5 min read

Guide

We love to help you stay organized at monday.com, especially when it comes to managing projects. With monday projects, you have an entire project management office built into your work OS in one click! The Portfolio Management board is the main hub of monday projects and allows you to oversee your work during each phase of the project cycle. Stay on top of your projects at all times using our designated Portfolio Management board. 😊

Easily see the big picture

When managing projects, it's ideal to have a designated, centralized hub to easily view project information at a glance. While individual project boards show the finer details of their respective projects, the Portfolio Management board allows you to see the big picture in one, high-level view. Instantly connect budgets, projected and actual timelines, costs, risks, and project progress to identify trends, successes, and potential shortcomings.

Oversee your projects

Let's see how this high-level board is structured! The Portfolio Management board is divided into groups that showcase the phase of each project and columns that display important data. Your upcoming projects are seen first followed by your active and completed projects:

Add upcoming projects

Once the status of a project is marked as "Approved" in the Project Approvals board, it will automatically move to the Portfolio Management board thanks to automations! Below is a customized automation found in your Project Approvals board:

Key automations

Our specialized automations add fluidity to your workflow and makes monday projects come to life! A key feature is the ability to create a new individual board for every project that becomes active. We have a specialized, ready-made template for your project boards as well as automations included in the Portfolio Management board that will give you the structure you need to manage any project. The first step is to save the Project Template board for future use.

See how to save the Project Template board as a template

Select "Project Template" within the Templates folder.
Choose the three dot menu in the upper right hand corner of the board and select "More actions."
Select "Save as a template"
Confirm by clicking "Create a template" in the pop-up window

Once a project is designated as "In Progress" and ready to be worked on, there is an automation set so a new individual project board is created (from our template) and the owner (referred to as PM here) is notified:

Note: While this automation is already found in your PM board, it is necessary to update it once the project template board is saved so new project boards are created correctly.

See how to update the automation here

Update the automation and click on "new board"
Choose "Project Template" as the board template
Type the board name as "Project" and click the blue "+" sign to select "Item name" (your board name will appear as Project {pulse.name})
Click on "Advanced" to access advanced settings
Select your preferred workspace
Select "Projects" folder

Additionally, projects in the Portfolio Management board move groups easily when the status is changed. Below you can see automations that move items to the "Completed Projects" group when the status changes to "Completed" and to the "Active Projects" group when the status changes to "In Progress."

Connect projects to your portfolio

Our connecting boards feature is the perfect way to use transparency to bring your workflow to the next level. Our Connect Boards Column allows your individual project boards to be connected to your Portfolio Management board. All information within the project board will be reflected in your PM board.

You might be wondering how new items added to your project boards will be reflected in your PM board. We have the option to link all new items created to your PM board, so you don't have to worry about new information being lost among the boards.

See how to link new items

When in the Main Table view of your individual project board, click on the last item located in your toolbar called "Item default value"
A pop-up window "Default values for new Activity" will appear
Scroll down and click on the "+" box next to "link to Portfolio Management"
Choose the project under "Active Projects"
Click "Save changes" in the original pop-up window

Gone are the days of extra manual work that slows down your workflow. Now any current and new items created in this board will be linked automatically to your Portfolio Management board. 👌

See everything in one place

It's super easy to keep track of everything now that your individual project boards are connected to your Portfolio Management board! As our individual project boards are connected to our PM board, we have several Mirror columns that display valuable data from our project boards and give a high-level oversight into the state of the project.

Check out our most useful mirror columns

Project Progress - breaks down the activity statuses within each project into percentages of what is yet to be completed, what is being worked on, and future steps
Project Baseline - shows the target schedule of the project
Project Timeline - shows the timeframe in which the project must be completed
Planned & Actual effort - gives insight into the projected amount of hours the project was planned to be finished in and the actual amount of hours it was completed in
Costs - shows the total amount of money spent for the project

Tip: There are other columns in the PM board that highlight project risks mirrored from our Risk Management board. Be sure to check them out!

There you have it! Initiate, plan, and execute your projects with ease using monday projects. The Portfolio Management board acts as the organized hub you need for all your projects at any time so your team can remain focused and achieve their goals. 🎉

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