Connect Boards Limitations Workaround

We have been using a High Level and multiple Low Level boards structure to track our client’s projects. The data from the low-level boards is mirrored to the High level Board (numbers, formulae, statuses). I am just now finding out that there is a limit to the no. of boards that can be connected to a High Level board.

We need anywhere from 100-200 boards that could possibly have to be connected to the High Level board and Monday’s limitations make this tool completely unviable for future use. We’ve spent too much time transferring data, creating automations in Integromat etc so it would be a shame to now have to discard Monday altogether.

What are the possible ways that we can circumvent the Connect Boards limitations?

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Hi @Rohan-TAP - the way we have worked around this in the past. Have a single “master board” where all the tasks from the various project boards are housed. This way your project board columns are a series of mirrored columns from the master board. You would have identifiers in each row sent to the Master board to make it clear what project you are working on.

From there your high level board where you want to reflect overall project status can be connected to master board, so only a single board connection.

This is also very helpful for task executors to see all their tasks in one place across all projects. You could also utilize the My Work view, however this way you see all metrics attached to a project/task.

Additionally, from a reporting perspective via dashboards/etc this makes life simple as you are only connecting your dashboard to a single board, rather than than multiple project boards.

Of course, there are limitations to this approach, but it would get you around your initial issue. If you would like more information in regards to this approach feel free to message me anytime.

Thanks
Mark

Hi @Rohan-TAP,

This suggests to me that it could be good to consider looking at possible ways of restructuring the way you’re tracking the projects and other possibilities as well as looking for that fix to what you’ve currently got. This is a really good opportunity for you to explore what you could get out of monday.com if everything were set up just the way you needed it, and it was scalable, so wasn’t going to limit you.

There are plenty of partners out there in the community so you can get a few opinions/options with no obligation to you. Have a look around the Hire an Expert category and you’ll see many people you can reach out to for this.

Your usecase however, sounds all too familiar to me and I know is something upstream can help with. We are Platinum Partners, APAC Partner of the Year for 2020 and Preferred Partners, so a safe and knowledgeable pair of hands.

You’ll have access to our dedicated teams including the Solutions Engineers and our full stack Dev Team who specialise in integrations and custom requirements.

Feel free to drop me an email via peta@upstreamtech.io or use the below link to book straight into my calendar for a meeting and I can answer any questions you might have.

Chat with Peta

Kind regards,
Peta - upstream

Hi @mark.anley , I’m not sure if I understand correctly. Won’t the “master board” run into the same problem of connect board limitations if I were to have individual project boards and have the tasks mirrored from master board to project board?

Just to give a little more detail about the current setup -

We have a Masterboard with all ongoing campaigns for clients. We also have individual campaign boards that house all the deliverables for that campaign. The sub-items for each campaign in the Masterboard are also the deliverables for that campaign and the data is mirrored to the masterboard from the individual campaign boards.

Hi @Rohan-TAP - you would not run into any issues as each row in the master board is connected to a task from a specific campaign board and the connection is made from the campaign board, not the master (1-way connection).

Basedo n your description, if I have this correct, your “masterboard” is basically a one-liner for every campaign (we would normally call this an overview board). And then you have a separate board with the individual tasks for each campaign, this is ties back to the masterboard and mirrors overall status.

What I do not understand is your mention of subitems? “The sub-items for each campaign in the Masterboard are also the deliverables for that campaign and the data is mirrored to the masterboard from the individual campaign boards” So do you have the tasks duplicated? Once in the individual board and then as subitems in the masterboard?

Thanks
Mark

Hey @mark.anley , that is correct. Items from campaign boards are mirrored to the sub items in the Masterboard. It allows us to “sum” up numbers, formulae etc (show summary on parent item) from all the individual items to get the overall status for each campaign in the Masterboard.

Thanks @Rohan-TAP for the explanation.

Quick question, how are you managing the connection between the task on the campaign board and the corresponding subitem on the masterboard? Are you manually creating the tasks in both and connecting them? Just attempting to get the full picture :smiley:

@mark.anley , I have boards, item creation, column data, & linking automated through Integromat. Just need to fill a Jotform with the campaign data.

@Rohan-TAP - I hear you - I’m expecting to run into a very similar problem with my implementation in the near future :slight_smile:

Do you need to copy/create sub-items on the Master board for summing up, though? Can you not sum up on the individual Campaign boards, then simply mirror that summed value to your Master Board?

Hi @mark.anley @Rohan-TAP
I am running into a maybe similar problem voor a client;

We use a main board called invoice on this board we have connections with all the low level project boards. On those projects boards is where the client is running their campagins/projects including a column where they keep track on the cost of each phase (monday board group).

However since business is going well, they have hit the limit of 60 connected project boards, so they are no longer able to connect more project low level boards to their invoice high level board.

Do you guys have maybe any creative ideas which could help us find a workaround as well?

hi @JuliaBakhuis

Welcome to the community. As an alternative to connect_boards and mirror columns there is an app called Rollup Multiple Boards in the marketplace, see https://monday.com/marketplace/101

With this app you create new low level (project) boards from the master board using monday templates. The created low level board is automatically connected to the item in the master board. See also this video showcasing the app and all its functionality RMB and RSI video.mp4 on Vimeo

There is no limit on the number of low level boards per master board. The other advantage is that you can filter the items on the low level boards being aggregated and that the master board is using real monday columns (not the mirror column) from which you can automate further.

Hi @JuliaBakhuis - this is a common issue and requires ongoing maintenance to stay within the limitations. Outside of changing the overall design (you could look into more of a master board approach which would cut down on connections) you could look into moving some projects to a separate Invoice or Archive board (older projects) or archiving the boards which are no longer active and the connections will be removed.

Moving forward possibly utilizing multiple Invoice Boards and having those roll up details to a higher-level board.

Thanks!
Mark

Looks interesting! However the structure is like this;

  • Highlevel, projects overview
  • As soon as a project is ready to starts an automations is triggered based on a status change and that will create the low level project boards
  • On the low level project boards there are the values for each item which then the summary will be on the invoice
  • The customer goes to the invoice board and on the subitem they select which items from the connect low project level board they would like to have on their invoice.

So in this case would it then still be possible to work with the app you suggest?

Thanks Mark!
The client would like to keep the data active, by archiving the boards we would lose the connections and the mirrored information. For now we are looking into if we could update our MAKE scenario so the values will get hardcoded and then the connections can be removed, however we can then still bump into the limitations because not all the groups on the project boards are invoiced all at onces.

  • Low level board creation from highlevel board is indeed how the app works
  • If the values are in the low level board (as a number column) the high level board will show the sum of all values. You can filter which values to include in the sum with a dropdown column on your lowlevel board
  • Don’t understand how you are using subitems in the high level board, do you mean real monday subitems or items in the low level board? If the latter, see previous bullet. Which item values to use in the sum is set on the low level board.

Thank you Bas for the quick response!
We work indeed with a highlevel/low level board to keep track on the portfolio of the projects and the lowlevel board are the boards per project.

However we use a different board outside of that structure for invoicing.
So the customer creates an item on the invoice board with the customer project name and then create subitems. For the subitems they then select the connect boards column and connect all the items from the projects board they would like to show on the invoice.

So invoice phase 1 are then the for example 10 items from the project low level board.
Invoice phase 2 is another subitem on the invoice board with maybe 5 items from the project low level board.

Hi Julia,

OK, understood. Where do you hit the 60 connected boards limitation. Is that on the high-level board or on the invoice board?

That is indeed on the separate invoice board.