Explained: ClickUp Dependencies Tutorial

ClickUp dependencies. What are they? Why would someone use them? And how can you avoid screwing something up in your ClickUp account while you're trying to use them? That is what we're going to answer on today's feature Friday. Now, before we get into that, let me introduce the talking head on your screen. My name is Layla and if you're new around here, welcome. On this channel, I cover ClickUp workflows and process documentation in the hopes of helping small teams run a little bit more efficiently using tools like ClickUp. I'm also the founder of Clicking Up Community, the newest kind of offer we have around helping people master ClickUp without having having to watch hundreds and thousands of minutes of YouTube content. So if you're interested in that, definitely check out the description below. So back to the video at hand here. We're going to be answering three questions today. What are ClickUp dependencies? Why would anyone use them? And how can you avoid screwing things up when you are using them? So first things first. What are ClickUp dependencies? ClickUp dependencies are a type of relationship that you can put between tasks or subtasks, or any mix thereof in in ClickUp. There are three types of dependencies in ClickUp Waiting on, blocking and linked. So waiting on is exactly what it sounds like. This task is waiting on another task or subtask. Blocking, as you might imagine, is the inverse, meaning this task is blocking someone doing another task down the line. It's kind of upstream downstream. The third category of linking is really just saying that these two tasks are connected in some way and we want to make sure you really knew about it. So so we put it up at the top with a linking dependency. So here we actually are in ClickUp and you can see the dependencies that are inside the task detail area. They show you those three types I just talked about and I want to highlight the link to one because this is particularly weird if I pick a link to task. So any task or subtask I can select for linking or any of these dependencies When I do a link to, you'll notice that this does a very similar thing to just mentioning a task. So if I was going here and just mention that this same task, it more or less does the same thing. This link provides a kind of hyperlink to jump into this other task, whereas this one pulls open the other task much like a hyperlink. The main difference between the linking dependency and this kind of method of mentioning another task is that when I mention a task it is a one way street Whereas when you link, it's a two way relationship. So here we go. If I click on this, it'll show that is linked back to this other one. It's a two way relationship. Whereas if I click on this kind of embed area, there's no any indication in here that I had that mentioned or embedded area in the other task. So as I already alluded to here, you're going to be able to find these dependencies in the detail area of any task. You can also go in ListView, click on the three dots and click on Dependencies field. Open the same window. You can also open Dependencies by using the Multitask toolbar and clicking on Dependencies from here. So you can set these in bulk multiple ways, same exact menu. These are all about task dependencies. So the next logical question is, okay, Layla, I get that dependencies are there. Why do I care about dependencies? The main reason to use dependencies is to be able to visualize what can be done now and what is waiting on something else. Exactly what the names suggest. It can be very deceptive to go into your ClickUp and see 100 Tasks and say, oh my gosh, we have so much to do for planning this event. But if half of the tasks can't be done until after the actual event occurs, well, you kind of want to know that. So rather than having to make another status saying something like not ready to do yet or have a dropdown that says waiting on other tasks using dependencies will allow you to kind of in real time show the relationships between one tasks and another. So, for example, YouTube content creation, my process, my task template for this video involves a lot of tasks where they are waiting on each other. A lot of stuff can't be done until this video is recorded. And there's a whole other group of tasks that cannot be done until this video is published. And so in that way, I'm using dependencies to be able to keep everyone in the loop as to what needs to be done and what is ready to be done. Now, there is a big distinction between those two and I think dependencies are a great way to do it. The other reason to have this, not just for the visual indication, is because when dependencies become unblocked, a notification goes out in the system. So here we are in ClickUp notification settings and you'll see that there are actually four different types of notifications you can receive for dependencies. Why are these so important? Well, if you think about a process that involves multiple people, right, steps one through three, like recording this video is done by one person, then steps five through six are done by another person and seven through 33 are done by yet another person. It's important for you to have a good sense of when can I do my piece of the relay race? And if you have dependencies, if you're using them and you have these notifications on, you can make that a lot easier. Because when step one is done and step two is ready to be done by that other person, that other person will be notified. You might think, wait, wouldn't I already be notified about this because I'm involved in the same task? Especially if our steps in the process are subtasks. Well, not necessarily. While we're in here in settings, let's just call out this feature here by default. Just because you're a watcher on the overall task is does not mean you are going to be a watcher on every single subtask. For example, someone might not care when step one is in progress or what comments come in. I don't want to receive all those watcher notifications, but I do want to know when it's done. So it unblocks the work that I have to do. In that way, using dependencies versus being a watcher can be really, really effective. So we've talked about what ClickUp task dependencies are. We've talked about why you might want to use them for a larger term project or to smooth over those handoffs. Now let's get to some pro tips about how not to screw up your workspace or while you are using dependencies. The first pro tip is just around speed. Dependencies take a little bit of time to set up just because they're kind of out of the way. So if I wanted to go in here and dependencies, the first pro tip is just to set your waiting on and blocking at the same time. Let me explain what I mean here. I've clicked on task two and I've opened the dependency windows. I'm going to put that it's waiting on task one and that it's blocking task two or task three rather at the same time and I'm going to click done here. In that way I've set up the relationships on both sides that rather than just going into task one and doing blocking and doing task two and doing blocking, just saves you a little bit of time by working in both directions first. Another related tip here is that if you use the Multitask toolbar, this little bubble next to multiple tasks usually used in List View but also available if you go to Board View. If you use that multi select bubble, you can actually set dependencies in bulk if things are waiting on or blocking the same task. Quick side note, on the topic of speedy ways to set up dependencies, I also find that it's pretty easy to set these up if you go into a Gantt view. So I'm going to open that up here. If you're in Gantt, you create a view like this even if you don't use Gantt normally. This is just so much faster for creating dependencies that I highly recommend it. You can see here if we have different tasks and we have them on a calendar, we can use these little handles at the end to create dependencies just by dragging and dropping. And it's a lot faster than going through the other way. So I just want to put that out there as a even faster shortcut for going through and connecting things is by using these dependency handles or whatever you want to call them. So just one more tip there. I want to say sneak in here afterwards and while we're here, let's just throw in a bonus. Tip number two is that task linking.