TLDR; hit a roadblock in testing Monday for my use case and looking for feedback from people doing similar work who don’t use 3rd party apps.
I’m on the core testing team for Monday becoming my company’s new project management software (migrating from Airtable). We have the enterprise plan. We work in episodic video production, our current workflows are mapped, and the structure we have been asked to test is this:
- 1 board = 1 series
- Groups = episodes (average of 10-40+)
- Items = tasks (10-20 one-off tasks are in 1 group, every other episode group has the same repeating 20-60).
Those tasks have complex interdependencies within and across episodes (and across series when a resourcing issue pops up). Each type of task also has “rules” for how it can be scheduled (ex: no more than 1 of each type of task scheduled each week in the entire series, certain types of tasks are always due Fridays, etc.). Our use case also requires a very iterative approach - trying out new configurations to see what works given all kinds of restrictions that may or may not be a data point in Monday. We are okay with these rules not being automated as long as the human who knows them can work fast in the software.
Unfortunately, we are finding it incredibly difficult and it feels like one root cause is Monday’s UI is not at all made for the people doing coordination work - just the higher-ups who want to see what’s happening and works who just need to check off tasks. Some examples of the biggest prohibitive issues we’ve run into so far include:
- No copy/paste columns (can’t just do the math in a separate sheet and paste in)
- Gantt view does not push predecessor tasks back when the successor is pushed back (ex: scheduling backwards is a MUST have feature for setting a video publish date, locking it in place, and rippling back the effects. There has t).
- Timeline for tasks with dependencies across groups does not automatically update when the predecessor is changed.
- Calendar does not allow expansion of the # of items displayed on every date at once (the ability to quickly see what exactly is falling on each day at the same time is pretty critical).
My question: does anyone here actually manage/coordinate projects with these kinds of needs? What is your Monday blueprint structure? What workarounds have you found without a 3rd party app? I have not been able to find a single tutorial/example that actually shows how this kind of volume/complexity works for the people managing the details. And since this is a testing period, it’s important we try to make it as out-of-the-box compatible as possible.
Thank you in advance for reading all this and taking the time to respond!!!