When handling numerous concurrent Copilot sessions, the My work pane serves as a unified hub for monitoring active tasks, completed work, and upcoming priorities.

This installment represents the third entry in the GitHub Copilot app for Beginners series. Newcomers to this guide should review the initial post, GitHub Copilot app for beginners: Getting started, which introduced the application and its capacity to facilitate work spanning multiple agent sessions. The preceding post examined techniques for operating within individual sessions. This article explores strategies for consolidating all requests and project activities into a single organized workspace.

Development workflows rarely follow a linear path. Developers address bugs in one area, evaluate pull requests elsewhere, and pursue fresh concepts simultaneously. As you delegate assignments to Copilot and generate additional pull requests, managing multiple concurrent efforts becomes increasingly challenging.

Centralized management capabilities are essential, which explains the purpose of the My work pane. The following sections detail how to leverage it for overseeing active work, reviewing completed tasks, and planning future efforts.

Exploring the default views for pull requests and issues

Upon accessing the My work tab, three tabs become available. The All tab displays every pull request and issue in a consolidated view.

The system automatically filters this list according to repositories you've interacted with through the Copilot app—not every repository accessible to you. To include an additional repository, initiate a session targeting that repository, and it will appear in the list.

Three additional preset views accompany the All tab:

  • Active displays all open pull requests and issues.
  • Review requests presents pull requests awaiting your feedback.
  • Done lists all closed items.

These views provide immediate visibility into what demands attention presently versus what has already concluded.

Creating your own views and filters

While the preset views offer a solid foundation, customization is possible. Selecting New view generates a default "New view" label that you can modify to something like "My issues."

You can construct filters using angle-bracket syntax familiar from GitHub, or employ the graphical interface, which often proves more intuitive for beginners.

For a "My issues" view, apply a filter for Is:Issue to capture all issues, then add Assignee:Me to narrow results to your assignments. After selecting Save, this view displays exclusively issues assigned to you.

Quick filtering is also available. Select the filter option at the top to access the same interface. You might prefer sorting by Ascending rather than Recently updated to surface older items first. Subsequently, save modifications to a fresh view, update the existing view, or discard changes to revert.

Customizing your list and table layouts

Items appear in list view by default, resembling a card-based layout. This presentation style offers an accessible method for reviewing work.

Switching to table view provides additional capabilities unavailable in list view: selecting which columns appear, repositioning them, and adjusting their width according to preference.

Experimentation carries no risk—you can restore the original configuration at any time and revert to list view whenever desired.

Starting agent sessions from issues and pull requests

Integration reaches its peak here. Selecting any item opens it, enabling you to initiate a fresh session. Simply instruct Copilot to begin work on that item, and it proceeds using the issue as its foundation.

From list view, you can select multiple items simultaneously, choose Actions, and generate new sessions. This functionality proves beneficial in several scenarios:

  • When multiple independent feature requests exist, you can establish separate sessions for each.
  • When several bug reports reference the same underlying feature, you can consolidate them into a single session by selecting New session.

In both cases, you can designate a different repository for the Copilot app's session, which proves valuable when the repository containing the issue differs from the one containing the implementation code.

Creating issues and changing your repository scope

Two additional useful buttons appear near the pane's top.

The repository filter defaults to All Repositories. Keep in mind that "all" here remains automatically limited to repositories you've accessed within the Copilot app.

The New issue button allows immediate issue creation. For instance, if you wish to implement a light mode toggle, select Create to launch a fresh session initialized with that issue as context.

Take this with you

The My work pane furnishes a consolidated location for administering all pull requests and issues. Custom views, targeted searches, and rapid task assignment to Copilot enable developers to maintain organization and concentrate effort where it matters most.

Additional information is available through other videos in this series or by visiting gh.io/app. The next installment will follow shortly.