Hello everyone. Welcome to this webinar concerning how to use roll up multiple boards for project management. My name is Julia and I am the CSM team lead here at Omnitas Consulting. And we are using roll up multiple boards a lot. So I'm very happy to be able to show this for you today. Let me start with sharing my screen, and please don't hesitate to ask any questions in the chat and I will respond to them as soon as possible. Give me a second. I'll just share my screen here. It's always difficult when using another tool then you're used to. But here we go. Let me share this window here. Super. Okay, so let's dig into it. Roll up multiple boards is an application that helps us to use monday.com in a different way than we can do natively. Usually when we create a hierarchy in monday.com we use a high-level board and multiple low level boards. However, we need to use something called Connect Boards column to be able to create that connection between them. When using roll up multiple boards, we can, instead of using connected board columns, which only connects an item to an item, we can connect the entire board to an item. So let me show you the purpose of that. We do have some limitations in monday.com for now, which allows us to link 10,000 items to one board. And this is going to change very shortly and we will be able to connect much more. But this is still something different from that. So let me show you the hierarchy of the boards that I have here. This board is working as a project overview, which means that one item here is a board, sorry a project. So we will work with Project Delta for this use case. Then I also have a low level board where I handle all the tasks that I have concerning this project. So in the overview, we will be able to take a look at all the projects, see the health. We want to have a quick glance over how things are going. And in the low level board, we will be able to execute the tasks and that will be our day to day workplace. So let me start by showing you where you find the application. In app marketplace, you have a lot of great applications that you can use, and here you simply search for roll up and see if that's enough. Yeah. Roll up my multiple boards by excellent team. So this is how easy you add it. You will be able to set some permissions. I already installed it here, but you will be able to set some permissions if it's going to work on multiple workspaces or only a specific workspace. And, you need to confirm some of the things that the application should be able to do in your account. There is a lot of documentation on the website that you can take a look at as well, if you want to learn more about that. Something that is good to know about roll up multiple boards is that it only supports one master board if you buy one license. So this project overview here is what we call a master board. This is where we set up all the integration recipes. And this is where we get the aggregation to. So one license is one master board That is good to know. Okay. So this project overview here, what really want to be able to see here is a quick glance over how is our project going. Let's start in the main table. The different columns that I have chosen here is best practice columns. Who's the project lead? What is the status of the project? And we want to see the timeline. And the progress, health, budget and spend. You can see that some of my columns has this little lock on it. That means that that is a monday.com native functionality. That means that only the board owners will be able to actually edit this column. This is really important when working with RMB because since the application will aggregate the information to the columns, we don't want anyone to overwrite those columns. So we don't want everyone, anyone to go in here and add the progress. We want the application to be able to do that itself. Scrolling a bit to the right here. I have added more columns that are concerning three different phases of the project. This is to show you the power in creating filters with RMB, and we will dig into that more later. First, I want to show you another native functionality in monday.com that is really good when working with these kinds of boards. We don't want the board to be too linear. We don't want to scroll to the left and right too much. That's why we can change to different views where we can hide some columns. So in this view, I actually hid the columns concerning the different phases. If I click on the product page here. I will be able to create an item card where I choose from the columns that I have in the board. What columns do I want to have visible here? Since I hid some of the columns in the main view, I added them here instead so that you will be able to see how is the actual health, how is the progress, etc.. Okay in the low level board. Where I had my tasks. I have a lead column. Who is the lead of this task? Status, a deadline, a spend, which we will talk about a bit more later. And task projects and delays. As you can see here in the board description, I put RMB with caps in hard brackets and I also made this board a template. And this is needed. Those two actions are needed to be able to reach this. A low level board from RMB and create recipes on that specific board. So let's dig into the actual functionality here. As you can see, I didn't mention these two columns before. This is my trigger to create a low level board. That will be connected to only this specific project. For now, I only have one templates that I'm working from. This can be multiple templates, so you can have a list of different templates here. And you will be able to create recipes on the different templates. Let's click on it here. So template A and what will happen now is that RMB creates a monthly board based on that template that I just showed you. And we will be able to work from that board and automatically have the aggregation up to this view here. As you can see, some of the columns already started to aggregate here. We have the progress which says that 0% is done. We have the health that says that this project is on track and we have the spend that says zero for now, since we didn't add anything yet. So in this view here I will just add a timeline. This project will continue throughout April and I will have a budget of $100, for example. As you can see here as well. We do have this. I just want to see if I can change the layout here a bit, since I was working from a bigger screen before. There we go. We see that also the progress and the health of the different phases was added here. I didn't create a recipe for phase three yet. We're going to do it together. So that's why this is blank for now. Okay, so another thing that is great about RMB is that I can easily find my low level board by just clicking the link that I got here. So I'm clicking it and I will come in directly to the project plan that I created. As you can see here, the naming is Project Delta which is dynamic. Since that was the project name and then project plan. That is something that I can decide myself and what the name should be. So let me let us take a look at the recipes that we have here. And go to the creation recipe. This is also a good reminder to really add descriptions on your recipes, because it's so much easier to search words. Now, since this is a demo, I didn't do it as properly as I could. Okay, so here we go. This is the creation recipe. So this is where we always start. We want to tell RMB this is the template or the templates that we want to be working with. So let's take a look. When project plan. This is a underlined word, which means that it's something that I need to, uh, to actively. Choose here. So when the column, the status column called Project Plan changes to template A, then create a detailed board and recalculate on Create and update. Place the link to the detailed board in link to plan. That is also a column that we created a link column. And specify the detailed board configuration. So this is where we choose. And which template are we using for this specific recipe? We decide that board names that we just talked about. If we click here, we will be able to choose from dynamic fields. So this is all the columns that we have in the board. So item name is in this case Project Delta. And then I just wrote Project Plan. We can decide which type of board this should be. And we can also make more advanced changes to say which workspace should support land in and which folder. You can also choose board owners or board subscribers. And this is really important if you're working with private or shareable boards, where people actually need a invite to be able to collaborate with. Okay, great. So that was the project plan column and the link to plan column. When it comes to the progress. Let me show you the recipe of that as well. I see that some of the participants can't hear me. I hope that it's, uh, just an issue. On one end. I can see that another person can hear me. So if you have any issues, um, please write in the chat so I can make any changes here for my end. All right, so let's dig into the actual progress. And let me find the correct recipe here. This is the one I'm looking for. So there is a lot of useful automations for this application. We will scroll through them in a minute, but this is what we can use when we want to track the progress. So in my low level board, I have a status column that says is it done, am I working on it, etc. we will take a look soon. And now in this recipe I want to watch that status. So I click on this underline here and I get to choose which status is it that I want to use. It's this one. It's the product plan template and it's the status. In the connected board and aggregate data board items to Project progress. So this is the column that I have in this board, the high level board displaying the. And then I get to choose from that status column in my low level board. Which label do I want to work from? So it's the done column since we want to measure progress. And then I get to choose which format do I want to view this in? Is it percentage or is it x of y for example? And then filter items by. And since I don't want to apply a filter to this one, I just choose the configured items filter. So let's take a look at how this is working. We go to Project Delta. Let's say that I am done with the entire phase one and maybe two in phase two. When I go back to my project overview here, you see that it automatically changed to say that, okay, I am 50% done. 50% of all the items that I have in my low level board are marked as done. You can also see that it's still on track. There are no delays, and if I take a look at my phases here. 100% of the progress in phase one is marked as done. And 50% in phase two. So let me show you how I could separate those two phases. Let's go in here. To be able to work with filters in RMB. You need either a status column or a drop down column. In this case, I use the status column because I only want one choice on each item. So for the entire phase one, I marked them as one here. For the entire phase two. I marked them as two, and for phase three I marked them as three. So now I can create filters on these status columns here. So let's take a look. We are still working with progress. So let me jump down to the progress one. Here we go. It's exactly the same recipe as the previous one. However, here we define the actual filter. As you can see here, I get a list of filters. And for this specific case I want phase one. The filters that we get in here are not something that is pre-populated. You actually need to create each filter one by one to be able to use them here. So let me show you how that's done. we're going to jump to the creation of filters. I think they might be in the bottom. Yeah. Okay. So let's take a look at this one. Create filter by matching. Then I get to choose the template again and the actual status that I want to measure. So the status that I wanted to use here is the one called phase to this CSV list. And this is super simple. You just add what does the label say that you want to filter on in this specific filter recipe? So for this case, when I'm using filter for phase one, I just write one here because that was the label that I used in that specific status. Name the filter. I'm naming it phase one here. For referencing this in the watch column recipes. So that's how you create the different filters. I have done this for phase one, phase two and phase three. Note that I don't have to create any filters for the one that, just need to read the entire board. Then you just choose Configure Item filter. So this filter allows me to make all these recipes that I have for the entire board for the specific ones. concerning the different phases. Great. I want to show you the project health here as well. And I have, pre-populated the recipes for almost everything for this short demo, but I want to create the filter. Filter, for phase three, the project health that together with you. So as you can see here. These two are already being populated, but this one is still blank. And that's because I didn't create that yet. So let's go back to the integrations that we have here. And we want to take a look at the filters. And we have one already done for phase three. So we don't need to create a filter that is already done since before. So now we want to jump in and create that Rag status recipe. So if we just scroll through this list of different recipes that we can use with roll up multiple boards, it's a lot. And it's really fun to be able to be creative here. Using the filter for different phases could also be used in a completely different way. Maybe you have a specific tasks in the low level board that you want to highlight in a specific way. Then you can create the filter on that, and instead of using progress in the recipe that I showed you before, you can use that as just count how many tasks do I have that has this highlight status on it? And so it's really something that you can play around with here. I took a look at the questions here and I see that I have two questions. So sorry about that. I didn't look at my second screen. And so we have a question here. Do you know where the limitation of 10k connected items on a board will stop to exist. I'm asking if you know of an estimation date for this change. Okay. So this is a tricky question. monday.com is really focusing on this this year. And that limitation will be lifted in the near future. However, it's the same as the most of the things with monday.com. It's a process and they will start to roll it out to specific accounts first. So I'm not sure exactly when it will be rolled out to your account, but I know that it's something that is happening in the near future at least. It's their main focus at the moment. And then we have another one. Is there a limitation on the number of projects we can have on a high level board for RMB? That is a great question. For example, what if you have 10k projects? On the high level project. Will RMB be able to cope with so many projects? And that's a good question. I haven't seen any limitations there. And the limitation we have is monday.com native limitations saying that you can only have 20,000 items on a board on an enterprise tier. I don't. I never actually tried to do keep that many projects using RMB and going on at the same time. I would recommend that if you're not working with 10,000 projects at the same time, look at how you can archive projects that you have already finished. But to give you a straight answer, I haven't tried. I haven't heard of a specific limitation, but I haven't heard that it would be an issue. But when working with a maximum amount on a board, it's always tricky. All right. Great. Don't hesitate to send over more questions if you have any. Let's go back to building the rag for phase three. So this is the one that I'm looking for. So as you can see here, all the underlined here are blank. When we start it's just grayed out what they are looking for as an answer in them. So first we decide what this status. Which is the project plan template and its the column is just called Status in connected boards and set. Then we want to go to health phase three in this case. To a rag status where And this is where this becomes really powerful because you can actually decide what range do I want to have here? How many tasks can be delayed or stuck? Before I flag them as at risk or critical. And then we get to decide what is critical, what is at risk and what is on track just to map them in here. So critical is our red in this matter. So for the different phases, I'm going to keep the number a bit lower than for the entire project. So let's say that if three or more tasks in phase three are marked as delayed or stuck, then I want to flag it as critical. My amber status is at risk. And my green is one, for example. I want them to count the stack labels. And then I scroll here and I just choose my phase three filter. Okay, now let's go in here and actually delay some things. Let me go back to our project overview. Take a look at the different phases. You can see that it's marked as critical. Great. I just want to watch the time so we're not getting too carried away here. Perfect. And note that the project health here. I'm just using the best practice terms of at risk, critical, on track. Try to be creative here if you don't want to use it as a standard rag. You can, I'm sure, come up with new use cases of that specific recipe and have statuses like this change depending on statuses in the low level board. So there is so much more to be done here from what I am telling you about now. We can also aggregate numbers. So for example in my project Delta project plan here, I do have a spend. So I can say that okay I spent $20 here and $60 here, etc.. So when I get a quick look at my overview here. I see that okay the spend is 80. The budget I already set in this board. So it's 100. And if you want to be super informative you can always create formulas saying this is a difference. Between the budget and the spend. So this could be left to spend for example. So. As you notice here, RMB is not a complete solution. There is still so much to the native functionality that is super important to get in automated and efficient project management tool. But RMB is a great way to actually aggregate information from a low level to a high level. Okay, let me show you some automations that I have in my low level board here. When we help customers with their product management, there is always a very fun task because it's so much that you can do to really make this flow efficient. So I will show you some best practices and tips and tricks that we usually use, and that might give you some inspiration. So in this low level board I'm not going to use the template. Let me use this one instead. As you can see, I have 14 automations already in this board. There is no need to have so many if you just want to have the task list as a task list. That's perfectly fine since we have groups by phase, we don't want things to move around either. But what we can do is that we can play around a bit with, transparency and showing what's going on on an even lower level. So sub items. For example, I just added three sub items here. You can see that they have also this delayed status here. So a really good automation is to have a deadline for example next week. Let's change this. And this is my task. So there is an automation. Let me find it again. I should have added in description. So that is a really good. This is a good example of why you should do that. Okay, so this is the one when deadline arrives, and only if status is not done, then set status to stuck or delayed depending on what you use for terminology. So when we're looking at this so we have a A specific date column that we use. And you can add the time here. Or if you want to say two days before or one day after, etc.. So when that column, a date column when that date arrives and status is not done, because if it's done, it's fine, we don't want to highlight anything, then set status to stuck. So what will happen is that when this deadline arrives here and this is still working on it, it will automatically change to stuck. Then we have another automation. And I want to show you here. Saying that when that status changes to stuck, then notify the person who is owning that task. So it takes a while for it to think here. I can see that the hearing issue is resolved as well. Perfect. Okay, so I'm gonna try to search for it. Notify. Nope. All right. Okay, so it was the top one. It was easy to find. So when the status changes to stuck then notify the lead. So that is a good two-step automation that you can use to be able to really make sure nothing's falling between chairs, nothing is delayed. You can even have a notification going out the day before the deadline, etc.. And so this is something that is really appreciated when having this many tasks, maybe in different project plans, it's easier to be on top of things. Also in notifications you can add dynamic fields, which is really great, and makes it easier for you to know exactly what is this notification saying? We can also track how many tasks that I have or am being marked as done or being marked as delayed. So let me. So here this was. And I just need to Put it to zero because I obviously created this automation after something is done. Okay, so let me just show you the whole chain here. And this task is not started. Task progress is zero, delays are zero. Great. So as soon as I change something here, I have an automation saying as soon as something changes in these statuses, this status will automatically say, okay, I'm working on this because something happened in the sub items here. When it's marked as done. You can see that this task, project, progress sorry, is counting up. So that means that we can also use this column in RMB to. Aggregate up to my project overview saying this is how many tasks I have finished on the specific project. It can also see if something is marked as delayed. We will count that as well. So the difference between these two is that if I accidentally set it done, oh no, I had something more to do on this specific task. I'm changing it back to working on it, and this will count down again the delays. However, if I mark it as done as it will be eventually. The delay is still saying. So this is a good way for us to track. How many delays do we actually have in this project? And on which specific task. So a good and creative way to use RMB in this purpose would be to maybe also count how many sub items do I have? And how many are marked as done. Aggregate that up and we can get a percentage of with the formula column. How much? Um, low level tasks. Not only this level but also this level. How far have we come there? And we can also say delays on that level. Of course, if you want to be really granular. Super. And, um, that was pretty much everything that I wanted to cover today. I hope that you got some inspiration on how you can work with RMB instead of connected board columns. And to sum it up, RMB is a way to create the low level board, connect that to a project, and get automated aggregations up to the high level board. There is of course native ways of doing it as well, but then you need to use the connected board columns, which for now has its limitations. And then you work with mirrors and it looks a bit different. So I want to open up if -there is any more questions. -No. Okay, great. Then I want to thank you all for today. And, I really hope that you found some inspiration to use RMB in your project management.