We keep EVERYTHING in our boards; meetings, schedules, tasks, projects, to-do lists, pipelines, KPIs, and even some personal things! We love having everything in one place, but sometimes it can get a little cluttered and overwhelming. That's why we compiled this guide with all of our best tips and tricks to help you keep your account organized!
Categorize your account
Workspaces
Workspaces are an excellent way to separate the work of different departments or teams. It's sort of like a big folder, holding related boards. Let's say our monday.com account is shared by the whole company. We can divide our account into Workspaces for each department, such as Finance, Marketing, IT, and Sales! Within each Workspace, different teams can work within their own boards and folders, while still having access to their department's boards! 🗃
As you can see, our company has several different Workspaces listed in the left panel of my screen.
In this example, most of our Workspaces represent a department in our company, but you're not limited to using these categories! You can choose to organize your Workspaces however is most comfortable and logical! Organize by project, by client, by office or client location, or by time period!
Folders
Under each separate workspace, teams can add Folders to group related boards together and organize work processes better. Folders add an extra layer of detail and organization and ensure that your account is always manageable for your teams. 📂
For example, our Marketing Department tackles several different types of projects at once! We've created one Workspace for the whole Marketing team, but we've separated their projects into folders, as you can see in the image below. Each folder holds all boards relevant to the respective project.
Tidy your left pane
Now that we have so many different Workspaces and folders, our left pane has begun to look a little cluttered. A great tip to make everything a little easier on the eyes is to collapse your folders and Workspaces!
To collapse a Workspace, just click on the little downward-facing arrow to the left of your Workspace's name to turn the arrow to face right!
Collapse a folder by clicking the open folder icon 📂, turning it into a closed folder icon! 📁
If you want to close everything at once, you can click the 3 dot menu to the right of "Workspaces" and select 'Collapse all folders'. This will collapse all of the folders within your Workspaces, but you'll have to collapse your Workspaces manually if you wish!
Take a look at the image below to see how much neater and easier on the eyes your account is with everything in the left pane collapsed!
Find what you're looking for
Sometimes we know exactly what we're looking for but we just can't seem to find it! Instead of checking every board and searching through your whole account every time you need to find something, check out these shortcuts to help you get there quicker! 🔍
Favorites
Do you have certain boards and dashboards that you use often and are critical to your workflow? The Favorites setting will enable to select your preferred and most used boards and have them appear at the top of your left pane for quick, easy access! ⭐️
To add a board to your Favorites, click the grey star next to the board's name!
When you click the star, it turns yellow, like in the image below! ⭐️
Now, you can see all of your favorite boards together in your left pane right above your Workspaces so you can always find them!
Search Everything
Search Everything allows you to search for anything across all of your boards! Want to filter which tasks are 'Stuck' across all of your boards? You can! Keen to check how much work your colleague has going on? Search their name! Want to see what you’ve got to do this week? Search for which items you’ve been assigned to, and then filter by date! 🔍
To get there, just click the little magnifying glass icon above your profile picture on the left pane.
From the Search Everything field, you can search for a specific update, file, tag, and more!
Filtering your boards list
Narrow down how many boards you see in your left pane by using the "Filter boards" search bar! head over to the search bar under "Workspaces" and type in the name of the board you're looking for or a group of boards with similar topics. If I type "Rebranding", we'll get a list of all of the boards with the word "Rebranding" in the title - creating a list of all of the boards related to our Rebranding project! In the example below, we typed the name of one of our boards so that we can see it displayed in the left panel.
You can filter the boards that you want to see in your left pane by hovering over the "Filter boards" search bar and clicking the tornado icon. 🌪From here, you can select which types of boards you'd like to see displayed as well as the option to only see the boards you're subscribed to!
Boltswitch
Do you find that you often switch between a few boards while you're working? We do too, which is why we love using the Boltswitch to seamlessly move between our boards! Instead of endlessly scrolling through your folders to find the board you're looking for, the Boltswitch allows you to easily search and navigate from one board to another.
To launch the Boltswitch, hover over the "Filter boards" search bar, and click the lightning bolt icon that appears. ⚡️
Type the name of your desired board to switch between boards as fast as lightning! You can even use this window to search for folders!
Clean up whatever you don't need
Are you still hanging on to old items and boards long after they're in use just in case you'll need the information in the future? If so, you would love the archive feature! Instead of keeping old information around, archive it to clean up your list of boards or the amount of items on your boards with the option to restore it if you ever need it! 🗄
Archive items and boards
- Archive a board
You can archive a board by clicking the 3 dot menu at the top right corner of the board, clicking 'Delete/Archive board', and selecting 'Archive board'. You can always delete a board if you're sure that you don't need it anymore, but we prefer to archive so that we have the option to restore it if we want!
If you ever want to restore the item or board that you archived, follow the easy steps in this article.
- Archive an item
You can archive an item by clicking the arrow to the left of the item and clicking 'Archive'.
If you ever want to restore the item that you archived, follow the simple steps in this article.
- Archive automatically
You can even archive your items using Automations like this one:
- Archive your Automations
If you have an Automation that you don't want to use actively, but you don't want to get rid of it altogether, you can turn it off! When an Automation is turned off, it stays in your list of Automations on your board so that you can switch it back on again if you ever want to reactivate it!
Unsubscribe from boards
Do you feel like you're receiving too many inbox updates? One way to narrow them down is to unsubscribe from boards you don't need to see updates from!
Click on the people icon to open up a list of all board members and then click the 'x' next to your name to unsubscribe! Now, you will no longer receive inbox updates from this board!
Narrow down your notifications
Sometimes, we log into our account and feel bombarded by lots of bell notifications and drowned in our monday.com emails! Check out these solutions to narrow down your notifications so that you only see the things you need to see! 🔕
Manage your notifications
To change the settings of your notifications, click your profile picture and then click 'My profile'.
Select the 'Notifications' tab, and you will see a list of all possible email notifications, including daily updates. You can select whatever email notifications you want to receive! I have no email notifications selected for my account because I already get notified for everything I need within the platform, so there's no need for me to check my emails as well. ✉️
From this tab, I can also enable or disable my desktop notifications! If I'm signed in to my account on my mobile, this button will allow me to receive push notifications on my mobile!
Manage your Inbox
Your Inbox is where you'll see all of the updates occurring across the boards you're subscribed to. We've got a few tips to help you manage the amount of updates you need to worry about.
- Filter by board
If you can't unsubscribe from a certain board, but find that you are receiving too many Inbox updates that you don't need to read, check out this cool tip! Go to your "Inbox Updates" under your Inbox View Options, and you'll see "Filter by Board" options below with a list of all of the boards you have updates from. Select a board to see only updates from that board. At the top right of your Inbox, you'll see an option to "Close All" updates. Click this, and you will close all of the updates from this board without having to go through each of them!
- I was mentioned
If you're short on time and just want to check the most important updates, you can view your Inbox by "I was mentioned". This way, you'll narrow down the content to updates that are directly relevant to your or your team! You can use this view to focus on the most relevant things first and tackle the rest when you have a little more time.
- Bookmark Updates
Have a few minutes to clean up your Inbox, but don't have time to deal with each one that requires action? You can bookmark your update to get to it quickly later! Just click the arrow at the top right corner of your update, and select 'Bookmark'.
When you head to "Bookmarked Updates" under your Inbox View Options on the right pane, you'll see a list of all of the updates you've bookmarked for later!
Unfollowing updates
If you've recently liked or replied to an update, you'll receive bell notifications for all future replies to this update! If you don't want to receive any more notifications about this update, just click the arrow at the top right corner of the update and select 'Unfollow conversation'.
Tips and Suggestions
Phew! It feels GREAT to have cleaned up our account a little, but we think we can take this one step further! 🧼Check out these cool tips and tricks we've compiled to help you use our awesome features to streamline your account even more!
Dashboards
Dashboards are a great way to display the most important highlights across several boards in just one place. Instead of checking progress and achievements across all of your boards, you can quickly glance at a Dashboard to get a good overview of everything you want to see! There are currently over 40 available Widgets and Apps to help you understand project progress, track budgets, estimate teammates' workloads and much more! Mix and match any combination of Widgets and Apps to keep you and your team motivated and focused on high-level goals and boost productivity!
The Marketing Dashboard below gives an overview of all of our team's Marketing boards! It features:
- Calendar Widget to show all upcoming dates and deadlines in a glance
- Battery Widget to display an overview of the progress across all projects
- Chart Widget to show the working status of each Marketing campaign
- Timeline Widget to visualize the span of each project across the upcoming weeks
- Numbers Widget to track how much our team has spent from our budget so far
- Chart Widget to show the balance between the platforms for each Marketing campaign
- Table Widget to display important groups across several boards in just one view
- Quote of the Day Widget for a little daily inspiration!
Automations
We know you're on top of your tasks, but sometimes things still manage to slip through the cracks. Use Automations to make sure nothing gets by you again! Automations were designed to perform certain actions for you or notify you when something needs your attention! They can cut down on manual actions and just simplify your life a little bit!
For example, since our board is organized by Months with each group representing a different month, we can use the following Automation to create a new group every month:
The Automation below is used for a board we have in which each group represents a different phase in our ongoing project! Instead of manually moving around our items from group to group (and potentially forgetting to do so), we've added Automations to move them for us whenever a status changes!
The Automation below uses data from the Date Column and Status Column to make sure that the item's status is set to "Completed" by the date specified. If it's not, another team member or manager is notified to help get to the root of the problem and move things along!
There are so many cool Automations available that will smooth out your workflow and improve communication within your team. Check out this article to become an Automation pro!
My Week
My Week is a great way for you to see everything you and your team need to accomplish this week, next week, or even what is overdue. It works by collecting all the tasks across your monday.com account that are due this week. 📆
Get there by clicking the calendar icon right above your profile picture.
From My Week, you can see all the tasks you have to do today, and for the rest of the week with links to the board they're found in. Keep an eye on My Week periodically to make sure you never drop the ball on your tasks!
Have any questions about the awesome features we covered in this article? Reach out to us at Customer Success 24/7! Send an email to [email protected] :)
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