Project management is not a secondary aspect of the business.
It is perhaps one of the most important business operations.
The benefits of project management tools extend beyond scheduling and collaboration.
Project Management tools help improve customer communication, risk management, process standardization, document sharing, and resource management.
These tools help reduce your team's workload as well.
An intuitive platform like monday reduces time consuming manual work.
And it is almost impossible to not mention project management and monday.com in the same sentence.
Since its launch in 2014, the Israel-based cloud-based project management platform has garnered the love and support of thousands of users across the world.
Despite its ease of use and beginner-friendly platform, some users may feel overwhelming to get the most out of monday.com.
This is where this post will come to your rescue.
In this article on how to use monday.com, I will walk you through different aspects of monday.com project management solution so you can learn how to use this powerful, project management platform.
A few things to note before we dive into details.
First, I will be using the free trial version of Monday.com’s Pro version.
This is the highest tier of monday project management solution.
Let’s begin starting with all the basics of monday.
In order to use the platform to manage projects, you would have to sign up.
Visit monday.com website and register for an account by clicking the “get started” button.
Make sure you have a free trial of the pro plan of monday (not the basic plan).
You can register using your email, Google, LinkedIn, or even a Slack account.
Input your name and choose a password.
You can also decide upon a name for your team on the platform.
Next, you will see a prompt about the usage type, team size, and business type.
I tried using a combination of these and found a negligible difference in the output.
Once you complete the registration process with monday, you will get a confirmation email for your free trial.
Do the needful and you should be all set to use monday.com.
You will get a unique URL that should read some like like this: companyname.monday.com
Logging into monday.com will take you to the main dashboard.
Here, you will see a few pop-ups to guide you through the platform.
I find these quite useful.
The Company has done a good job delivering a good user experience with useful pop-ups to manage projects.
However, if the pop-ups were enough, you would not need this in-depth guide on how to use monday.com!
Let’s start with creating an editorial calendar on monday.com, and discuss other aspects of the platform as we proceed.
Unlike most other project management tools, monday.com offers several more features for creating a board.
With monday, you can create multiple boards (and even private boards).
You can create a new board by clicking the “add” button and then clicking on the “New Board Option.”
You will see a pop-up here requesting you add a name for the Board, setting the privacy, and setting the aspects for managing the board.
For privacy, you get three options: main, private, and shareable.
For “what you’re managing in this board”, you can select one of these- items, budgets, employees, campaigns, leads, projects, creatives, clients, tasks, or custom.
You can change these later.
For the sake of this discussion, let’s go with “private.”
Once you click on “Create Board”, you will be greeted with a pop-up that says “welcome to your first private board”.
Hit the “Ok, got it” blue button, and you will see your board.
What’s next?
Now it is time to add groups to our Board.
Think of groups as the tasks you want to create for your Board.
Think of boards as buckets.
For instance, if you are into marketing, you can create groups such as content writing, Facebook ads, and SEO.
When I went to my Board, I saw 3 untitled groups there.
I renamed those.
If you want to add more, you can click on the blue button under your Board’s name that reads “New Item”.
This will create an untitled group above the previous ones.
If you want to move the new group down, you can just click on the three dots next to the group name, and click on ‘Move to”. Here you should see two options- Move to the board, and Move to the top.
Alternatively, you can just hover near the group name, and it will show you a “hand” icon to drag the group up or down.
Next, we need to learn how to add tasks to a group on monday.com.
A task is more like a To-do inside a group.
For example, for the content writing group, I want to create a task named “article research.”.
In order to do that, let’s either rename items 1, 2, or 3 (these are the default ones on the three default groups).
And if you have created a new group, you should see “add item”.
Click on that and you will see a side pop-up that should say “New Item”.
Click on that to rename it to the desired task.
In this case, I would name it “article research.”
This menu is where you can collapse a specific group or collapse all of them (great if you want to check a simplified list of articles, as in our case), as well as create a new group or move it to another board. You can also change a group’s color (handy for quick visual sorting) and, of course, rename the group.
Here, you should see three options- Updates, Files, and Activity Log.
When you click on “Updates”, it will show you a box with a prompt “write and update”, and a secondary text under the box saying “write updates via email.”
Let’s go with the first option.
When you click on it, you should see a WYSIWYG editor complete with a checklist option.
Think of this area as a general guideline or goal you want to detail about the specific task.
You can also add files, gif, emoji, and even mention someone on your team.
If you click on the second option next to Updates, i.e., Files, you will get the option to add a file and search for a file.
Lastly, we have the Activity Log tab that shows you a history of the activities for that specific task.
Almost forgot to mention.
Next to the task name, you will see two more options - A circle with a human outline and three dots.
When you click on the circle, you will get a pop-up to add team subscribers.
And when you click on the three dots, you will see these options- manage subscribers, email preference, export to Excel, copy item link, archive, and delete.
Now that we have set up groups, and also demonstrated how to set up tasks, let’s look into other aspects of monday.com.
Please note that you adding teammates to a group is not available as of writing this review post.
However, you have the option to add them to a task.
Step 1 is to add them to a board.
You can do this by clicking on the person outline with a plus sign on the bluish vertical sidebar on the left.
When you hover over it, it should say “invite team members”.
Clicking on that icon will show a popup that would read- invite to monday Work OS.
There, you will see an invite with an email option to invite the team member.
You have two options here.
One, you can invite the person to become a team member.
And two, you can add them as a “viewer.”
Now that you have added a team memver to your board, you can add them to a task.
Click on a group, and decide upon the task you want the team member to join.
Next to the task, you will see a column titled “Person” along with a circle with a human.
Click on the circle and add the person.
Another option to do this is by clicking on the Updates tab, and clicking on the circle on the top right.
If you want to remove a member from a task, click on the circle with their initials.
And then click on the cross (x) next to their name in the pop-up.
By default, you should see these columns moving left to right under each group- item, person, status, date, and “plus” sign.
All these columns (except the task) are movable horizontally.
Clicking on the Status column gives you four options: working on it, Stuck, Done, and a gray label.
Under that, you should see an “edit label” option.
Here, you can change the colors for all default labels and even add new labels.
Make sure you hit the “Apply” button at the bottom if you make any changes here.
The Date column appears third to the right of the task.
When you click on that column next to the task, you will see a pop-up that shows “today” and the month’s calendar.
You can choose a date here, and even add time by using the toggle underneath the calendar.
A cool thing I love about this popup is the smiley face at the top right corner.
Clicking on the icon opens up a dropdown popup with 15 icons such as check mark, cross mark, and question mark.
This is just one example of using time tracking in this PM software.
As I mentioned earlier, there is also a column next to the date that has a “+” sign.
When you click on this column, you will see a range of column options. For example, from here you can columns such as text, link, status, people, date, dropdown, country, numbers, label, and several more options.
You can create a new dashboard by clicking on the “Add” text under the Workspace sidebar (to the left).
You should see a pop-up suggesting you create the dashboard.
Select the desired name for your new dashboard, and choose the privacy (main or private).
The main option is for allowing the dashboard to be visible to everyone on the team.
And the “private” option is to create a dashboard for working privately, or with selected team members.
Next, click on the blue “create dashboard” button, and viola, you just created a new dashboard.
Once you are done, you will see the new dashboard with a text saying “Choose your first widget.”
Widgets are mini apps that help you manage your tasks on monday.com.
Some of the widgets you will see there include a battery, calendar, chart, workload, numbers, and Gantt.
You can also click the “Add widget” text next to the Boards to see a list of available options.
For this tutorial, let’s go with the Calendar widget.
Upon clicking the said widget, you should see a calendar populate under the new dashboard you just created.
You can click on any date on the calendar add a new item (or to-do), and customize the group, person, status, and date in the pop-up.
Monday.com shines in terms of its “views” functionality.
This feature comprises charts and other graphs for your groups and to-dos.
Using this, you can understand the what and when, and make changes on the go.
Adding views is relatively simple.
Head to the table view, and click on the “main table” button at the top.
Next to the Main Table, and Timeline, you should see a “+” icon.
Clicking on it should bring a dropdown with a list of options such as a table, dashboard, chart view, Kanban, Gantt charts, cards, form, Files Gallery, Apps; and “more views” at the bottom.
Click on “more views” and you will see more options.
I personally use the Kanban View, chart view, and Calendar View for most of my projects.
I love this feature of monday.com.
You can access this by clicking on the “Timeline” tab next to the “Main Table” under the Board.
This view shows you to-dos, project deadlines, and the assigned team members at a quick glance.
You can even export the details to Excel from here.
I have tried my best to cover the basic aspects of monday.com.
This project management tool is easy to learn and use.
Unlike other project management tools, monday.com is incredibly visual and customizable.
With its large number of use cases, monday.com has earned itself a positive reputation.
Project managers across both large and small businesses love this platform to manage repetitive tasks and other aspects of project management not just for marketing, but also for sales teams.
Take this project management software for a ride, and I am sure you would love its ease of use, and a wide array of features. Getting started with monday.com is relatively easy.
Besides, with the 14-day free trial, you have nothing to lose.