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monday.com
Managing different projects means juggling numerous tasks at once, keeping everything on track, and staying sane throughout.
Project timelines, resources, and team communication constantly need to be managed, and without the right project management tool, things can quickly become overwhelming.
This is why monday.com’s project management templates are so useful.
In this guide, I’ll cover the advantages of these customizable templates, how to create your own, and how to boost efficiency with smart templates and automation.
What are monday.com Project Management templates
monday.com project management templates are pre-configured boards designed to simplify project planning, execution, and tracking. Available directly within the platform, they can be accessed in the template center when setting up a new board.
These project templates have wide functionality and act as a framework for managing various types of complex projects and setting key milestones. They allow teams to start quickly without the need to build from the ground up each time.
Instead of starting from scratch, teams can choose from over 100 pre-built templates tailored to different industries, project types, and workflows.
As an example, let’s take a marketing team struggling to manage tasks like blog posts, social media updates, and email campaigns. Their main issues are missed deadlines, a poor task assignment approach, and a lack of a clear roadmap, which results in inconsistent content publication. monday.com’s “Content Calendar Template” directly addresses these issues by providing a centralized platform to organize all content types.
The template offers a calendar view that allows the team to schedule tasks, assign them to specific members such as writers and designers, and set automatic reminders to ensure deadlines are met. Additionally, files and links can be seamlessly integrated into the board, enhancing collaboration and ensuring that the entire team is aligned and efficient.
This is just one example of how marketing team members can benefit from Monday.com’s project management templates, which are also flexible and work for many other teams.
We’ll use the marketing example throughout the article, but remember; these templates can support a wide range of tasks, like product teams tracking feature releases, HR managing onboarding, sales teams handling leads and follow-ups, and much more.
How to create your own Project Management template
monday.com offers a wide variety of native templates that provide a solid starting point, helping you organize, streamline your projects, and tackle challenges with a ready-made framework. But what if you’ve fine-tuned your processes and need something more specific? That’s where creating your own templates comes in.
Creating your own template is a step up for those who know exactly what they need and want to save time on repetitive tasks. Instead of setting up the same board structure over and over, you can build a custom template tailored to your exact workflow, ensuring consistency and efficiency every time.
- Start a new board, and add columns, groups, and tasks that match your workflow. Customize it with automation, integrations, and tools like Gantt charts and Kanban boards to fit your specific project needs.
- Once your board is set up, click the three-dot menu in the top right, select “Save as a template,” and name it.
- Access your template from the “Templates” section when creating new boards. You can update templates anytime by saving changes to keep them aligned with evolving processes.
While creating templates from scratch offers full control and is ideal for tailoring workflows to your specific needs, monday.com’s native templates are highly customizable, can be saved as personal templates, and are a great starting point. I highly encourage you to go this route to save time and effort.
Let’s check in on our marketing team, which now needs to manage A/B testing tasks to improve landing page performance. For this, they decide to use monday.com’s “A/B Testing and Planning Template.”
But they quickly run into a problem—the template doesn’t manage task dependencies. For the team, this is crucial because some tasks, like “Finalize CTA Design,” are managed on a separate board and need to be completed before testing different color options or placements.
To solve this, they customized the template by adding a “Dependencies” column and a “Connect Boards” column to link tasks across boards.
So they link “Finalize CTA Design” from the design board as a prerequisite for “Test CTA Color Variations” on the A/B testing board.
This customization ensures the team can effectively track projects and manage their A/B testing in the correct order, even when tasks are spread across different boards.
But the customization possibilities don’t end here—let’s explore how Smart Templates in monday.com can drive even greater efficiency.
Improving efficiency in monday.com with Smart Templates
While board templates provide an overall framework for managing entire projects, Smart Templates allow you to focus on the finer details within your boards. These lower-level templates let you save and reuse specific groups, items, and subitems, making it easier to replicate detailed tasks and workflows across different projects.
For instance, using Smart Template, the marketing team running A/B tests can save the “Test CTA Color Variations” item with sub-items like:
- “Set Up Color Test in A/B Testing Tool”
- “Analyze Initial Test Results”
- “Adjust Target Audience Segments”
Now it is much easier to apply this setup for future tests of other CTAs.
To save a template, simply select the item, group, subitem, or any combination of the elements you want to save. For example, you can save one item and four subitems together as a template. Click on the three-dot menu on the left side, and under “Apps,” select “Save as Smart Template.”
To create an item/subitem or multiple ones from a saved template, go to the relevant board, select an item/subitem, and add the Smart Templates view. This needs to be done once; for all future items/subitems, the view will appear by default on the relevant board. Next, expand the desired template and choose “Create Item.”
Once you save a template, it becomes a powerful tool for keeping projects consistent and efficient. By standardizing recurring tasks, your team can save time, reduce mistakes, and focus on more important work.
Adding automation to Project Management templates
monday.com’s automation features, known as “recipes,” allow you to automate repetitive tasks and trigger actions based on specific conditions like status changes, dates, or task assignments.
Recipes streamline workflows, reduce manual effort, and ensure consistency across your project management processes.
Now returning to our marketing team’s example—where they customized their A/B Testing template with a “Dependencies” column and “Connect Boards” feature to link tasks across boards—automation can further enhance this setup.
For instance, the team can set up an automation that notifies them when a prerequisite task, like “Finalize CTA Design,” is completed, allowing the next task, such as “Test CTA Color Variations,” to start right away. This ensures smooth project progress and minimizes delays that could occur due to human error.
Smart Templates are closely integrated with monday.com’s recipes, enhancing workflows further by automating routine processes.
For example, you can set up automation so that when a critical subtask like “Analyze Initial Test Results” is completed, a new set of tasks is automatically generated from a Smart Template.
This could include follow-up actions such as “Present Results to Stakeholders” and “Plan Next A/B Test,” ensuring that the next steps are immediately in place and the project continues smoothly without delay.
To wrap things up, monday.com Project Management Templates are powerful tools that simplify project planning, execution, and tracking, making it easier for teams to manage their workflows efficiently—and when combined with Smart Templates, the platform becomes pure joy.
Now that you know how to leverage these templates for greater efficiency and consistency in your projects, start exploring how you can apply them to your own workflows. For more practical tips and insights, explore the rest of our blog! ?
