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From Excel to monday.com: Ultimate Migration Guide

October 21, 2024
#monday
12 min

Excel and Google Sheets have been the go-to platforms for organizing tasks, tracking projects, and managing workflows for years. However, spreadsheets weren’t built for managing projects. They lack features for real-time collaboration, project tracking and overview. Many companies still rely on them to manage complex tasks even though there are more effective tools for that. Here’s where monday.com steps in. As a comprehensive work management platform, monday.com empowers companies to organize, collaborate, and automate workflows with ease. In this article, we’ll equip you with the tips and tools to help a company prepare a transition from Excel to monday.com.

Migration Steps from Excel to monday.com

Stage 1: Analyzing Current Workflows

Now, it’s time to navigate through the spreadsheet labyrinths to figure out the existing workflows.

Start by documenting your existing spreadsheets and the projects you manage. Analyze how different sheets communicate and how data flows within one sheet. Do you have inter-sheet references or formulas? Are there dependencies between different spreadsheets? Do macros automate specific tasks? It is important to comprehend these relationships to reproduce them on monday.com.

Consider creating a flowchart that helps clearly illustrate your project, workflows, and dependencies.

Specify the rows and columns of each spreadsheet, indicating the type of data they hold, such as text, numbers, dates, formulas, etc. This way, you get ready to match this data  with the appropriate monday.com board columns.

By taking time for a thorough analysis, you can identify bottlenecks and fix them in the new system.

Stage 2. Observing Tools on monday.com

After understanding current processes, it’s time to explore the features of monday.com.

Consider your organizational structure. Depending on the size and complexity of your teams, the number of contractors and projects, you may benefit from establishing multiple workspaces. You can organize workspaces, for example, by department, team, client, or project and set them to public or private.  A workspace houses all the boards related to it.

A monday.com board is where your processes come to life. It’s a central hub where you can manage anything from daily tasks to complex multi-step projects. Many users, especially those transitioning from multiple spreadsheets, are tempted  to merge all data into one board. While this may seem convenient, it’s essential to recognize that breaking down workflows into different boards can be incredibly useful. Every board can be customized for its unique workflow while still communicating with each other  through automations and board connections. This approach helps people work together more easily, which is often difficult  in a spreadsheet-based environment.

monday.com board connections

To recreate the structure of your spreadsheets, make sure you understand the different column types that can be used on monday.com. For instance, they can represent a wide range of data types like text, dates, numbers, statuses, assignees, or even files. After documenting rows and columns in the first step, you can now utilize this information to find relevant columns on monday.com.

Stage 3. Implementation

Now that boards have been carefully structured, it’s time to import spreadsheets to monday.com.

Before importing, check the formatting of your spreadsheets to help monday.com recognize the data. Import & Export with Excel feature enables you to transform a spreadsheet into a board by aligning the column headers from the spreadsheet with the corresponding column names and data types on your monday.com board. This way you can ensure data flows correctly into your monday.com workspace. For example, getting a board from a spreadsheet like the one below takes a few seconds:

Remember the item and column limits when importing from Excel, which are up to 20 columns and 3,000 rows at a time. We suggest reading this article for guidance on overcoming these limitations.

Once the data is imported, the real power of monday.com comes into play.

  • Add automations to streamline processes, like updating statuses, setting deadlines, or assigning tasks automatically.
  • Assign team members to tasks and set up notifications to keep everyone updated on key changes.
  • Establish permissions to control who can view, edit, or manage specific items, offering more control and security than traditional spreadsheets.
  • Connect boards to ensure data flows seamlessly between different projects or departments, avoiding the fragmentation often experienced in spreadsheets.

By leveraging these features, monday.com can transform your data from static spreadsheets into dynamic, automated workflows, improving collaboration and productivity across the organization.

Stage 4. Testing and Feedback

As with any major change, it’s crucial to monitor the team’s adaption to monday.com. Continuous feedback is vital to refining workflows and ensuring a smooth transition. You can utilize the WorkForm feature to collect feedback directly onto a dedicated board.

Adapting to a new system after years of using Excel can be challenging. For instance, monday.com handles tasks like formulas, data linking, and charts differently from regular spreadsheets. To make this transition smoother, tools like Smart Spreadsheet for monday are incredibly useful. This app enables teams to work with monday.com boards in a spreadsheet-like environment, which benefits the new monday.com users in the following ways:

  • Familiar syntax for calculations: Perform advanced calculations on board data (whether by rows, columns, or subitems) using spreadsheet-style syntax.
  • Access nearly 400 built-in formulas for industry-specific calculations.
  • Bound Column to Board feature: Add new columns with calculated results directly to the board.
  • Pivot tables and custom charts: Build dynamic reports, visualize them, and represent them as widgets on monday.com’s dashboard hub.

monday.com board calculations in a spradsheet

Furthermore, if you’ve been using spreadsheets to prepare documents such as quotations or reports, you can use Smart Spreadsheet as an item view and fill it with board data.

Excel templates on monday.com board

This way, teams can enjoy the benefits of spreadsheet capabilities while gradually moving towards monday.com’s more dynamic and collaborative environment.

The migration from Excel to monday.com can lead to a whole new level of teamwork and project management. While the initial steps involve analysis and migration, you can get the true value while leveraging monday.com’s powerful features to automate workflows and enhance collaboration. After implementing the new tool, find out what the users think of the new platform. If they miss familiar spreadsheet capabilities, keep in mind Smart Spreadsheet that seamlessly bridges this gap.

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    Master Subtasks on Monday.com Like a Pro

    June 10, 2024
    #How To#Project management#Reporting#monday
    8 min

    Subtasks on monday.com are powerful tools for breaking down complex projects into manageable steps. They go beyond simple checklists, allowing you to store important information such as deadlines and budgets.

    Take a marketing campaign launch, for instance. The “Launch marketing campaign” item might seem straightforward, but subtasks or, in other words, subitems provide a clear roadmap for executing this task. Here are some subitems that can help:

    • Develop a social media content calendar
    • Design email marketing materials
    • Schedule campaign launch date
    • Track website traffic and conversions

    With subtasks, you gain a bird’s-eye view of the entire project, enabling you to control its implementation.

    Tips on managing subtasks on monday.com

    Basic tips

    Although the monday.com guide lays out fundamental tips on managing subitems, we have a few additional pointers to enhance your experience.

    Subitems templates

    Unlike items, subitems do not automatically inherit the column configuration of their parent. This allows you to tailor the subitem structure to your specific needs. Let’s create a simple subitem column set: the Owner column indicates the person responsible for the task, the Deadline column highlights the due date, and the Status column can track the progress, priority, and complexity of each subtask.

    Subtasks on monday.com

    Here’s a tip to save this subitem structure: Navigate to the Automation Center, click on Board Automations, and choose Add Automation. Set the trigger for “when an item is created” and the action to “create a subitem.” This automation will replicate the predefined subitem column structure when you add a new item to a board. It streamlines the process and ensures uniformity across your project.

    Subitems automation template

    If you need to follow the structure of the parent items, you can set it up by coping with parent columns when creating a subtask.

    Intermediate tips

    Here are some savvy techniques to further optimize your workflow with subtasks on monday.com.

    Subitem dependencies

    In complex projects, tasks often rely on the completion of preceding steps. You can set up the subtasks sequence by adding the “Dependency” column. Then, you can visually represent the dependencies on a Gantt chart view in conjunction with the “Timeline” or “Deadline” columns.

    Subitems dependencies

    Subitems at the Gantt chart

    Please remember to update the Gantt chart settings to include subitems.

    Filtering subitems

    To create more personalized views tailored to their specific needs, filter your board by subitems. For instance, you can filter high-priority sub-tasks assigned to you to determine what to work on first. This can save significant time and help you focus on what matters most.

    Filtering subitems

    Sub-subitems

    Some tasks can be quite complex and require an extra level of detail. Although monday.com doesn’t offer an additional hierarchy layer, there’s a clever workaround. You can use the checklists feature to add sub-subitems in a subitem update section.

    Sub-subitems

    Pro tips

    As your proficiency with subitems grows, you may encounter scenarios where the native functionality falls short of your requirements. Some of the key limitations for subitems on monday.com include:

    • Not all the dashboards support subitems.
    • Formulas in subitems can’t pull data from connected items.
    • Functions for aggregating subitems are not directly supported.  The subitems rollup feature helps but can’t show averages, max values, min values, counts, or perform more advanced calculations.
    • Conditional formatting is limited. You can’t combine multiple conditions within a single formula.

    How to overcome the subtasks limitations

    Let’s get back to our case. As a head of marketing, you need to analyze the campaign performance results. Due to the limitations mentioned, the most efficient way to do this is to auto-import your board with subitems into the Smart Spreadsheet for monday app. By leveraging the power of the spreadsheet, you can:

    • Perform more complex calculations with subitems and refer to parent items’ values
    • Apply advanced conditional formatting
    • Get auto-updates from the board

    In our case, the app helps us determine the total costs for a campaign launch and identify tasks that took longer than anticipated by applying conditional formatting.

    Subitems and smart spreadsheet for monday

    Subtask analysis empowers you to optimize future campaigns and allocate resources more efficiently.

    Additionally, you can build custom charts and visualize subtask values on a dashboard for more insights.

    Custom graphs and charts from subitems

    By utilizing monday’s hidden features and the advanced subitem management capabilities of Smart Spreadsheet, you can focus on delivering results efficiently and quickly without being hindered by platform limitations.

    Start a free trial of Smart Spreadsheet for monday

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      Smart Spreadsheet for monday: Welcome the Auto-Sync from Boards Feature

      June 21, 2023
      #monday#How To#News#Collaboration#Project management#Reporting
      3 min

      You may already know that the Smart Spreadsheet for monday app allows our customers to import boards to spreadsheets. Then they can work with the data using familiar Excel-like functions. Everything is stored within the monday.com instance. So, besides security, you don’t need to switch between different platforms.

      As this option was very popular, we decided to move further and released the auto-sync from boards feature. 

      It means that when you import your board to Smart Spreadsheet, all the changes made to the board later are automatically pushed to the spreadsheet.

      Let’s take a look at how everything works from now on.

      Here is the Item Board with statuses, dates, numbers, and formulas. When we import this board to Smart Spreadsheet manually for the first time, all the fields are populated as they are (including cell formulas).

      Manual import of the board

      Then you may continue working with the imported data in the spreadsheet. For example, here, we added another column with formulas and applied conditional formatting based on the calculated values.

      Now, if you go back to the board and make some changes, all the updates will be automatically passed to the connected spreadsheet.

      In our example, we changed statuses, dates, and numbers (the formulas were also recalculated). Smart Spreadsheet immediately reflected the updates for every column, including the extra one.

      Auto-sync data

      Such synchronization also works if you add and delete columns, create new or rename existing groups and move items between them.

      We hope our new feature will make your experience with monday.com more pleasant and smooth.

      The Smart Spreadsheet app is eternally free for 1-2 users. For companies with three or more users, we offer a 14-day trial period to check all our handy features.

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        How to Create Powerful Spreadsheets in monday.com

        May 30, 2023
        #How To#Collaboration#monday#Project management#Task Management#Document management#Reporting
        11 min

        If you use monday.com, you know for sure that this tool can take your team’s collaboration and productivity to the next level. This powerful platform is designed to help teams work together more effectively, with features that support everything from project management to task tracking and more. In this article, we will share with you how you can empower your team to reach their business goals faster, with greater efficiency and accuracy than ever before, and create spreadsheets in monday.com.

        Why choose monday.com?

        One of the best things about monday.com is its ease of use. Simply create an account and start building your team’s boards and workflows. No programming or DevOps skills are needed to start. Just take the monday.com ready-to-go solution, and adjust it to your business goals. Whether you’re working on a small project with a few team members or managing a large-scale enterprise initiative, monday.com has the tools you need to keep everyone on the same page and working together towards success. And because it’s cloud-based, you can access your projects from anywhere, at any time.

        One of the key benefits of monday.com is its ability to streamline team collaboration. With features like customizable boards and timelines, you can easily track tasks and projects across your entire team, ensuring that everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goals. With monday.com automations and deadline tracking, you can ensure that every member of your team is working efficiently and effectively towards your shared goals.

        Why go to the marketplace?

        If you need to make more complex operations like calculations, you can empower your monday.com with different integrations or marketplace apps. They will easily connect monday.com to the other tools your team relies on every day. The marketplace has loads of apps. So how do you choose the right one? And how do you add the app to your monday.com account?

        Easy as it is, you need to look around for a start. Once all apps may look the same at the first marketplace visit, they turn different after a while. We suggest setting your business goals in advance so that you clearly understand what you are looking for when you’re headed to the app marketplace. It will prevent you from long-lasting listing browsing without any purpose. Instead, you can start your marketplace journey with a clear plan and save time.

        Now that you know what you need, the app discovery on the monday.com marketplace turns from a chaotic action into a plan. Start with the keyword lookup using the monday.com search engine. Just type what you’re interested in, and here you have the appropriate apps to choose from.

        Browse apps

        After that, you can take the time and dive into the app details. To be sure of the quality of an app before you integrate it into your monday.com account, you can check the ratings left by other trusted monday.com users or look at the number of app installs on the marketplace. You’ll find these numbers next to the vendor name. Treat the number this way: the number of installs is equal to the number of monday.com accounts that initialized the app installation to their host. So whom do you trust more: the vendor with 500 installs or 1.5k installs? You decide!

        Another thing to look at is the presence of the app appraisal signs, like Editor’s choice, Featured, or Best sellers. You’ll find those apps grouped in separate monday.com marketplace categories on the left sidebar. Another way is to look at the app marketplace page. The sign of being in one of the marketplace categories appears in the form of a respectful badge.

        Marketplace categories

        App ratings are also important. In monday.com, only commercial verified users can rate the apps they are using to ensure the accuracy of the app performance you can see on the marketplace. You don’t necessarily need to take the app rating for granted, as we are all humans with different expectations and business needs. Still, rating is something we definitely suggest looking at when you are reviewing the app.

        App ratings

        Now you have a better understanding of how to differentiate between the marketplace apps. It’s high time to think of the business cases that can be better managed in your monday.com account and find the right tool for that.

        Why create spreadsheets in monday.com?

        The boards of monday.com are awesome. They keep your daily work organized, make processes transparent, and even allow you to do simple math. If you want to use Excel-like formulas and functions to perform complex calculations, you can try our Smart Spreadsheet for monday.com.

        This app helps you create, edit, and keep your Excel-like spreadsheets secure on monday.com. No more struggling to choose between real-time collaboration with your teammates in monday.com and powerful Excel functionality. Smart Spreadsheet brings it all together to your account. It can help your team work together more effectively and reach your business goals faster than ever before.

        Once the app is installed, you can add it to any monday.com component: dashboard widget, item view, custom object, docs, and board view. Click Add view > Apps > Installed Apps and select Smart Spreadsheet. The blank spreadsheet will immediately appear, but you can import external or monday.com data to it if needed.Сreate spreadsheets in monday

        You can reuse your data from external sources like Google or Excel by importing it to our Smart Spreadsheet for monday.com. Just select File > Import and add the required file to add its data to the spreadsheet. Your external data will immediately appear in the spreadsheet, so your teammates will need no other switch between several resources. You can take advantage of powerful Excel formulas, add filters, and build pivot tables and charts directly in monday.com.Import Google or Excel files

        Marketing and product teams, project managers and business owners, HR and IT teams – whatever your role is, you will work with your data faster in the Smart Spreadsheet. This app has advanced calculating capabilities and flexible filtering and sorting. You can format your table content in the spreadsheet to make it more digestible or add data type to your cells. The intuitive controls on the top bar of Smart Spreadsheet will help you do it in a few clicks. Your team will streamline the data processing with time-saving shortcuts to copy, cut, and paste the spreadsheet data or undo and redo operations.Advanced calculation

        If you want to work with the data you already have in monday.com, you can also import the board to our spreadsheet. To do so, you need to select File > Import board and add the information from the connected board will be imported to the spreadsheet immediately. This way, you can enjoy the intuitive monday.com board view and work on complex data in one place without leaving the platform.Import board

        For cases when you need to share a particular piece of data from the monday.com account, you can export spreadsheets. To do so, click File > Export and select the name and format for your file. This functionality is required for easy sharing and further usage of your data.Export spreadsheet

        Why wait?

        Smart Spreadsheet makes it possible to import Excel and Google Docs files into monday.com to keep them secure and work on them with ease. No more switching between platforms to work with table data or struggle missing the calculations for complex business cases. You can try the app for free on the monday.com marketplace and see if it adds to your team’s productivity. The app has a flexible pricing model making it the perfect choice for teams of all sizes and industries.

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