Biggest ClickUp Mistakes! And How to Fix them

Hi there, it's Jeff from Zenpilot, your productivity professor. Today I'm going to talk about the biggest mistake that agencies make when they're using ClickUp or any other project management tool. So if you feel like you're not getting the visibility that you need inside the tool or your team's not following best practices, or maybe things are just falling through the cracks constantly, I'm going to take you step by step through different phases that you'll go through inside of ClickUp or any other project management tool to help you get to the point where you'll get visibility, things won't slip through the cracks, and your team's going to follow the best practices that you put out in front of them. So let's jump into ClickUp and talk through a few different scenarios of maybe where you're at, which might be the reason that you're not getting the visibility reporting that you need and why things are really starting to slip through the cracks. So, first off, maybe you have a good structure in ClickUp. If you don't know the ClickUp hierarchy, then I suggest that you start off by watching this video up here in the top right, and it'll take you through a good ClickUp hierarchy for agencies in terms of the spaces and folders and lists that you're going to need to really get, again, good reporting and visibility out of the tool. But a big part of this is oftentimes people jump into ClickUp and they don't build out their processes first. So let's walk through a few different scenarios of what this may look like for your team. So again, I have my structure set up. I'm in Dunder Mifflin, and let's say Michael Scott, he wants us to write a blog post on paper. We just want to start driving traffic to the website. So we want some good content for him to actually get some keywords out there on paper so that people can start going to the website and see Dunder Mifflin as a paper provider. So scenario one for oftentimes a lot of agencies is they come in here and they don't have any processes built out. So they just go, okay, Michael asked for a blog post. Let's just start building this out right here. So you go, you put a parent task in here. I'm called blog post. And maybe you're like, I think we need to add some details to here. So maybe on this blog post you add a task description of what we need, what Michael wants. You put some action items on here, just as A checklist of, okay, we need to write the post, we need to review the post and maybe we need to publish the post. So that's what we have. That's really all that we're going to get. It takes some time for me to set this up. Maybe I'm like, okay, this is going to be due on the 23rd and I'm going to assign this to myself. I'm a part of this project. I'm going to sign it to Ian, I'm going to sign it to Andrew. And the time estimate, I think it's going to take about five hours, maybe longer than that, but I'm not really sure. So that's oftentimes where people start off at and just having multiple signees on here, that's where things can really slip through the cracks because I don't know if this is really assigned to me. Ian doesn't know if it's for him and Andrew doesn't know for him. So oftentimes people will start there. They have one task with a checklist and then they're just communicating and saying, ian, can you start writing this? This is due, I'll review it, yada yada. And they comment on this task and things just get lost. No one knows when writing the post is due, no one knows when sending it to Michael is due and actually publishing it. It's all just one due date. Multiple assignees with a checklist in that parent task. That's really the first phase. In addition, maybe you only assign one person to each of these. So maybe I'm assigned to the blog post. However, say I start writing it, I come here to the action items, I check this off and now I want Ian to review this. So maybe I come here, I said it's internal review and then I reassign this task to Ian right here and I just comment and say, hey, can you start working on this and review what I've written? Once you start doing that, you again. If you want to use the workload View inside of ClickUp, the workload view is going to be tied to due dates, time estimates and the assignees so that I'm losing all of that visibility and things will really start to slip through the cracks here. So never if you're in this phase where you have just tasked for this and you're using the status and reassigning work, that's a big no no and it's going to make things slip through the cracks and not give you any visibility that you're trying to get out of the tool. So that's really sort of stage one here. Stage two is moving sort of the next level. And you just start with, again, Michael wants a blog post. We go here. But now you're like, okay, I can't really do in the parent task. I'm going to start doing this in subtasks. So I do write the blog post. Just like that. I do review the blog post, then to Michael for review and publish blog post again, if you have to do it every time, once you get multiple different clients and you're having to write out all of your subtasks and build everything in here. So now I have to come here and assign this workout. So I'm the one writing, reviewing it. It's going to be Ian sending it to Michael. I'll do that and then I'll also publish the post. And then I'm having to put due dates for when these things actually are due. So I'll say this one's the 23rd. Now writing it, let's say that's due on the 6. Reviewing it, that's going to be due on the 8th. Sending it to Michael, let's say it's the 12th and then actually publishing it 23rd won't give us a lot of wiggle room there. But anyways, then you have to put the time estimates on here and it's just going to take you a ton of time to do that. You're taking a step in the right direction because now once I write this, I can close it and then I'll comment with Ian and say, hey, can you now review this? So we now have things that won't slip through the cracks. But again, you don't have enough granularity in these tasks. I send a Michael for review. I might need to receive it from him so we know it's in our hands. Again, you're relying a lot on statuses and you're relying on just not enough tasks to actually get the visibility you need. Plus, if we have to remap this, it's going to be pretty difficult for us. So there's just a lot of manual labor when it goes into actually setting up tasks inside of ClickUp, which again, if this is not standardized, if there's no instructions on how to do each of these, then your team is not going to follow your best practices and it's going to be really hard to delegate work and make sure things don't slip through the cracks and actually give you the visibility that you need. So phase one, just the parent task, changing the status, reassigning that work. Phase two, building out workflows when they come in and not having or just taking too much time to actually set this up, not having all the details that you would need in all this. And now phase three is a big step in the right direction. So now we want to move towards actually having all of our processes and workflows and sops all built out in the system. So we really streamline all of our operations inside of ClickUp or again whatever project management tool you use. So what I want is to have a dedicated process library in here for me to have everything that I need. So whether it's my growth task for my sales and marketing team, operations for all of our sort of people things and recruiting everything as well as delivery templates for my team in terms of it being maybe just a deliverable or even a project. So website projects, things like that. If you have all the steps already built out, then you can do it repeatable over and over and over again and get the same results for your clients and continue to improve that way. So let's go through a scenario. Let's say I come down here and as you'll see I have all of these process templates for my team to use. So now again I've streamlined everything. It's going to make it way easier to set up, way easier for my team to follow this best practices and give me the visibility. So as you'll see, I have my blog right now here. I have all my due dates, my time estimates, my time tracked, plus I have all these custom fields that I'm going to need in here like deliver roles, task types, work categories. And so what I can do now is I can take this template and I can save it inside of ClickUp's template center pretty easily. I just go here, template center, save as a template and then when I want to go to deploy it. So now in this scenario, Michael Scott has requested a blog post. I can easily go to my Dunder Mifflin folder retainer XYZ list, go into my list settings and I'm going to go into the template center just like this. Browse templates and let's go into my task templates and I'll type in blog find it right there, use a template, I can rename it like this. Let's say this is paper 101 blog and then I will go to remap dates. Again this is due, let's say this one's due on the 30th just like that. And I'll use my template. So again now, everything that I built into that template, from custom fields to task descriptions, checklists to everything that I'm going to need is built into that template. So now, as you can see, I have my paper 101 blog just like this. All of my steps, all of my task descriptions, I can come down here. We have templates for what we actually need to fill out. So I'm getting my team to follow best practices. We have all of it in the task description or linked out to another SOP document in ClickUp or out of ClickUp. And you'll see I have all of my custom fields in here as well, so I can use a delivery role custom field that allows me to easily assign this. So as you'll see, all these tasks are going to be from that template I just created. I'm now just grouping by delivery role in a different ClickUp view. I can come here. As you'll see, I'll be able to assign all the strategist tasks to myself. I'll go through it and let's say I need to assign all the copywriter tasks. I'll do that as well. Say that's going to be Ian, just like that, and then so on and so forth. So I can assign all of that out super easy. And as you'll see, if I come back here, you'll see all the tasks that I did assign there and all of it is built out for me with a nice date map of when things are going to do. As I go through here, I can complete it and then work is just going to be passed back and forth through our team and we're going to have good visibility into the progress of this as well. So I'll show you that in a second. But let's say we just keep closing these, we're done with all these tasks and then maybe we get to the point where we'll just close all these and we need to send the blog to the client for review. I don't want to assign those. I want to close these. Close them just like that. Yes, close this task. As you'll see now, maybe I sent it to the client for review and I can get post client feedback on the blog to the next step. Let's say that Michael takes a little bit too long and we actually need to remap this. So now I can go into the Gantt view can just like this. And because I have all my dependencies built out, I can easily remap this task just like this. You'll see everything is going to drag along with it. And now we've officially remapped our task super easily. So that's a massive benefit. If you save all your templates, you have dependencies in there, it's going to make it much easier for you. As you can see everything below, it is going to move with it. In addition, the big advantage of this, besides your team following the best practices, nothing slipping through the cracks is now I can create views in ClickUp that's going to give me the visibility that I need say in the future. Your account managers, project managers and they need to see work across multiple different clients and multiple different projects. So what I'm able to do is I can actually create views for them up at the delivery level that allows them to see. As you could see, this is for account manager Steve. We're using custom fields to really filter all this out. As you can see, filter Account manager is Steve I'm grouping by client. We'll be able to see across Troop Farms and Dunn or Mifflin all the progress on these tasks. So as we could see if we come down here to this paper 101 blog post, this is 63% of the way done. If I have tracked time, I'll be able to see all of that here. We can see our due dates and everything is going to show up in one specific view and I'll know exactly where it is. So another awesome view that you can create as well in addition to the account manager or project manager view is I can create a public view for clients see all the work that we're doing for them. So so if I wanted to I come here to the folder level for Dunder Mifflin and as you get more projects and deliverables there that are going on for a specific client, whether maybe a big website project going on for them and sort of other campaigns that you're running. If I go to the folder level I'll be able to create a view across all my different lists that I have in this folder. So I can see all of it one place. What I'm able to do is I come here, I can create a deliverable progress view or name it whatever you want, client view. And I can take this and I can show different columns that I want. So maybe in this case I just want the name of the blog right here. I want the due date, I want the status and I want the progress. If I wanted to add other columns I can come here. If I wanted to adjust any more settings, say I Didn't want the breadcrumbs that I had on here. I could adjust all that too. Let's say we don't want the task locations just like that. I could turn that off. So you have a lot of options to change up this view for your clients. Then I can come here, I can go into sharing permissions, copy the public link, just like that, after I share the link with anyone. And then as you see, I'm able to create an amazing view of this from the due date, statuses and progress just like that. So they can see all of the work that I'm doing for them. And you could take this and you can embed it just doesn't have to just be a view like this. You can embed it into a client portal, a client dashboard, whatever it may be, just so you can show them the progress of all your tasks. And it's going to update as you actually submit those and close those tasks out. And then lastly, what's going to be super impactful is every single member of your team. Once you get these processes built out and a little bit more granularity inside of your tasks, it's each of them is going to have a dedicated task view that they can go to every single day. They'll be able to click right here and they'll be able to see all of their work today, tomorrow and in the future. So I can easily plan, I'll see all my tasks here, I can click into one of them and that's going to give me sort of the how to complete this. So if you have a new employee coming on board and you have those task description with some instructions, a video in there or a template for them to use, the process is going to live where the work gets done and make it super easy for them to complete that task and follow your best practices for them as well. In addition, I'll be to see sort of when these are due, the time estimate. I can track my time right here if there's any comments or communication I need to be aware of. And all of it's going to make it super easy for your team to be more productive, more efficient in the system. So you're going to be able to create views for, for you, your project managers, your account managers for or your clients and all of your individual contributors that are at your agency if you build out your processes and take some time to actually get all this streamlined inside of ClickUp. So hopefully you found this video helpful. If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments below. Otherwise, if you need help getting ClickUp set up for your agency the right way, need help training your team and helping them build healthy habits in the system, and you need a great process library just like this with thousands of battle tested agency templates. Please feel free to go to zenpalot.com call book a call with us. We'd love to talk about where you're at, where you're trying to get to, and see where we can help again. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you liked it, please hit subscribe and follow along as we continue to post content for agencies inside of ClickUp. Thanks again. We'll see you again next time.