is an anecdote, so no verdict is given.
Department scorecard
Checkout redesign · PRJ-4
| Department | Done | On time | Actual ÷ est. | Blocked | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Engineering | 5/7 | 40% | 1.40 | 0 | Strained |
| QA | 4/9 | 75% | 1.05 | 3 | Blocked |
| Design | 6/8 | 83% | 1.10 | 0 | Steady |
| Product | 5/6 | 100% | 0.95 | 0 | Strong |
| Finance | 1/5 | — | — | 0 | Too early |
Empty is shown as empty, never as zero. The sample size sits beside every verdict, so a thin one is visible rather than implied.
Blocked is reported, never charged
In Crosdesk, Blocked comes out of the plan, not out of anyone's effort. A department waiting on another's work is flagged so you can unblock it — not marked down for it.
Two things a department controls
Only two inputs count toward a grade: did finished work land by its planned date, and did it take as long as the department said it would.
Departments, never people
The scorecard grades teams. No report in Crosdesk ranks individuals — a number that grades people gets gamed or resented, usually both.
Projects
Draw the work. Verify it. Crosdesk computes the dates.
A project is work with a shape: some of it must happen before the rest. You lay it out on a canvas across departments, estimate in working days, and press Verify. From then on the plan, the baseline and the slip are all measured for you.
-
1
Shape it on the canvas
Each card is a task, each line means this follows that. Cards from different departments sit on one canvas — the concourse, the jetty that connects to it, the passenger information system that needs both.
- Import existing tasks, or a whole epic at once
- Estimates in working days — no hours, no story-point debates
- A task belongs to one project, so nothing is copied
-
2
Verify turns a board into a plan
Verify lays every task out from a start date, around your working week and public holidays. It refuses a plan with gaps — an unestimated card, a disconnected one, a cycle — and names every problem at once.
- Work waiting on unfinished work is set Blocked by the plan, not by a person
- The dates are kept as the baseline — what the project promised
- Edits after that show Changes to verify until someone recommits
-
3
Each department plans its part into sprints
Project planning shows the whole board's timeline, then the department's own sprints beneath it. Commit work sprint by sprint; work that turns up mid-sprint sits beside the sprint, so the commitment still reads as one thing.
- One running sprint per department, never overlapping
- Ending a sprint snapshots it before anything moves
- A project closes itself when its last task is done
-
4
The dashboard says what it cost
Planned against actual, task by task, on one axis. Three finish dates — promised, planned and projected — and How the plan moved: every slip, its cause and its size in working days.
- Re-planning a late project never hides the variance
- The projected finish catches a phase that started late
- The scorecard grades each department's slice
Features
Product work, end to end — with sign-off you can trace.
A feature is work too long and too consequential for a single task: it runs for months, passes through several departments, and somebody will later ask who approved what. Crosdesk runs it as a sequence of steps, with owners, approvers and a baseline.
FeasibilityDesign UI/UXHLDLLDSplit tasks & estimationDevelopmentCode reviewQARelease
The built-in Standard template. Save your own and make it the default.
Steps run in order, and are approved
Owners send a step for review; approvers approve it or request changes with a comment, in the same action. Nobody approves their own step.
Phases are rounds, not groupings
Phase 2 runs the whole step list again, with its own approvals. Owners, approvers and estimates carry over, so the next round starts from what the last one learned.
Open issues block approval
QA logs issues against a step. While any are open, the step cannot go to review or be approved — unless the same action closes them as won't fix, on the record.
Estimates in, timeline out
One start date and a working-day estimate per step lays the round out. Each step shows planned against actual — +1 d over, 1 d under.
Every department, its own board
A feature spans departments; its work does not. The feature board shows one department's tasks for one phase — Water Transport sees Water Transport's — and feature planning drops them into that department's sprints.
A dashboard per phase
Steps approved, work done, open issues, and three finish dates against the phase's baseline. How many times each step was sent back, and a breakdown by department.
Reports
Thirteen reports. Each answers one question honestly.
Computed on request from what Crosdesk already records — nothing to fill in, nothing stored to go stale. Distributions rather than averages, ranges rather than false dates, and every one downloads as CSV.
Commitment
Did we deliver what we said we would?
- VelocityCommitted against delivered, per sprint — planned work only.
- Sprint burndown & flowHow a finished sprint ran, day by day, and where the queue formed.
- Sprint reportWhat a sprint held, and what carried out of it.
- Member effortDone and spilled, planned and unplanned — in name order, never ranked.
- Epic burnupDone against total, so scope growth is visible.
Flow
How does work move? No estimates involved.
- Cycle timeHow long finished work took, as a distribution.
- Aging work in progressLive work aged against finished work — the one you can still act on.
- ImpedimentsWhat was blocked, for how long and by what — computed, not flagged by hand.
Plan & forecast
When? Without false precision.
- Throughput & forecastItems per week, and what that implies — a range, never a date.
- Epic progressWhich epics are being worked, and which are merely open.
- Baseline varianceHow far work landed from the date it promised, not today's plan.
- Department scorecardOne project, graded by the departments working it.
- Feature dashboardOne feature's phases against the baseline each promised.
- Null is not zero. An empty percentile is shown as empty — "0 days" would be a lie that looks like a result.
- Commitment and reality stay apart. Unplanned work is counted beside the sprint, so a team absorbing fires is not shown as slow.
- Scoped to your departments. A report never shows work its reader could not open.
- CSV everywhere. The same numbers the screen shows, for whoever needs the spreadsheet.
Meetings · Todos · Recordings · Documents
The talk, the follow-ups, the bug report and the spec — on the work itself.
Cross-department work runs on meetings, small promises, "it broke when I clicked this" and the document everyone agreed to. Crosdesk keeps all four attached to the task, feature step or project they are about, so nothing lives in a chat thread or a shared drive nobody can find.
Schedule meetings
A calendar in Day, Week and Month, with meetings linked to the work they are about. Open a task and its meetings are there; open a meeting and its work is one click away.
- Weekly recurrence on chosen weekdays, every N weeks, ending on a date or after a count — kept at 10:00 through daylight-saving changes
- Edit one occurrence, this and following, or all — move or cancel a single meeting without breaking the series
- Link work — tasks, issues, projects, features, phases and individual feature stages
- Video rooms — paste any https link, or have Crosdesk create a Zoom meeting when you save
- Today's meetings and a reminder banner on My work, counting down to Join
- Private by design — only the organiser and guests can open a meeting. Not even a workspace admin reads a diary they are not invited to
Checkout design review
Wed, 4 Nov 2026 · 10:00–11:00
Join Zoom meeting
Edit
Copy link
ARArun · Product
FBFathima · Engineering
LMLakshmi · Design
Linked work
TSK-37Payment API for the new checkout BlockedFTR-1/PH-2/HLDOne-page checkout · HLD In review
Confirm the payment provider’s go-live date
To Fathima · From Arun · on TSK-37
Add todos
Not everything deserves a task. A todo is one sentence of work — "send the revised mockup", "confirm the date" — on exactly one task, issue, feature, phase, step or project, handed to one person.
- Assigned to, and from — record a request on someone else's behalf, so it reads To Fathima · From Arun
- Made in the meeting — add a todo beside any linked work while you talk, with the meeting attached
- A red badge means yours — the count on Todos turns red only when something there is yours to do
- Todos for me on My work, each opening the exact task or feature stage it belongs to
- Assignment never grants access — the assignee must already be able to open the work, so a todo always leads somewhere
Todos
TSK-37 · Payment API for the new checkout
✓ Assigned to me
Pending
3 of 3
-
Confirm the payment provider’s go-live date
To Fathima · From Arun · Checkout design review · 4 Nov
-
Send Design the error messages for declined cards
To Fathima
-
Get sandbox keys from the payment provider
To Fathima · Completed by Fathima
Todos 2
Red: yours to act on. Grey: everyone else's.
Screen recordings with the console and network
A bug report that shows what happened instead of describing it. The Crosdesk Recorder, a browser extension, records the tab — with its console and every network request beside it, in step as it plays.
Record in two clicks
Press the toolbar button or Alt+Shift+R. Narrate with the microphone if you like. Record this bug on an issue links the recording as it is made.
Console, in step
Logs, warnings, errors and uncaught exceptions with their stacks. The line for the moment on screen is highlighted; click a line to jump the video there.
Network, request by request
Method, address, status and timing for every request — open one for its headers, payload, response and timing. Failed requests are marked.
Trouble on the timeline
Errors in red, failed requests in amber, page loads as ticks. Click a mark to go straight to the moment it broke.
Secrets removed before upload
Cookies and authorization headers are dropped, and passwords, tokens and keys in addresses and JSON become [redacted] — in your browser, before anything is sent.
Comments on a moment
Pause where it goes wrong and comment. The video stops at each comment as it plays, so the developer sees exactly what you saw.
Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera and Firefox
One extension, served by your own installation. It uses your Crosdesk sign-in and reaches only your Crosdesk address.
Tidies up after itself
A recording expires ninety days after it was made, or thirty days after its linked work is done. Download the video and log as a zip to keep one.
Documents with versions you release
The spec, the scope, the allocation table — written in Crosdesk, filed in a department's folder, and linked to the work it describes. Editors write a draft; when it is ready they save a numbered version that never changes, and release it. A link always opens what was released, not what somebody is halfway through typing.
Write without markup
Headings, lists, checklists, tables, code, links and images from a toolbar or the keyboard. Paste from a web page or a word processor and the structure comes with it.
Draft, version, release
The draft saves as you type. Save version freezes it as 1.0, 1.1, 2.0 — you choose the number. Release the one that is agreed; a later release replaces it.
One editor at a time
While you edit, the draft is yours and others see who has it. Nothing is ever written over — every save keeps a revision.
Review on the line
Select a passage and comment, or comment on a whole line. Threads are resolved and reopened; on the draft they follow their text, and say Outdated when it is gone.
Linked to the work
Link a released document to tasks, issues, projects, features, phases, stages and releases — from the document or from the work. Each side shows the other.
Everyone reads, editors write
The whole workspace reads every version, so a draft can be reviewed before release. The owner chooses the editors; a department's folder decides who may create there.
Agents write drafts too
A connected AI agent reads any version, writes the draft under the same one-editor rule, saves and releases — as you, in the audit log. Archiving stays with people.
Archived, never deleted
Archive a document or a single saved version and it leaves the explorer, but its text stays readable from its link. Copy any version out as Markdown.
Integrations
Works with the sign-in, the calls, the code — and the AI agents — you already have.
Single sign-on with your identity provider, Zoom rooms made from the meeting editor, pull requests that link themselves to the work they finish, and AI agents that work in Crosdesk as you. Each is set up once, from a screen — with secrets encrypted and never shown again.
Single sign-on
Google, GitHub, GitHub Enterprise Server and any OpenID Connect provider — Okta, Microsoft Entra ID, Keycloak, Authentik, Auth0.
Zoom
Add a Zoom meeting to any Crosdesk meeting. The room is created when you save, with the organiser as host.
GitHub
Mention TSK-12 in a branch or pull request and it links itself — with review and CI status on the task.
AI agents (MCP)
Connect Claude, Cursor or any MCP client. It finds, creates and updates work as you — with your access and no more.
GitHub: pull requests that link themselves
Each workspace creates its own GitHub App from Admin → GitHub in a few clicks — nothing to copy and paste. Install it on the repositories you choose, and every pull request that names Crosdesk work links to it.
- Write the reference where you would anyway — the branch name, title, description or any commit message
- Link any kind of work — a task, project, release, issue, a feature's phase, or one stage:
FTR-7/PH-2/HLD - One status per pull request — draft, open, review requested, changes requested, gate failed, approved, merged or closed — from GitHub's reviews and checks
- Releases list every pull request behind their work, each once, so you can see what is still unmerged before shipping
- Read-only — the app reads pull requests, reviews and checks. It never reads code and writes nothing to GitHub
- Shared repositories — two workspaces on one repo use
TSK-12@acme, so a number never links to the wrong organisation
Pull requests
TSK-37 · Payment API for the new checkout
git push origin tsk-37-payment-api
Linked to TSK-37
-
Merged
TSK-37: Payment intent endpoint
shop/api #482 · linked by GitHub
-
Gate failed
Card form validation errors
shop/web #491 · linked by GitHub
-
Approved
Retry a declined payment once
shop/api #495 · linked by Fathima
TSK-12PRJ-4REL-3ISS-9FTR-7FTR-7/PH-2FTR-7/PH-2/HLD
Single sign-on, without giving up control
Offer Continue with Google, GitHub or your own identity provider on the sign-in page, beside passwords and emailed one-time codes. Each provider is a card on the operator console: register the callback, paste the client details, press Test, switch it on.
- Google — limited to your Google Workspace domains if you choose
- GitHub and GitHub Enterprise Server — limited to members of your organisations
- Any OpenID Connect provider — Okta, Microsoft Entra ID, Keycloak, Authentik, Auth0
- SSO proves who someone is; an invitation decides where they belong. A provider never creates an account or a workspace membership
- Matched by the provider's own id, never by an email address someone could change
- The operator's sign-in stays separate, so a broken provider can never lock out the person who fixes it
Zoom rooms from the meeting editor
The instance operator connects one Zoom account for the installation. From then on, every meeting editor offers Add Zoom meeting beside the video-call link.
- Created when you save, not when you click — close the form and nothing is made in Zoom
- The organiser hosts, through their Zoom user with the same email as their Crosdesk account
- One room for a repeating meeting, kept across every occurrence
- Join from anywhere — the meeting, Today's meetings and the reminder banner all say Join Zoom meeting
- Any other service still works — paste a Google Meet, Teams or Jitsi link instead
- A Server-to-Server OAuth app, its credentials encrypted and tested before the console accepts them
Edit meeting
Checkout design review · weekly on Wed
Video call
Zoom meeting · created when you save
Hosted by Arun · one room for every occurrence
Or paste an https link from any other service.
Save
Cancel
Starts in 5 min · Checkout design review
On My work, for every guest
AI agents that work as you — and no more
Crosdesk speaks the Model Context Protocol. Add it to claude.ai, Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor or any MCP client, and ask in plain language: "What's overdue in Engineering?", "File a P1 bug for card payments timing out, assign it to Ravi, attach the recording", "Add a todo on TSK-42 from today's standup."
- Sign in, or use a token — apps sign in and you approve them on a consent page; anything else takes a personal access token from your profile, for up to ninety days
- Your access, in one workspace — it sees your departments' work and can do what your groups allow, in the workspace you chose. Another department's work does not exist for it
- Read, change, record — you choose: read work; create and update tasks, bugs, projects, features, issues, comments and todos, approve steps, link pull requests; write, save and release documents; upload a recording it made
- Never the Admin area, never a delete — even for an administrator. Of your meetings it sees titles and times, and can only link one to work
- Every change is on the record — the audit log names you, with the device Agent · its name
- Off until you turn it on — the operator enables agents for the installation; a workspace admin can switch them off for theirs, and you can disconnect one at any time
Claude · connected to Crosdesk
As Anitha Rajan · Acme Corp · Engineering
File a P1 bug for card payments timing out at checkout, assign it to me, and add a todo from today's standup to send the notes.
create_tasktype BUG · P1 · EngineeringTSK-88add_todoon TSK-88 · from StandupLinked
Done. TSK-88 is a P1 bug assigned to you in Engineering. I linked today's standup to it and added the todo Send the standup notes — it's on your My work.
Audit log · Task created · TSK-88
Anitha Rajan · Agent · Claude
Everyday screens
Around the plan, everything a team uses daily.
My work
One page for what is yours today: assigned tasks, todos handed to you, and your meetings — overdue decided by the server, in the workspace’s time zone.
Backlog and epics
Triage with nullable priority — "nobody has looked yet" is a real answer — and group work into epics with burnup.
One time zone per workspace
Every time on screen and in mail is in the workspace's zone, and "overdue" is decided by the server — never by a browser elsewhere.
Working calendar
Your working week and public holidays, set once by an admin and used by every plan, feature and forecast.
Audit trail
Every change written to the workspace log in the same transaction as the change itself — never a guess after the fact.
Releases with QA
Assemble a release from tasks, projects and feature phases. Opt-in QA logs issues against it, and shipping marks the work done.
CSV everywhere
Every report downloads as a spreadsheet with the same numbers the screen shows — for the people who still live in Excel.
Who it's for
Built for organisations where the work crosses a line on the org chart.
Government and public authorities
Agencies and departments delivering one programme — a transport hub, a citizen service — where each owns its part and the plan must hold together. Self-hosted, so data stays on your infrastructure.
Product companies
Product, design, engineering and QA passing a feature from feasibility to release, with sign-off at every step and one dashboard per phase.
Enterprises and groups
Several business units, or several organisations, on one installation — each workspace separate, each department seeing its own.
PMOs and programme leads
The people asked "who is late, and why?" — with a baseline that does not move when the plan does, and a scorecard that separates late from blocked.
Self-hosted
Your servers. Your data. One image.
Crosdesk ships as a single Docker image with PostgreSQL behind it. Run it on your own infrastructure or a platform like Railway — one installation holds as many organisations as you need.
- Migrations run at boot, safely across replicas
- Files on local disk or any S3-compatible bucket — bytes never leave through a signed URL
- An operator console for licence, mail, storage, SSO and video settings — secrets encrypted at rest
- Many workspaces per installation, each with its own time zone
- Nightly housekeeping for abandoned files and expired recordings, built in
# one process serves the app, the API and the manual
$ docker run -d -p 3000:3000 \
-e DATABASE_URL=postgres://… \
-e CONFIG_ENCRYPTION_KEY=… \
-e SERVE_FRONT_END=true \
gsmithun4/cros-desk:latest
Migrations applied
Storage: local (writable)
Listening on :3000Questions
Asked before every demo.
How is this different from a team tool like Jira or Asana?
Those are built around a team's board. Crosdesk is built around departments sharing a project: visibility follows department membership, plans are computed from dependencies rather than typed in, and the scorecard measures each department's slice of a shared plan against its baseline.
Can a department see another department's work?
Not its tasks in general. On a project both departments are part of, everyone involved sees the whole plan, because a dependency you cannot see is one you cannot plan around. Admins see every department.
How does the scorecard decide a department is lacking?
From two things the department controls: the share of its finished work that landed by the date the plan gave it, and actual days against its own estimates. Below 60% on time is Strained. Work blocked by another department is reported separately and never counted against it.
Can an AI agent use Crosdesk — and what stops it doing too much?
Yes, over the Model Context Protocol: claude.ai, Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor and other MCP clients connect by signing in, or with a personal access token. An agent acts as the person who connected it, in one workspace, with exactly their access — and never the Admin area, never a delete, and only what that person allowed when connecting (read, change work, upload recordings). Everything it changes is in the audit log under that person, marked as the agent. Agents are off until the operator turns them on, and a workspace admin can turn them off.
Do people have to log hours?
No. Estimates are in working days, and dates come from the plan and from when work actually moved. Nothing in Crosdesk asks anyone to fill in a timesheet.
What does a screen recording capture, and is it safe to share?
The tab's video, its console and its network requests with headers and text bodies. Cookies and authorization headers are dropped, and fields named like passwords, tokens or keys are replaced with [redacted] in your browser before upload. A recording opens only for people signed in to that workspace — there is no public link.
Is Crosdesk a wiki?
No. Documents are versioned specs filed in a department's folder and linked to the work they describe — not a tree of pages. One editor writes the draft at a time, with no live co-editing, and what a link opens is the version that was released. Everyone in the workspace can read and comment on every version.
Do meetings send calendar invitations?
Not today. A meeting appears in its guests' Crosdesk calendar and on their My work, with a reminder banner before it starts. Email invitations, browser notifications and external guests are not available yet.
Is there a cloud version?
Yes — sign up free at app.crosdesk.com and start a workspace straight away. When you want your data on your own infrastructure, Crosdesk is also self-hosted under a signed licence: you run the image on your own servers or cloud account, and your data never leaves it. We can help with installation.
How is it licensed?
Per installation, under a signed licence key installed from the operator console. Request a demo and we will talk through what fits your organisation.
Try it free
Start a workspace in two minutes.
Sign up with your work email, name your organisation and invite your departments. No card, no installation — the same Crosdesk you would run on your own servers.
Request a demo
See Crosdesk with your own departments.
Tell us how your organisation is split and what you deliver together. We will walk you through a demo installation set up around it, and talk about licensing.
- A 30-minute walkthrough of departments, projects, features and the scorecard
- A look at the reports with realistic demo data
- Installation and licensing for your infrastructure
Prefer email? Write to hello@buddhyantra.com