I recently set up my teams Monday.com user account. We are an Civil Engineering Firm working in Land Development. Each of what we call “Projects” is a contract with a land owner or architect to delivery construction documents for permitting to develop a piece of property.
After discussions with the Monday.com rep who helped set us up, we have chosen to make a “Board” for each one of our “Projects”. We used the “Powerful Project Management” Template and modified it a bit to our liking. We currently have 25 active projects, so we have 25 Boards in a folder called “Active Projects” and this is our main work area for Monday.com.
When looking at an individual Project/Board everything is going pretty smooth, we are able to create tasks, assign a person to work on it, set a deadline. The board works well for seeing what is going on with that project.
The problem I am having is that there is no screen where I can simply see All the tasks assigned to a particular team member across all of the 25 different Projects/boards. One team member will be assigned different tasks on multiple projects/boards. There is no way to check their “To do” list?
The closest thing I have found is the “My Week” button. Which is in the bottom left (4th button above profile picture). It doesn’t work well at all. The biggest problem is that if a deadline isn’t assigned to a task, or more importantly if the deadline isn’t within the actual week, then that task doesn’t appear. That won’t work for us at all, as most of the stuff we work on takes months.
I’m really struggling with this, we really need a place to see all the tasks a person has, so that we can set priorities for them, or assign tasks to a different person if that person is over loaded. Any help is greatly appreciated.
I’ve worked with a few folks on a similar setup as your describing and there are a couple of ways to handle this.
Firstly I would suggest creating a dashboard, include all your project boards and then add a timeline view and group by ‘person’ column, this will get all their tasks in a line based on timeline column.
The limitation here is that you do have to have a timeline column for each item and it needs to be filled out in order to show up.
Secondly if you don’t have timelines for items on projects then I would suggest adding the ‘Table’ widget to your dashboard, I would suggest training your team to filter by their person, so they can see all their tasks in one place. the downside here is that it doesn’t combine groups and so the view gets really lengthy. This option seems much less Ideal than the first, but perhaps it’ll work for you guys.
Thirdly I have seen a ‘combined board view’ app by a third party which on initial install looks to combine items from different boards similar to the table view, but in a more consolidated manner. This app might be worth exploring.
Hi @Gessleman - this is actually quite a common use case where people want to find quick summaries across multiple project boards.
Agreed with @timlittletech - Dashboards would be the simplest way to get around this, however depending on your licensing tier there are limitations. Within the Pro license you can only connect 10 boards to a dashboard where this is upgraded to 50 with Enterprise. As you mention, you have 25 boards today, so unless you are currently on Enterprise licensing, this will not meet your needs.
What we have setup for clients in the past is more of a Master/Child board approach, where the master is the source of information that is mirrored down to the various child (project) boards. The benefit of this - you have a single board that contains all information which can then be displayed via an overview board (think a single record for an entire project) and also into a dashboard without hitting limitations of board counts.
At a very high level - you would create a master board with all the information you would want to track per project. Then create a child board with the fields mirrored from the master. You can then create an automation to connect the records from the child and master so they stay in sync.
From there, save the child board as a template and use that moving forward and everything will be setup for you.
If you would like to discuss more or need us to lend a hand feel free to reach out to me here via DM or shoot me a message at info@greenllamas.com.
Also, check us out online to learn more about what we do!
@mark.anley and @timlittletech ,
Thank you for your responses. I am on the standard plan, so I guess the dashboard will not work for me.
I am really struggling to grasp the Master/Child board approach. Would this approach work if most of the tasks being assigned are not standard for each project? I currently have our project boards set up with some standard items that we do for most projects, but the bulk of what we need this for are for items that don’t fall into those standards.
The problem I have is that each person on our team will currently have 3-4 different tasks to do on 4-5 different projects. The tasks could be as simple as “draft an email to ____” which will take 30 minutes. Or the task could be as large as “Grade a 40 acre site” which will take 20 hours. What inevitably happens is I will ask someone to draft that email while they are in the middle of grading that site, they don’t jump on it right away, other stuff comes up, a week goes by and they have never drafted that email. So the idea is to quickly throw a task into Monday.com so that it doesn’t get forgotten.
Can we use the Master/child approach for entering in those small non-standard tasks easily? Or is mainly for the standardized tasks that happen for every project?
Hi @Gessleman - thanks for adding the additional context here - very helpful.
With the master/child approach what is important is continuity between the columns (fields) between the master and child. If the pulses/items or groups are different within a project or task board that is fine. So if you have a set of fields you always use (dates, status, resource, etc) then this setup should still apply.
With that, you could have various child project boards (for the larger items) and additional task boards which follow the same style. Those task boards could be used for smaller (non-project) items and still feed in the same way as a larger project would.
Within those boards you could also setup automations to remind the resources if they are reaching a due date without being completed.
Thank you Mark. Yes, we do use the same columns. I’ve tried to keep it really simple. We only have 5 columns. The first is the name where you type in the task and there is the Chat bubble to the right in that column, then we have Tasks/Owner/Status/Timeline.
I will try to set up a test board to see if I can figure out the Master/Child application.
@Gessleman No problem at all - this sounds like a good approach and the simplicity of your boards makes this even easier for you. There are automations out of the box to help setup the connection between the boards. I like to use the one below as it gives you more control on when the connection is made. You could just setup an additional status field called Send to Master and when changed it will make the connection.
One thing to note with this kind of relationship. The Item Name will note stay in sync if changed after the connection is made. It is important to make sure you are happy with the name before sending to the master board as if you want to make a change you need to make it in two spots. However even if the item names are different they will still be connected.
Hope this helps and if you run into issues let me know!
Mark
@mark.anley
I’ve created a board called “Master Board” that is just kind of blank, and I guess the goal is for it to be populated by the board I will use as “Project Boards”.
I created a TEST project board and added an automation that “when an item is created in this board, create an item in Master Board and connect them in the selected board”
That seems to work, I can see new items in the Master board. But those items don’t update after the initial creation. How do I make an automation to update the Master Board when anything is changed on the TEST project board?
Sorry for the novice questions, this is all very foreign to me.
Hi @Gessleman - so what you want to do is within your master board, create the fields you would want to track on a child project board.
Then within a blank child board - add a connected column and mirror the columns back from the master. Then - when the automation runs they will stay in sync. I have added a couple screen shots for you to assist.
Add a new column: Connect Boards
Click Select a Board:
Select the Master Board you just created:
Remove the check for Allow linking to multiple items and select Mirror Data From Board:
Select the columns to mirror and select done
You should now see the mirrored fields on your project (child) board with the arrorw to denote a mirror:
Thank you again for all your help. I am so sorry, but I am complete lost.
You said “create the fields” in the Master Board. What is a Field? Is that a column?
I thought the tasks I would would be entered in the Project Boards (Child). Is that incorrect?
I have 25 Projects. So I wanted 25 Separate boards, where each row has a Task that needs to get done, and there are the five columns discussed earlier.
I don’t understand the Master board, but if I set that up correctly, then I can create a dashboard, and in that dashboard, I can view my To-Do list. Is that correct? My assumption was that the Master Board would just be a big long list of every single task(row) created in all 25 projects. Is that correct?
So with the Master/Child example you posted. Where would we type a new task/row? If we type it into the Master board, how does it know which of the 25 project boards to put it in?
Hi @Gessleman - it’s a strange technique and takes some time to get a good feel for how it works, apologies I am not being clear on the approach.
As for fields - yes, this is columns - I mix-up the terminology sometimes (old IT guy here )
Here are some summary points to help clarify:
The tasks will be entered on the Project (child) boards. The fields are being mirrored from the master board so technically they are actually entering the data into the master, just via the child boards
As for the 25 boards, the best way is to create a template and base all your projects off the template. That way all the automations and connections to the master are pre-built
The dashboard would be created off the master board as it will contain all the records from the child project boards. You can also setup views off the master board to give you all the details you need easily. Consider your master board as the main database for all information
To your last point - no, when the the new task is added it should be done in the project board. This will then connect it back to the master board.
If you need more assistance we should maybe plan a quick call and do a screen share to walk through the process. Let me know if this is needed and I can schedule something.
@mark.anley Thank you Mark, I think I understand a little better now, but I’m not getting the automations right.
I created a master board and set the columns (Status/Assigned/Deadline)
Then I created a Project Board (Child) and was able to mirror the correct columns into this board.
But when I am in a Project Board, and I go to add a new task, I can’t set the status or assign a member, I see this new pop up that says “Connect Boards column” then “Mirrored Column” under it.
If you are willing to deal with me on a call, I would greatly appreciate it.
No problem @Gessleman - seems like you are really close. After you have mirrored the columns, create a new status column in the child board that is attached to the automation to connect the boards. So the flow would then be:
Create new Item in the Child Board (ensure name is accurate)
Use new status field to trigger the automation
This will enable the fields mirrored from the Master board to be filled in
If you still need a call send me your email to info@greenllamas.com and I will get a quick sessions setup with you as soon as I can.
