Combining numerous dashboards onto one calendar

We are a metal fabrication company. We have 30-50 jobs going at once, each in different stages of completion. I have a template set up that every job is created with. Here is basically how I have all jobs set up:

Field Measuring
Estimate
Fabrication
Dry Fit
Delivery/Install

Each of those items has either projected dates of completion or the date it was actually completed. I need to be able to pull every job I have into a calendar view to see what is scheduled.
I.e.
Job 12345 Field Measuring April 10
Job 13567 Fabrication April 15
Job 14325 Delivery/Install April 12

I need a calendar that shows all my jobs on it and what we are supposed to be doing on what day all in ONE space. (Right now we are using a dry erase calendar on the wall) When talking with support about it, we discovered I can only pull in 20 jobs at one time into a calendar view in a new workspace. I need to be able to see all of them at once for scheduling purposes.

Does anyone have a solution for this? I am more than happy to share my blank job template if that helps.

Hey Cindy,

can you please share your template (calendar)
you can have more than 20 items in a calendar vue (i have on mien)… So i dont really understand what is blocking you.

Here is the template I use for every job we take on:

We are very new to Monday.com so I’m sure I’m not explaining what it is I need properly.

When I put a date into the timeline column on any of the jobs, I need it to go into a calendar that everyone can see so we know what is happening on what day. When talking with support, we tried to create a calendar view and include all my jobs on that calendar and it would not let us put more than 20 jobs in this calendar.

I hope this makes sense. I’m afraid I am not familiar enough with this whole thing to even know if I’m using the correct names for everything I’m telling you.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

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if i got it well:

1 job = 1 board (with multiple groups, multips items, tasks, fases, etc)
You have 50 jobs, so 50 boards to include in the dashboard calendar, is that?

Yes! That sounds right.

it is possible that according to your account, monday does not allow you to have more than 20 boards in a dasboard. However when we look to pricing, there are limits like this:
5 boards
10 boards
50 boards,
so, nothing matches with the limits you find on your dasboard… not really clear…

is it not possible for you to to reorganise your configurations so you can reduce boards?

Not the way we do it. Each board has a unique job so they can’t be combined. We are on the Pro Plan which costs enough money monthly that we should be able to have more than 20 boards in any dashboard view we want in my opinion.

At this point, if it’s not possible to get rid of the dry erase board we are using for scheduling and see everything on here, I don’t think it’s even worth it to keep it. I’m not at all interested in having to enter all this stuff in more than one place. I don’t have the time or the energy for that I’m afraid.

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We use monday for somewhat similar kinds of project tracking, however we use subitems for almost everything. This allows us to have a parent job (at the item level) with numerous tasks/deliverables associated with that parent job. So in your case, your parent job would be the project, like Job 12345, and the subitems would be each task that you now have as items in different groups. Making tasks subitems on a parent job would allow you to have more jobs on a board and therefore wouldn’t run into your board limit issue. I did a mock up so you could see what I mean

Hi Laura,
This looks like it could work? I’m not sure how to set our jobs up this way. Is it possible (I know you are probably just as busy as everyone else) that you can walk me through the steps to set it up this way? Like a Step 1, Step 2 list or something?

I truly appreciate your help.

Hi Cindy,

I’d be happy to - monday stuff is so fun for me! Please email me at LKatterhenry@watermarkcommunities.com and we can see how I can help.

Thank you! I will do that now.

Hello @MNCMetal , It sounds like Laura has the right idea for optimizing your boards. You can also use a Gantt chart view as another way of visualizing your jobs on a Calendar if you use Laura’s method. You can setup dependencies as well so if dates change for each task for a job, it will change in the Gantt view.

If you’re interested in some additional help, please feel free to get in touch.

Laura - Might I ask a question about the use of sub-items? We too have a robust number of projects tracked with Monday.com as our project management system; 50-70 active projects, each project with 1-25 tasks. In current form it is 1 project = 1 board.
One of the factors of 1 project = 1 board is providing staff time entries to each task.

Currently sub-items are where time entries are added. The Time Tracking column option was not sufficient as it is a single aggregate entry of all time and does not provide the breakdown of when time entries added, by who, and a notation of what was done in that time entry (the Summary column in example below).

My question is, is there a way in the example you provided where project tasks are the sub-items, to collect the individual time entries for each task such as shown in my example below)?

Many thanks. Always looking for ways to improve our project management implementation.

Hi Troy,

How are you using the data in your time entries? Is the Time column, for example, a numbers column and you’re totaling up the time worked on a particular task?

Hey Cindy,

We do something similar - each sales guys submits jobs to various main boards (depending on the type of job - one for deliveries, one for custom application, one for 3rd party application etc.) and each sales rep has their own dashboard - they can view all of their jobs, regardless of job type, as a daily calendar. Reach out if you want some help setting it up - mcoleman@southwestagromart.com

Hey Cindy - there’s a quick solution for that, if you’re willing to install an app.

With Same Item Multiple Boards you can create a new “Calendar” board and set an automation for “when item is created” or “when status changes” (or any other trigger) - add the same item to “Calendar” board. Then, you can simply set a calendar view - so all items are where they’re supposed to be + you get a calendar view you can quickly access. Any change you’ll make in the calendar board (or update you post), will apply to the other location of that item

We have to do something similar. Each project used to be a unique board but we ran into limitations with the dashboard. We are restructuring to make better use of subitems. Some of our PMs don’t use subitem’s very robustly while others get really granular. It’s been a challenge to meet everyone’s expectations.