0050 Basic - The views in ClickUp - Part 1
Hello ClickUp enthusiast! Greetings from Ernesto.
The way in which ClickUp naturally or by default presents the tasks that we are creating is through a "list" of tasks, which, as its name indicates, simply presents the tasks in consecutive lines. We have already seen that we can group the list by the "status" in which the tasks are, but we can also group them by:
- "Assignee"
- "Priority"
- "Tags"
- "Due date"
- "None"
- "Custom field"
And within each type of grouping, we can order the tasks in ascending or descending order. In the following image you can see the grouping menu that is located at the top of the task list:
But regardless of the grouping, the tasks are still displayed in a list.
Now, ClickUp offers the possibility of visualizing the tasks in different ways that are called views. We will review some of these ways of visualizing tasks.
At the top of the screen, to the right of the list name, the available views for the tasks are presented along with the add view button: "+ View", as shown in the following image:
When clicking on the button to add a view "+ View", the following screen is presented:
On the left side is the list of available views that can be added to visualize our tasks. Three basic and eight additional views are shown. At the bottom, page views are also included, which we will review in another occasion.
We will create a "Board" view for which we will have to click on the corresponding button so that the configurable characteristics of the board view are displayed on the right side of the screen along with a brief description as shown next:
The board view presents the tasks in columns where each one of them represents a state (grouping used by default in boards) or any of the other grouping types that we reviewed at the beginning of this article. Also, you can specify that the view is "Private view"; that is, only the author will be able to see it, and you can "Pin view" so that it is always presented at the top of the screen. The name of the "view" will default to "Board", but if you want to call it something else, for example "Kanban" you can type the name at the top of the view menu where it says "Type name..." before clicking the "Add View" button. So that the board view is created as shown in the following image:
The board shows a column for each of the statuses that we have assigned to our task list; that is, seven columns, in our particular case. One of the advantages of this view is that we can "drag" the tasks (each displayed in card format) to a different column (status). We had already commented on the Kanban boards, this view represents a board of this type, widely used in project management.
If we group our board by "Priority" (Priority), selecting this option in the menu:
The view changes as follows:
Now we only have 5 columns, one for each of the priorities that can be assigned to the tasks.
When changing the view display, ClickUp probably displayed the following message at the bottom of the screen:
Whenever a change is made to the display of a view, ClickUp offers the options: "Save" the new view, "Autosave view" which means that the view will be saved automatically each time it is changed, this option is the one I normally choose so that ClickUp doesn't ask me every time I make a change and I make sure that any new display is saved so that it is available the next time I display the view and finally "Revert " (Revert) which in this case would take us to the previous visualization using the statuses instead of the priority. Choose the option of your preference.
By dragging the task cards, I can assign different priorities to each of them as shown in the following image:
However, each of the tasks still maintains its same status and using the dashboard I can change the status of a task by moving the cursor over the sidebar of the card which will show its current status:
and clicking it will allow me to change the state as shown below:
If I assign the status "In Process", now the sidebar of the card will change to the color that corresponds to that status:
If I go back to the list view, (by clicking on the corresponding view at the top of the screen) I can see that all the changes made in one view are kept in any other: the tasks have new priorities assigned and one of them changed to "In Process" status:
The board view is one of the most used since it allows you to manage tasks in a very practical way.
To make better use of the other views, it is important to assign at least the due date to each of the tasks in our list, as well as one or more assignees, I have reordered, assigned the dates and assignees to all the tasks as shown below:
We will create a "Calendar" view to which we will assign the name "Schedule" as shown in the following image:
Clicking the "Add view" button will display the newly created view as shown below:
This view allows me to visualize the tasks on a calendar clearly showing on what day the tasks start and on what day they end. I can also see the days when there is more than one task assigned and with a single glance I can clearly identify when my "project" starts and when it ends. I can drag tasks from one day to another and lengthen or shorten them so the start and end dates will be adjusted accordingly; for example, if I need to finish with the tasks, let's say that by May 20 (according to the calendar in the image), I can reorganize the tasks without having to open each one of them and modify the dates by simply dragging and resizing them so that everything be concluded in the week of the 20th as shown below:
At the top of the calendar view, I can select the type of calendar to display: by day, week, 4 days or by month. On the calendar view, I can create new tasks by clicking on the "+" sign that shows when placing the cursor on a day or hour of the calendar, with which a small card is presented where I can create my new task by assigning the most important values such as: name of the task, person in charge, priority, etc. the start date is determined by the day in the calendar and after adding it can be extended to assign a due date, as shown in the following images:
It is an ideal view to plan and see the workload of the week or the month or even the day, in a future installment we will see how to see tasks from different lists in the calendar so that we can see all the current projects on the calendar, a very powerful option that allows me to plan and manage the work in a very efficient way.
We'll continue to review some of the other views available in ClickUp in the next instalment.
Until next time and remember that the standardization of plans and processes does nothing more than improve the quality of the result and repeated iterations generate an upward spiral.