We’ve been using Monday.com on and off for close to 3 years now and really appreciate the platform for its intuitive UI/UX experience which allows for a much smoother integration of new users.
However, the priorities with some of the new-feature roll-outs is perplexing to put it mildly. Over the years we’ve seen visual changes and new low-impact feature introductions when arguably some of the most important existing features don’t get the updates they deserve.
I’m talking about sub-item automations - as it stands they are very limited. The three automations that I believe should not be too difficult to roll-out but would substantially improve usability are:
Every time period create sub-item automation;
Every time period duplicate sub-item and move to item automation;
When status change, create sub-item and set sub-item date to ‘today’ automation;
For example, this would allow workflows like this:
Every time period (Friday) if the status of the sub-item is (not Done) then move sub-item to item (Next Week)
This type of automations would substantially increase the level of process automation through Monday and I believe would be a great boost for productivity for a lot of users.
I agree. And there should be subitem automations where if every column (status or value or date or whatever) is a value then do something to the parent item.
Also Subitems in Dashboard…they are virtually NON-Existent
Agreed this is another sorely needed feature! And also agreed that it’s very confusing what’s considered priority to them, even the roadmap is super unclear.
It would be so useful for an automation for “Every time period” that allows you to “Create a subitem”.
For example;
I have a board where group is the product family, Item is the project, and subitem is the work level. To be able to create a subitem for a weekly update would be amazingly helpful.
Could we get a new trigger for automations from sub items? I wanted to see something like, when a new sub item is created, change status of the main item (not the sub item that was just added) to something. Or any other action for that matter. The point is, the trigger is from a sub item and the action is for the main item.
I would totally love an automation “when subitem created then”. This is actually one of the things that I need for my process as well.
Edit:
Now I think it, you could use a status column in the subitem that changed from default to something else. And use that as a trigger to change a status column in the main item.
To change the subitem status from default to something, you could check “every period” if a subitem status is still default and then change it to something so that subsequently triggers the change in the main column.
You do need to keep an eye on the number of automations this would you (every minute, every hour every day?), but I think it can be a good workaround.
I am not seeing this as an option at all. In the Automations Center the only action after “Every time period, if status is something” is to notify. There is no change status action.
If I do the custom automations, and start with “Every time period”, I am unable to add the filter for “status is something”
There need to be more automations regarding subitems. I have 200 items on a board, all with subitems. A lot of times it’s necessary to update the same subitem under each item to the same conditions. Currently, this has to be done item by item. If automations could update subitems based on a status change in the parent item, that would be awesome.
Hi @awright , you can achive that now with some imagination following these steps:
Connect the subitems to the items using the Connect boards column.
Each subitem should be connected to each dedicated item.
Then go to the Automation Center and use the automation “When status changes to something, change another status to something” where you can set the trigger status and action.
You can see a quick example in this video. Hope it helps!
thanks for the feedback. From what I can tell, there is no way to connect each individual subitem. When I connect to the subitem board, I am only given the list of each column. I cannot choose each subitem individually. Thus, all subitems would have to have the same exact status for your suggestion to work. And the point is to have one status column on the parent item that when updated, changes information in the subitems. Example, I needed to assign a person to 2300 subitems. I wanted an automation to do it. There is an automation that will do that when the person column is on the parent record, but it will not do it for subitems. If I mirror the person column to the parent item, the automation doesn’t recognize the mirror column. And, I can’t have the person column on the parent record mirror to the submitems because different people are assigned to the subitems depending on the task. Thanks again.
Please fix these limitations Monday. I’m seeing posts about the limitations of sub-items dating back quitte a while. You’ve recognised this problem months ago. TIme to fix it!
This is another obvious one; Subitems’ boards should have an identical feature set to Parent boards. Don’t wait for count of votes to determine whether this is worth the effort. Most people will not find their way to this thread. I can speak for everyone- it’s required.
It’s very difficult to plan enhancements to the business, and say in meetings ‘Yes we can do that in Monday’, and then bet running into these unexpected silly limitations. It makes the platform look not-fully-cooked to business users.
We developed an app that solves the pain point of subitems inherting column value from parent. Improving a lot the process of creating, updating and generally working with subitems.
On creation - Populate item’s data into its subitems in a seamless way
Hey there, I downloaded the app, which seems very promising, but it doesn’t appear to be pulling in the Column data from subitems. Let me know if this is a bug:
Hi Daniel, thanks for helping me troubleshoot this – the automations work like a charm, appreciate you providing this solution to the Monday.com community!
I would love to see my item columns have a status change which then prompted that column to then become a subitem that could mirror the item column. It would take individual/multiple mirroring within that column to make that work. Essentially each cell would have to operate independently from one another within that column for this to work.
Just like this screen shot that I manually entered for clarification purposes. Where the individual items column status could be changed by changing the subitem status. It would help when in construction there is a lot of information that could overwhelm someone so during each phase a few critical items would drop down to the subitem area so that those tasks could get more attention without overwhelming my construction managers.
I am almost crying I am so happy about this app! I just downloaded and tried it out. It works perfectly! I have been waiting and waiting for Monday.com to add an automation recipe like this…it was so simple!! This saves me a ton of work! Highly recommend
