6 min read

Feature

Subitems provide your board with a deeper structure by letting you add an extra layer of information within the items on your board! You can use them to better support your workflow or enable more complex workflows on a single board.

Utilizing subitems will give you the low-level item detail that you are looking for when breaking down your work for a more granular view. 🙌

How to create subitems

To create a subitem, simply click on the arrow located on the left of your item, as shown below: 

Copy columns from parent items

When adding subitems to your board, you may want to quickly add some (or all!) of the same column types that you have from your parent items to your subitems. To easily achieve this, we've added the ability to copy the columns of your choice from your parent item, directly to your subitems. 🙌

To copy columns from your parent item to your subitems, start by opening up a subitem on your board. Next, click on the plus sign to the right of your final subitem column and then click on "Copy parent columns", as shown below.

It's now time to select the relevant columns that you want to copy to your subitems! Simply check the box next to the columns that you'd like to add and then click on "Copy columns".

How to expand and collapse subitems

You can expand and collapse your subitems either by clicking on the small arrow to the left of the item name or by clicking on the number displaying the number of subitems within an item.

You can also expand or collapse all subitems by clicking the three-dot menu beside the name of any item in your board and selecting either "Collapse all items" or "Expand all items". 

Duplicating and creating standardized subitems 

To duplicate a subitem, select it on the left side and press "Duplicate" from the resulting menu at the bottom of the screen.

When duplicating an item or a group or board of items that contains subitems, the subitems will also duplicate. 🙌

Additionally, you're looking to create a standardized workflow where the same set of subitems is duplicated or created over and over again, there are a few options to go about this! You can:

• Use an automation to instantly create new subitems on your board. For example, if you'd like to have three of the same subitems created every time an item is added to your board, you can use the recipe "When an item is created, then create a subitem, and then create a subitem, and then create a subitem".

• Alternatively, you can also manually select the necessary subitems, duplicate them, and then move them to the desired item.
  

Deleting subitems

If you find a subitem is no longer relevant or want to remove it from your board, you can easily delete that subitem. Select the subitem via the check box to the left of the subitem. Once selected, a menu bar will appear at the bottom of your screen. From the menu bar, select "Delete". 

Moving subitems between items

To move subitems between other parent items on your board, simply hover over the left of the subitem and select it. Once the subitem(s) are selected, select 'Move to' in the menu that appears at the bottom of the screen and select the item that you'd like to move it to.

You can also select multiple subitems from different parent items to move between items! Simply select the subitems from underneath the various parent items and select "Move to" from the menu bar, and choose which new parent item to move those subitems to. 

Move items with subitems to another board

To move items with subitems to another board, simply select the item(s) you want to move, press "Move to board", and select the board of your choice.

From there, you'll see the following screen pop up, where you can "map out" the parent and subitem columns according to those on the destination board. Keep in mind, if there is no matching subitem column on the destination board (as shown in the "File" column in the GIF below), that column's data will not transfer over, unless you choose to "Add as a new column".

Once you press the blue button to move the information, you should be all set! If there are any columns that do not match those of the destination board, you will be able to choose to go back to the column mapping or to move items anyway: 

Convert subitem to item (and vice versa!)

The moment that you've been waiting for has arrived; you can now convert subitems into parent items and vice versa, too! Let's see how you can perform each of these actions below.

• Convert subitem to item

To convert a subitem to an item on your board, select it from the left side and click "Convert" in the bottom pane that appears, or through the subitem menu.

From there, you'll be able to "map out" the column values according to the parent items on your board. If your parent items have more than one of the same column (as we have multiple Status Columns in the example below), you can choose which one it will be converted to.

• Convert item to subitem

Similar to the conversion shown above, to convert an item to a subitem, you can start by selecting the given item on the left side and clicking "Convert" at the bottom of the screen or through the item menu. Doing so will prompt you to choose the parent item which the converted subitem will fall under, as so: 

After selecting the parent item to which the converted subitem will belong, you can map out the column values according to the subitem column types on your board.

Get a visual overview of subitem data

To get a summary of your subitem data directly on the parent item, you can do so by using the "rollup" feature! In the subitems, open the desired column settings you want to reflect on the parent item, and select "Show Summary on Parent Item".

You can summarize many different subitem columns on the parent item, such as the Tags Column, Time Tracking, Date, Numbers, and more, to get a clear overview of your subitems in one place: 

Subitems activity log

Looking to track the actions that you and your team performed on a board's subitems? We created an Activity Log for your subitems for this exact purpose!

To access the subitems Activity Log, simply click on a subitem to open it up and then select "Activity Log". Here, you'll find an ongoing list of the actions performed on that given subitem. 🙌

Subitems in the Dashboards

In terms of viewing subitem information on the Dashboards, at this time, the Gantt, Timeline, Workload, Battery, Number & Calendar widgets, as well as the files from subitems in the Files View, support subitems. Keep your eye out for more subitem widget support in the future!