Is there a better way to do this? Simplified example below.
I have 2 boards:
Companies - each company and their contact info
Contacts - each contact and their individual contact info
These 2 boards are linked so that the COMPANIES board has a column displaying the connected CONTACTS, and, vice versa, the CONTACTS board has a COMPANIES column.
Now, let’s say I have to add 10 new contacts to 10 different companies. Let’s say I import those 10 new contact entries from a simple excel sheet. There seems to be no way to import the company names since it’s a connected board column? Is that right? Or am I overlooking something?
What I’ve done so far is import the COMPANY data in as a separate text column. Then, I go back through each individual line of data and click to select and link the company.
Is that the only way to get the info into the board and connected? Manually?
This is super time consuming. If there’s a better more efficient way, please let me know!
Thanks for the suggestion. I looked up Integromat and looked over it briefly. It’s pretty much another zapier/IFTTT clone right? Not really sure how I’d use it to solve this particular problem though.
EDIT: Integromat is so confusing! I have been wrestling with it for a couple hours now. I don’t know how many more hours I can pour into this. I’m sure it’s great once it’s figured out and set up! I’m really frustrated and discouraged.
This way all the info is on one board, and you can easily sort or filter to just see the info you need. You can have multiple contacts at the same company; we also have company details like address, website, etc in columns further to the right on the board, so we actually don’t list companies themselves (all that info is contained in every individual contact listed for that company).
Apologies if I’ve misinterpreted the issue you’re trying to solve - just give me a shout if so and I’ll see if I can assist!
Thanks! Yes, that is how I have my system set up too.
Just wondering if there’s a better way to import and connect the two tables rather than manually going into each pulse and connecting them. I already have a spreadsheet with company and related contact - but when I import, it can only import the text. As a result, I then have to go to each pulse, click the contact name and select the proper company so that the 2 boards are connected. This is incredibly time consuming. Was wondering if there’s a better way that I am not seeing.
So once the info is all in there and connected, you can totally do all the stuff you mentioned (i.e. connect multiple contacts to same company, filter as needed, etc.) - the question I am asking is:
Is there a better way to connect contacts and companies other than going through each line of the table and manually connecting HUDREDS of companies and contacts to one another?
I might not be the best person to answer that - I’ve only done some simple importing, and ran into the same issue of ‘connected board’ columns not being able to populate themselves.
There may well be a better way, but our solution was to have it all in one board instead of two (and therefore no ‘connected board’ columns) and adapt the spreadsheet and board to match each other. It makes it huge, but it’s easy to filter or sort as needed.
Another option might be to have a static (text) ‘Company’ column in one board, where you import your spreadsheet to, and ‘mirror’ it in the second board? I’m not sure if this will do what you need it to though.
Not sure if this is helpful but there’s a slightly quicker way to populate, IF you’re adding multiple contacts from one company at once: select multiple items using the item checkboxes (and you can click on one, and hold down ‘shift’ (on a pc) and click the bottom one to select all) then go across to your company column, and populate one of those items - and it’ll copy to all the items you’ve selected. Just remember to ‘end the selection’ before you do another batch.
I hope you get some more answers about Connected Boards - to be honest, I don’t find them all that useful, for the same reason as you! I might also be missing something but in the meantime I try to find ways to minimise the need for them. I’m finding that we can combine lots of stuff in one board, and have it function far better than having multiple connected boards. It’s also easier to find things!
I’m sure a Monday rep will have some better ideas - best of luck and I hope you find a good solution!
Wow! I’m honestly amazed that you don’t find the connected board useful! Not as a criticism of you - as a criticism of the platform. That’s the entire point of a database is to have interconnected tables so that you don’t have to enter information/update information in more than 1 place.
If we have everything in one board, then we would run into a lot of problems in how we connect our info. If everything were in one board, I would just need an excel spreadsheet, to be honest.
I did the text column for import, like you suggested, and then went in and manually, line by line, selected each company. That’s exactly what prompted this question.
Monday is being used by huge companies. How in the world are they migrating to monday.com in an efficient way? I can’t imagine they built out their databases manually line by line! There has to be a way to make this efficient.
For large migrations where hundreds or thousands of records that need to be linked are involved, we build one-time migration tools with Integromat. We can pull in the data and automatically create the Connect Boards column links as part of the data migration.
If anyone else is facing this problem and would like to chat about how to more easily migrate to monday․com, we offer a limited number of no-charge strategy sessions in the community each week. You can book one here: Book a call with Polished Geek: Do more with monday․com
I’m guessing that your business needs are completely different to ours - hence that functionality might be critical for you but has limited use for us. We are using it to connect Contact details with Projects and that’s helpful, but it’s a very small aspect of what Monday.com is doing to help us scale up our business - and that is probably why I don’t have the knowledge or expertise to be of any further assistance.
Cheers and hope you find a good solution
I used the automation “when item created, create an item in another board and link them” to import a long list of orgs and create linked contacts on a separate contacts board.
My orgs are each linked to a single contact at this point. I plan to add more contacts manually.
I don’t think this automation would work if I was trying to import a list of orgs with multiple contacts. I think in that case, I’d import the contacts, then multi-select connections from the org board. But I’m curious if there’s a better approach.
One last question: are you using the ‘mirrored columns’ function in the board connection?
I’ve just had another look at our setup. As previously described, our Contact list was imported as text columns only:
We then set up our Project board with columns mirrored from the Contacts board, like this:
As you can see, we have connected with our Contacts board, and mirrored the email and company columns from that, in our Projects board.
The key here is, you can choose whether or not to also have the connected board column back in your other board (i.e. the one you’re importing your data to. We chose not to - the company column is just text).
The info still mirrors - so if I change the name of the company in this mirrored company column, it updates it back in my Contact boards too (and vice versa)
Conclusion: you don’t need a connected boards column in both boards - just the second one. Hope that is helpful
Hi Mondayzato. I would like to do the same thing. I am entering about 1,500 rows of data into a board with a company name. I want to connect to my Company information board and link the boards by company name. I’d rather not click into each connect board column and make the link manually. Were you ever able to figure out an automated way to do this?
