Is there a way to automatically create subitems when new item is created?

We have a new board were I think subitems would work well. But I immediately ran into the issue of wanting to create a list of subitems everytime a new item is added to a board.

Does anyone know how to do this?

6 Likes

yeah, as a template.

@hlopezvc,

Unless I’m missing something, that does not add automatically add the sub items when a new item is added.

Please show me how I’m wrong.

For anyone who is interested, I created an Integromat scenario to solve this issue. It’s not too bad in terms of complexity. I made it to work being called from any board.

When the user adds an item, the template is copied, renamed to the name the user entered and then the original entered item is deleted.

This is how it works:

An item, “template”, is created in the board and the desired initial subitems are added to it. I put this in it’s own group at the bottom of the board.

This integration is added to call the scenario.
image

These are the scenario steps:

  1. Get Webhook
  2. Stop If Item already has subitems
  3. Get the “template” ID
  4. Stop if no “template”
  5. Duplicate the “template” Item (done with a direct https API call because this is not yet implemented in Integromat)
  6. Rename the duplicate item
  7. Move it to the correct group
  8. Delete the user entered item

3 Likes

It would be really great if there was a more built-in way to do this! I would like to be able to use templates for sets of subitems, too.

4 Likes

Hi JCorrel,

I’m really interested in your solution based on Integromat. I would really appreciate if you could share with us this Blueprint json.
Thank you very much!

@jandiano,

I thought that you (or others) might be interested in the changes I made to ours. This is the updated scenario diagram:

The biggest change was that I added processing to set due date values on the subitems. For the dates, it takes today’s date and adds the day of the year on the subitem minus 1 and puts the result back into the subitem. This allows the template subitems to control the due dates as offsets from when the new item is created.

6 Likes

Hello,

When we create an item, we want to automate the creation of subitems from a template.
We have a certain type of item, and we want that when it is registered, the entire structure below is created automatically. This item has many subitems. We automate this task without Integromat with a template.

1 Like

Hey @fcalicchia, thanks for posting about this!

This automation feature isn’t available at the moment, but I will pass it as a feature request on to our team.

If you’d like help brainstorming workarounds for your workflow, please feel free to write in to monday.com :blush:

3 Likes

Hi @JCorrell,

I’m completely new to Monday.com and integromat but would really love to replicate this process on a board I have set up. Are you able to provide any more detail on the steps?

Thanks!

Pat

This is probably not the best beginner project. But, if you set it up to work for a specific board and stick with just duplicating the the template item (as opposed to adjusting the subitems after duplication) it’s doable.

Done this way, the trickiest part is the item duplication. This is not currently implemented in Integromat so has to be done using an HTTP request. This is how the HTTP request needs to be setup:


2 Likes

I really second this. If we can create default subitems for every item in the board we could use it to make a better workflow. I have boards with so many columns and those columns are somethings like “tasks” to be done, so the best way to present them is the subitem feature but creating those subitems everytime we create an item would be just time wasting so we are forced to leave them as “column” tasks. I’ll follow this feature request :smiley:

Hi @fcalicchia & @V.B.Music - Just released is the ability to create subitems automatically with Custom Automations. I recorded this video demo of it today for someone and thought you’d like to know too - Screen Recording 2020-12-10...

5 Likes

I’ve just seen the new feature, is amazing!! The posibilities with this are just huge huge huge! thank you! i’m pretty sure that many people are gonna love this new feature :hugs: :hugs: :hugs: :hugs:

1 Like

Good job monday! adding more here to reach the 20 character limit.

Thanks for this video! :slight_smile:

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Hi @JCorrell - I think I am wanting to do something very similar to you with integromat.
Basically, I have a “template” item (its not a template in the monday.com sense of a template, because as far as I know, they don’t yet support templates at the task level - rather I’m just calling it a “template” item because I want to duplicate it over and over again) which has 18 subitems. I want to duplicate this item with automation.
I see that the monday.com api has a mutation for duplicating an item.
My question for you is: → Is that basically what you are doing? Calling the mutation api from integromat? And if so, can you confirm (or deny) whether or not calling the duplication mutation api on an item also duplicates all of its subitems? If not, do you know of a way to duplicate the item and all its subitems as well?
Thank you very much for any help/clarification you can provide!

@mclovin,

Yes, I am using the duplicate item API. It does duplicate the subitems. As I described above, this API is not directly implemented in Integromat. So, you have to call it using the HTTP request module.

@JCorrell this is really really helpful. Thank you!

This automation is great, however it assigns me as the subscriber on the sub item.
My team use the sub items for their individual tasks so now i am getting a notification every time they make an update. Is there anyway to turn this off? or an automation that would make the sub item subscriber the same as a people column on the main item?