There was a fella on here a while back who had mentioned he had a workflow similar to what I was looking for, but it sounded way beyond my ability. I wanted to throw this out there again to see if anybody else has come up with something like this.
Basically, we use our monday account as a scheduling system for our rental business. Each monday, I create a new folder of boards based on a template board and then manually change the name of the folder and each board to a date. Ie. “Week of 04/26/2021” with boards named “Monday, April 26, 2021”. So that’s request 1. Anybody have any idea how this could be easily implemented with an automation/schedule?
On the day boards, I have created an automation that when a status column changes to “Delivery” an item is created on another board called “Job Board”. The goal here is to have an automated system of tracking which items have been rented out and when they need to be picked up. Currently I can get the new items created on the job board and can put the Drop Date simply as the date the item was created, but if someone was to move the item from the day board because the delivery was delayed, I’d want the Job Board to be able to reflect that the Drop Date changed to another day. I’m not sure if this is possible with a linked column (they don’t seem to do what I’m thinking from what I see)?
Thanks in advance for any additional input on this!
for your first request I was intrigued so I set up a board that is specifically used to trigger this ‘weekly’ board creation.
I added 2 status columns and a date to this board. 1st status column is ‘weekday’ and second is to trigger board creation.
Then I set up the following automations:
Every week on monday create 5 items (1 for each workday) set the name and label of weekday to the day of week for that item. (see example)
Custom automation "When Itemn created and “Weekday” is “monday” set due date to today and push date by zero days (repeat this 5 times and increment push by 1 day each) (see example)
When Date changes set Status = “Create Board”
When Status changes to “Create Board” Create board in folder ‘weekly board’ and notify yourself.
Note the only thing this doesn’t get you is the custom named folder each time. you can specify the folder but it would stay the same week to week. But hopefully that saves you some time. let me know if you have any questions on this. Note I only went to tues in the example, but hopefully you can figure out the rest of the days.
Ah, thanks for your interest and efforts, Tim! Unfortunately, I’m looking to have each day be it’s own board and then that board has 4 groups (3 of which are employee delivery schedules), so this is a templated board that I just need to be duplicated 5 times each week, given a name ie. “Monday, April 19, 2021” and then group these new BOARDS in a folder which would be called “Week of 04/19/2021”. Even if I could find a way to just properly automate these board creations with the appropriate names, and manually put them in a folder would be better than what I’m doing now.
@bhowell the only automated board creation can be done from a status change, which is step 4 in the process. if you search the automations center for ‘new board’ you should see it.
As far as the templated board you are able to create a board from the template and give it a name based on column names - I used the item.name which is the day of week and the date which if you follow the other automations should be the day of the week.
So basically by my automations there will be 5 items each week and each of those items will result in 1 board getting created - e.g. 5 boards per week with the right name and based off your template.
here is a screenshot of the board creation automation
Starting to try this now, but also wanted to ask before I get to far, are you saying also, that it should be possible to say “When this new board is automatically created it should have this board template” (and direct it to a different board that is saved as a template? Cause if this is the case, this and you are amazing! I’m going to mess around and see.
I’m trying to build my consulting practice for monday.com setup and optimization, if you have any other automations or things you’d like some help with feel free to schedule a consult and we can talk through any additional help you may need, or if you know of anyone else who needs help feel free to send them my way!
Awesome! Thanks so much man! I love messing around with this stuff too and have some new ideas that I may need some help implementing, so I may reach out!
Additionally, looking at the automations list you created, I started to follow in the same order of creation starting from top to bottom, but monday’s automations center stacks them from bottom to top…is there a way to rearrange them, so they “play” in order, or should I just be working backwards?
@bhowell
well, that’s kind of a funny story, basically the display order is determined by when the last automation was updated/created.
It doesn’t determine run order, there is not currently a way to set a ‘run order’ However if you set those automations up the way I have done in my screenshot then the order should be guaranteed, as each automation provides the output for the next automation based on step numbers.
Keep playing with it and I’m sure it will make more sense.
I hope I’m not pushing my luck, but I do have a couple of other questions on this.
So currently, I’m trying to get the newly (automatedly) created boards to have the name “Monday, April 26, 2021” and so forth, but it looks like the automation that’s creating the items on the Weekly Board Creator is somehow adding the date to the item name, ie. “Monday (Apr 22, 2021)”. So when I’m creating the boards based on the item name and adding the date from the date column, I’m getting “Monday (Apr 22, 2021), 2021-04-25, 2021” if I set up the new board name to “{pulse.status7}, {pulse.date4}, 2021”. So three questions:
Do you know why today’s date is being added to each new items’ name?
Is there a way to change the way that the “{pulse.date4}” is formatted; ie. spell out the full month and rearrange the date to Month Day, Year?
I’m going to try adjusting the “[pulse.status7}” which is the “Create Board” status column that is automatically populated when I select status from the little blue “+” to simply “{pulse.status}” (which is the weekday column) and see if this gets me closer to where I want to be.
I gotcha, yes, I have noticed that recurring created items have a date added to the names. This appears to be by default from monday (I have seen it for other automations). I don’t know if there is a way to disable that.
For #2 I tried doing a formula function to change the date format, but that is not supported. Perhaps you could accomplish this with an integromat or zapier integration. Also I’ve heard of this app General Caster :https://monday.com/marketplace/8
which may be able to cast the month/day/year to text columns and then you could add those to your board name. Might be more trouble than its worth though.
