What can we help you with?

The Mirror Column

 

 

Need to store the same information in multiple places across your account? Want to update separate columns without the hassle of doing double the work? By connecting your boards and mirroring information from one (or more!) boards to another, you can easily make changes to any one board and the changes will be reflected in the other board(s) as well.

Increase visibility and centralize all important information with the Mirror Column! 

 

Before starting

In order to add the Mirror Column, you'll need to have the Connect Boards Column. The Connect Boards Column will link the items in your boards together, while the Mirror Column will reflect information from one (or more) boards to another creating more visibility. 

 

Adding the Mirror Column

To add the Mirror Column, go to the Columns Center and search for "Mirror" in the search bar and press to add it to your board:

2.png

 

After adding the Mirror Column, you will immediately be prompted to add a Connect Boards Column and to create a link to one or more other boards. To complete the set up, click on the blue "Connect" button.

BC- Connect Mirror Column.png

Clicking on this button will automatically create a new Connect Boards Column on the current board that you are on. By pressing the blue "Select boards" button, you will be prompted to select one or more boards to create a two-way connection with.

BC- Select board for connect boards.png

There, you'll need to select the exact board(s) you'd like to connect to and then link each item from the connected board(s) to its respective item on the current board.

BC-Connect boards select linked items (1).gif

 

Note: To learn more about setting up the Connect Boards Column, check out this article.

 

Once you've completed linking the board(s) and items through the Connect Boards Column, it's time to select which column type you'd like to display from the boards that you've connected. To do this, click into the Mirror Column settings and select the column of your choice from the drop down arrow under one of the connected boards.

BC-Select column for mirror column.gif

 

Tip: You can display many different columns from one board to another by adding in multiple Mirror columns!

 

Once you've selected the column and linked the items on the Connect Boards Column, the mirrored information will automatically populate and will be reflected into your board as so: 

BC-See data for mirror column.gif

 

Now you can make sure that your connected columns are fully synced at all times! Every time that you make a change to one of the cells in the mirror column, it will reflect on the connected board(s) as well, and vice versa. 🙌

Note: If you are mirroring from a Private/Shareable Board, or one with Column Viewing Permissions, only those who have access to the original data being mirrored will be able to view it here, too.

 

While it is not possible to mirror the updates section, you can easily toggle between boards to access any updates on an item. To view the update section on an item from a connected board, click on that item in the Mirror Column and select the "comment" icon at the top of the item card. You will be redirected to the update section linked to that item. 

BC-Connect boards discussion section.gif

 

Customize your Mirror Column

When mirroring a column you can customize the way that it is displayed on the board where it will be mirrored. For example, when selecting the Status Column to mirror, you can customize the column summary at the bottom of the column to show "All labels" or only "What's Done". 

BC- Mirror label option.png

Alternatively, if you are mirroring a Numbers column, you can determine exactly how you'd like the reflected numbers to be displayed - as the sum, average, minimum value etc. 

BC- Mirror numbers options.png

Each column will have its own customization options! Make sure to check them out. 🙌 

 

Editing your Mirror Column

If at any point you'd like to change the mirrored column to display a different column type, you can do that directly from the column settings! Click on the small arrow next to the column header, then "Column settings" to perform this change.

BC-Edit mirror column.gif

Mirror multiple items from the same board

The Connect boards column allows you the option to link up multiple items from the connected board to one item on the current board (think of multiple tasks relating to one project!). Once multiple items are linked, the 'roll-up' feature provides an easy, clean way to view the multiple reflected items. It does this by aggregating the data mirrored from several items of one board onto another board. 

For example, if you have multiple items connected and you mirror over the Status Column, you'll get an aggregated view of all those statuses as shown below:

BC- Mirror multiple statuses.png

 

Do note, when multiple items are connected from a Status Column within the Mirror Column, the mirror will only display the color(s) of the connected statuses, and no label text. However, if you hover over the connected statuses, you'll see what percentage of the connected items contain that status as well as the full label! You can also click on any one of the sections to dive deeper into the items connected there.

BC-Mirror column data closer look.gif

 

As a reminder, you can customize what kind of column summary you'd like to see from a mirrored Status column, whether it's "All labels" or only "What's Done" from the Column Settings!

 

Note: If you delete or archive a board that has connections to other boards via the Connect Boards Column, all of its related connections will be removed and therefore will not be shown within a linked Mirror Column.

 

 

Multi-board mirroring

Do you have information from multiple different boards that you'd like to sync and consolidate all into one board? Are you looking to easily get an overview of your data from a few separate workflows? With our brand new multi-board mirror feature, you can do just that!

In order to mirror information from multiple boards into one Mirror Column, you must first connect multiple boards and link the relevant items through the Connect Boards Column. Once this has been completed, you will see a nice aggregated view of all the data from the connected column in the boards that you selected!

BC- Multiple mirror columns.png

 

Tip: To learn more in depth about mirroring information from multiple boards in one place, check out this article!

 

Customizing multi-board mirrored information

Through the Mirror Column settings, you can define which column type will be mirrored over from the connected boards. It is important to note that you must mirror the same column type from each of the connected boards per mirror column (e.g. only Status columns, Numbers columns, Date columns, etc.).

If you have multiple different columns of that same type per board, you can select which exact column you want to mirror over. As an example, in the connected boards below, we have two different Status columns on each board (one named "Status" and the other named "Priority") so we can choose either of these to be mirrored over and it won't affect the mirrored columns of the other connected boards:

Copy of BC-Mirror column multi label .gif

 

On the other hand, if you change the column type that is being mirrored from one of your boards (e.g. changing the Status column to a People column as below), it will automatically adjust the other boards to display that same column type: 

BC-Mirror column column alignment .gif

 

Mirroring other Mirror Columns

If you're looking to mirror a Mirror Column from a different board onto one of your boards (as shown in the GIF below), there is a limitation of how many subsequent times this can be done. This limitation is in place to help prevent any potential performance or data reliability issues that may be caused by mirroring too many levels of Mirror Columns.

BC-Mirror a mirror column  .gif

 

At the moment, you are only able to mirror other Mirror Columns subsequently up to two times. This meaning, if you are looking to mirror a Mirror Column from "board 1" onto "board 2" and then mirror a Mirror Column from "board 2" onto "board 3", it will work properly. However, if you try to add a third level of this by mirroring a Mirror Column from "board 3" onto "board 4", it will not work.

 

Group_1_-_2022-12-22T114446.441.png

 

Note: If you have any questions or feedback for our team about mirroring more than three levels of Mirror Columns, please fill out this form

 

Use Cases

The Mirror column is an excellent way to link information from one (or more!) boards to another to optimize your workflow. Not only can you update information in one board and have it automatically update information in another, but it can also help to add more visibility between departments in your organization. We've added a few examples below to help you get started!

  • Use Case #1: High-Level and Low-Level Boards using multi-board mirror

Let's say you manage a few projects each on their own board. In order to get a clear overview of where each low-level project stands, you use a "High-level Board'. To view aggregated data from all three boards, you can simply mirror information from all of the low-level project boards directly onto your high-level board so that all stakeholders can have a quick and easy overview of exactly what's going on.

BC- High Level Overview.png

Each item on our high-level board represents a different project which is managed on its own separate board. Therefore, to easily see a summary of relevant information from each board, we first connected all three boards through the Connect Boards column and then linked the respective items for each project.

In our case, we linked all "Better Me Association- Low Level" items to the Better Me Association item on the high-level board, all "Clean Living Campaign- Low Level" items to the Clean Living Campaign item on the high-level board, etc:

BC-High Level Connect Boards .gif

Thanks to this set up, we're able to easily display the relevant columns of data from all of our project boards in one place! Below, we're mirroring the aggregated statuses, timelines and costs of all tasks from the three low-level boards to the specific project that it relates to on the high-level board: 

BC- High Level Mirror Overview.png

Keep in mind, you can choose to mirror the Files Column, People column or any other column that will be insightful for you!

Tip: Check out this article to learn more about setting up a "High-level board"!

 

  • Use Case #2: Link your Projects board to your Clients 

The Mirror Column is useful if you are working with many clients on different projects and would like to easily keep track of and refer back to the client's details at all times. Let's say you have a Client's board where you store all information about your clients (i.e. their contact details, payments and more). Then, you have your Projects board where you manage all your ongoing projects at any given time.

With the Mirror column, you can make sure your projects are always tied to their respective clients and that you have all important information on hand! We've added two Mirror columns to reflect the client's email address as well as Payments until now.

BC- Mirror Column Use Case 2.png

There you have it! Start optimizing your workflows with the Mirror column!

 

 

If you have any questions, please reach out to our team right here. We’re available 24/7 and happy to help.