Why are the views/settings different when I use Board View vs Project View

[Casey Jones]

I have one Project, Documentation.

When I click the header, Project, and select it I get a view that doesn't allow me to enter board settings, everything looks washed out, and is entiled just, BOARD.

When I use the header and select, Board, I get a much more detailed view with board settings but no project settings.

When I view all boards there is only one DOC board, and the same thing when I view projects.

This is what I'm seeing. The top picture is Board view, the bottom Project view 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

Note the titles of the board.  Your first picture is of a Kanban board, provided by JIRA Software, and it's a board that has been told to look at your project.  Users who do not have access to JIRA Software will not have a boards menu.

Your second board is a project board.  These belong to Core projects in JIRA Cloud and are a very simple implementation compared with Kanban/Scrum boards.

There's no harm in using both.

[Casey Jones]

Oh that makes sense. So all I have to do is change the project type to software and the two will become synonymous. 

Thanks for your help! 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

No problem.  Yes, swapping it to Software should make your Kanban board become the "board" in the project summary.