Hi @Idolwild, I can very much relate to your wish of being able to create a workflow like you describe. In fact i described somewhat of the same in Two-way linked with 'Link To Item' column (potential subtask solution)
Another usecase for me would be working on one high level planning board and connect items (tasks) from another board via two-way LTI column.
Cheers,
Eltjo
Hey @Idolwild - welcome to the community! Currently the link to item column, indicates when you connect one item from one board to an item(s) to another board - the only thing it actually does it create that first set of linking and shows they are linked, though no changes will be made without the use of the Mirror column or automations.
Would you mind elaborating a bit further on how you would expect the linking/roll up feature to work? We are in the process of working on changes to the mirror column to allow for rollups, one to many boards, etc.
Let me know!
@brett-monday.com: I think it’s probably best if I just illustrate it using my real-world boards. Please keep in mind – I might still be using the field types incorrectly, so please excuse if this is already possible and I’m just doing something wrong.
I have the following HIGH-level board that lists out the projects one of my teams is working on. It has the fields below – you can see I’ve added a mirror/link column set to look at my LOW-level sprint board with tactical items. For any given project, I can associate a number of pulses from the sprint board, in any sprint grouping. The below is the interface provided:
This interface is OK and serves the purpose of associating down-level tactical work with the project. However, instead of doing the spec from top-down, why not bottom-up?
This is the board with my tactical items and its associated columns. We use one-week sprints, each sprint is a group, the top-most being the current week’s sprint. My people are on this board all day long, putting in their work and maintaining their workflow at the tactical level. Sometimes they need to break items apart, sometimes consolidate, sometimes they need to put new work in.
For any given pulse they enter, I want them to associate it with one of our projects on the HIGH-level board – each item is, after all, a child of one of those parents. What I want to have happen is that when they DO select the project that the tactical pulse is associated with, it essentially would be the same end result as if I had checked the box next to that pulse at the higher level (the action specified in the second paragraph). That way, my people can be responsible for associating their work to a project when they enter it, instead of us having to filter through the projects, one at time, and then looking through the sprints for the work. I hope that makes sense!
Please let me know if I can elaborate further.
Hey @Idolwild - thanks for explaining here. To me it sounds like you are using a high level board with the link column to link to all of your lower level boards.
Would you be willing to do it the opposite from your current set up? Can you clarify on linking from your low level boards to your high level board would not work for you? Currently the mirror column is set up so that you can only link one board to another per column, whereas the link column you can link one to many.
Does that make sense? Would you be willing to use it from low to high?
Brett
I don’t really understand what you mean. Wherever you establish a link/mirror, the point is activity is not bi-directional reflected between boards. I can associate each sprint item with a project, but on the project board I would never know this occurred. Either that or the software is just confusing.
@brett-monday.com - Ya, after some looking around, the things this person expresses in this post:
Are accurate, and my current challenge is described as “monday offers a very limited view of linked/mirrored relationships. The only way to see a linked relationship is to be on the linked board . If you are on the parent board, there’s no way to see an overview of the links.”
This makes managing tasks that roll up to a project from the project board impossible and Monday.com not really realistic to manage agile projects of any complexity. I hope you guys plan to fix this, else my search for an good product continues…
I’m trying out Monday.com for the business I work for. I 100% agree with this sentiment–if there is a link made, why can’t it go back and forth on the boards? I’d like to use the link to allow one board to inform another board, but then send back different information from the 2nd board back to the first.
Well kuddo’s for this. I’m thinking the exact same. Just want bi-directional linking as in any other database kind of platform… Notion, Filemaker, AirTable… It’s Database 101, no?
It is database 101 (referential fields) - to my knowledge it has never been solved in Monday.com and we struggle on. I haven’t been able to pay much attention to their feature releases due to the current hullabaloo, so maybe it’s been addressed.
An end result of this issue is we manage everything at the tactical level because organizing the strategic level becomes too much work. So, we have very messy sprint planning.
@brett-monday.com never responded so I don’t know if anything ever became of it or if they have any interest in fixing it. Notion is becoming attractive, even with it’s steep learning curve.
Their support team has mentioned it will be released in Q2 but who knows anymore.
i support that idea. Olso optimization for loading data from the linked board. I have a board for NGO members 10K, I have second board for donation entries where I have linked a column to a NGO members board and mirror email, name and last name. when I want to connect board member to a donation entry it takes more time to load the data from members board than to go on crossboards search and find a company that matches the payment.
there is one other important thing. search in a link to item column searches only main column, instead of all entries in columns from linked board.
to explain why is that important: When a member pays a donation they write their VAT number and that is the onlu reference to connect payment to a member.
I support this request - it’s one of the most important workflows that I’d like to accomplish. I’m trying to figure out a workaround but it’s like fitting a round peg into a square hole.
@Idolwild and others,
Although this is a somewhat older thread it might be interesting to look at this one Master board linked to multiple low-level boards - #3 by jakobrydberg
The Rollup Multiple Boards app let you create multiple “down level” boards where the connection is maintained in a database. In the high level board you can have recipes that does a rollup from all “down level” boards. So it basically rolls up an entire column in any number of “down level” boards to an item in the high level board.
In essence, what I think I (and maybe many) are looking for here is the ability to create Child boards from a Parent board - maybe let’s call them sub-boards for consistency. This would look fundamentally similar to sub-tasks in a board entry, except that they’re collected in their own sub-board. They would differ from sub-tasks, which are exclusive to that entry. This is pretty similar to the relationship between Tasks, Stories and Epics in AGILE.
These sub-boards would be indented from the parent board, and both the boards and the individual entries would maintain cross-links, so when anything is updated, it flows to the other(s).
hi @Russ-Avalon
It looks a perfect fir for the Rollup Multiple Boards app where you indeed create sub-boards from a parent board. An item in the parent board represents a sub-boards (holding the details). The data from the sub-boards (compare it with the column summaries) is kept in sync with the parent board through defining recipes.
@Idolwild This where Monday need to implement a Project Column that completely links/mirrors tasks from one board to another like I have suggested as a function below, check it out and upvote it!
I would say the most straight forward use cases for us as a Web/Marketing Agency would be related to rolling up billable hours and other cost-related numbers. Example:
Top Level Board of “Client Website Projects”
Low-Level Boards - One per “Client Website Project”
The High-Level Board Rollup (aka. Aggregation) columns would show the total from their respective columns in the low level boards, and you should be able to choose specific “Groups” in those Low-Level Boards OR the whole Low-Level Board–This way you can exclude groups (ie. Pending Work) from the totals.
Let me know if that helps!
hi @zlanich
What you describe sounds very much like the design principles of Rollup Multiple Boards (see https://monday.com/marketplace/101). This app rolls up multiple boards in a high level board where each item represents a down-level board. The good thing: it writes to normal monday columns in the high-level boards, so you can calculate (formulas), automate and integrate with the aggregated data.
This is a good find. It would be nice though to just have basic rollup built into Monday core, especially since it’s already supported in dashboards more/less, and since that app seems to be between $300-$5,000, haha.
A one time charge of $300 per high-level board (not too bad I think 
)
