Please help before my computer flies out of my window.
I have my sign companies jobs listed in some boards that carry us through the job process from beginning to end. My first board “New Customer Requests” starts out the process.
The name column in all of my boards is the name of the company or in other words my customer requesting the job. Currently we have to manually type in the name of this company which opens up the chances of my employees spelling the names incorrectly, among other potential issues.
I have been trying to figure out a way to simply start typing the name of the company to search for them or have a drop-down with all my customers names in it but I can not get this sucker to work. I have a seperate board which has my customer data inside of it which the name column is the name of the customers I am looking for.
I understand I can connect the two boards and create a link that way but that does not allow me to have the 1st column in my “New Customer Request” board be my customers name without double entry. Please help this is slowly killing me!
Hey Corey! Have you thought about creating a very minimal board template with the company names set up in the Item Name column or as options in a Dropdown or Status Column? You could then just create every board in the job process from this same basic template so that you don’t have to retype the same information over and over again.
Here’s a guide to making your own template boards. I hope this is helpful!
Thanks for the response, I am a little confused. I do not understand what steps to take with this or how this would even work? Can you please explain it to me in a different way so it makes sense in my world? I do already have a board created with my customers names in the first item name column. How do I use this to be able to search through my customer list while creating a new item in a different board?
I believe you won’t be able to directly achieve what you are trying to as you are trying to use the first item name column as a connect board which isn’t supported.
The only way I can see this working is to have the item name be something else and instead simply use a connect board column to have as a searchable name field.
Thanks for the response Shayan. Yeah, I have been coming to that understanding but did not want to believe that it couldn’t be done due to how important it is to me. Appreciate you confirming my worst fear about this setup I was looking for.
Before I give up and move on I have to ask everyone if there is a way to get my customers name (company) into the item name column by searching a customer list. I cant be the only one who needs to do this for the workflow they create? Does anyone else use this platform for a job shop order tracker like I do?
Sadly, your use case seems to better fit Airtable not Monday. Airtable is built for that kind of interconnectability but also makes it a bit more of a learning curve than Monday. There is a fairly robust free version of that software if you want to check it out. (I am not affiliated with them in any way, I just know this because I tried to use that software for things that Monday cannot do but it was a little too difficult for me to master in the end because of that interconnectability ).
Basically my company is what I have found out to be called a job shop type of workflow. I organize all of the orders by my customers name so it is easy to lookup the certain job for them I am looking for at any moment. A customer can have as few as one job only with a single item requested to be made or I have other customers who can have 10-20 jobs going at once with different job names for them.
I used to have a more production shop orientated workflow but my building suffered a devastating fire in the middle of the night two months ago. I have had to switch my workflow to more of an outsourcing modeled workflow until I get done playing the games with the insurance companies and then getting the building repaired or rebuilt.
My current workflow: (each number is a new board in the process)
New Customer Requests (a landing page to either send a job from an email request to Monday or a spot to manually enter a new job (item).
Quote Requests: Jobs will be sent here if a quote is requested by a new or current customer.
Proofs: Items sent here need a proof sent to our customer for approval of there product.
Ordering/Shipping: Where jobs go when they need to be ordered from one or multiple vendors to be able to fulfill our customers requests. Once ordered they go down to the appropriate shipping group on the board.
Invoicing: Once a job is shipped to our customer this is where the job goes to get invoiced.
Job Archive: A board where our completed jobs go and hang out for the remainder of eternity. This also serves as a reference to jobs we have completed in the past and the customers need more of the same item ordered.
Hope that makes sense, I appreciate any feedback you may have!
I have the same problem. I have a list/board that contains the names (and other details) of about a thousand members of staff. Many of them are members of various working/governance/project teams and I need to set up a board for each team and select the names of members of each team from the master list/board of employees. In both the master board and the team boards the “item/name” column holds the employee name so I need to use the master board as a feeder board that is connected to by the team boards… Staff can be in multiple teams.
I would suggest adding a two-way Connect Board column from the customer list (customer board) to all boards 1-6, as @shayan.moussawi mentioned. If you rename all those columns so they have the same name, the connection will follow when moved between boards. You can move the connect board column right next to item name, so customer name is easily viewable. Most common use case is to have the item name be the project or inquiry name.
If you still want the item name to be the customer name, without typing it in every time, here are two options:
Generate new items from the customer list (customer board). Add a button or status column to trigger an automation that create an item on intake board and links it. When setting up the automation, make sure to do the mapping correctly so that customer name becomes the item name.
Use a third party app like “Item Name & Text Column Automations”.