Explained: ClickUp Dependencies Tutorial

What do I need to do in ClickUp to make sure that I finish step one before I start step two? Hmm. I mean, I could post a comment like this and hope for the best, but the better solution to prevent things from being done in the wrong order is not in leaving a comment or even numbering your tasks. It's in using the feature built into ClickUp called dependencies. In ClickUp, managing dependencies is something that is built in from the get go when you get your account set up. But if you are someone who's interested in using these to the fullest potential, I also recommend you get your administrator or yourself to go into your overall workspace ClickApp settings and turn on these two companion ClickApps. While dependency features are available to everybody from the get go, only once you enable these other two click apps do you really get the full power. Think of it like dependency is the bread and this is the peanut butter and the jelly and really when you combine them, that's when the magic happens. Otherwise you just get a piece of bread. I don't know if that landed, but you get what I mean. Turn these click apps on and you should have the full power of everything I'm talking about here. To access these dependency superpowers and eventually become dependent upon them, all you need to do is open up any given task and locate the task settings area. You'll see a section for relationships. Yes, dependencies in ClickUp's world are considered a form of relationship. If that is a new concept to you, you can head up to this video where we break down the differences between these other dudes here. But for now all we need is to click on the dependency option. This comment is driving me nuts, so we're just going to delete that real quick. So waiting on and blocking are our two directions of a dependency. Is task number two waiting on something or is it blocking something behind it? That's all this is saying. So I'm going to say that task number two is waiting on task number one. And if I wanted to, I could also say under relationships dependency, task number two is blocking task number three, meaning can't do three, which basically is telling me hey, do number one, then number two, then number three through this dependency relationship. Now inside ClickUp 3.0 to find your dependencies once they are set up. We now have buttons on the right hand side, which is a little bit different than what it used to be. We now have waiting showing up here and blocking showing up here. These little icons on the right side will only show up if you have a dependency set up. Now, when it comes to creating dependencies, I already showed you the most popular method, which is using task settings. You can also do the same thing using this little plus button down here in the corner, or from the overview area using your non dominant mouse button and then going to dependencies. And in case that wasn't enough, options, you can also create dependencies by going to a Gantt view and just clicking and dragging things together, such as that right there. Or if you really want to be an overachiever, you can use the Bulk Action toolbar or the Multi select toolbar, whatever you want to call it, whatever version you're in. And you can set these up in bulk as well. Well, there are just so many options when it comes to setting up dependencies, as there are with all things in ClickUp. So that's what dependencies are in ClickUp 3.0, how to find them and navigate your way around them. Now the natural question might be why the heck would I use these? Well, you would want to use dependencies in your workflows whenever you have a designated sequence. Only dependencies. That's the only feature in ClickUp that can really yell at people for doing things out of order. Nothing else, excluding maybe parent tasks and subtasks to an extent, but nothing else really does a great job of telling you hey, do this before that. Other than dependencies. The second reason to use dependencies is the fact that with dependencies you can trigger automations dynamically in a much more flexible way than any other triggering ClickUp. Let me show you what that looks like inside of your automation area. Inside of ClickUp, which if you don't have this active, make sure you have automations enabled in your overall workspace. ClickApps. Inside this automation area, we can set up a new automation that says whenever a task or a subtask is unblocked, meaning that it's no longer waiting on anything, the dependency is cleared, then do whatever. So maybe we want to have it assigned to me now the right side of this automation isn't really important. It's the left side that's remarkable. Dependencies are the only type of related data in ClickUp, the only relationship that will allow you to trigger an automation. If you make a custom relationship, if you have rollups, if you have doc backlinks, that's all cool, and we talk about that in the relationships video I mentioned earlier on. But you can't automate based on any of that data, let alone report on it. But with dependencies you can. So this makes dependencies one of the most powerful forms of relationships right off the bat, even though it's less customizable in some ways than the custom relationship field. Some of you might know from our other videos on that topic. Now, the third reason to use dependencies is just for the visual aesthetics alone. I know a lot of people will use tags in ClickUp to assess priority or to say, hey, work on this first, but if you are doing that, you're introducing a lot of manual work into your workflow. With ClickUp dependencies, we have these little objects here that show up and are clickable right from the get go that will show you exactly what your task is blocking or waiting on, all in one click, all dynamically generated in the event that we have a task be completed, such as Task two. There you see how that icon just changed from yellow to red. Now it's telling me that task number two is the one that is blocking the road for other people down the stream. That's a lot more automatic than using a custom field or a tag, and it gives me a visual indication of which task on this list is most important, or at least, you know, holding up the most people. So that's the what and the why. Last time I covered dependencies I went through a bunch of pro tips at this point, but I thought what might be more useful this time around is to go over some of your burning questions when it comes to actually using dependencies in your own workspaces. So let's pull up some questions with the magic of editing here and talk through them live. So Molly is asking, is there a great way to visualize dependencies without having to use Gantt View, which is a little buggy. Now this comment came in a while ago and since then Gantt View in ClickUp has improved considerably. So I'm going to respond with first saying give Gantt View a good shot here. There are some new features now inside this Gantt view that really allow you to organize your information in a pretty nice way. And when it comes to dependenc, the gold standard of organizing your projects with dependencies is really to use that Gantt view, particularly because inside the Gantt view we can even reschedule things based on dependencies forward and backward, which is a powerful feature that we don't really see in any other area or view of ClickUp other than that Gantt view. So first thing I would do is push back and check out that Gantt view again, since all of the updates that have happened over the last year if, however, Gantt view is not up to speed and you're like, nope, not doing it, can't stand it, that's fine. Your second option will be to use something like a list view. There's actually a column that's available in most views now that is called a dependency column. This is relatively new, I would say maybe only a year or two old, and it will actually show you all dependencies clustered together inside this one singular column as a standard field in ClickUp, meaning you don't have to create it. It's always just there, waiting to be on center stage. The only downside I would say about this view is that it does not clearly tell you what is ahead and what is behind. It just shows you all dependencies side by side. Now, if Gantt and this column solution isn't going to cut it for you, the third option you have around dependencies is just to use the visual indicator that I've already talked about earlier on, which is this guy right here. This does not do a great job of showing you how they all piece together, but it does show you dependencies, albeit in not nearly as visual way as the other two options. Hope that helps. Next question Richard and Mickey were asking how can you handle dependencies when you duplicate a task? When you duplicate a task with the dependency, the dependency is tied to the original. So let me show you what that looks like guys, just to follow along along here. So let's just say we've got task number three. I want to duplicate it and say, hey, I'm going to have a task four when I duplicate that task four, a funky thing happens when I copy the dependency, which is what I want. In this case, it always pulls over the dependency of the original task. So task 3 was waiting on task 2. Task 4 also waiting on task 2. Not very helpful, is it? This is just a known reality. Richard of ClickUp much like mentions, you know when you have like an symbol throughout your ClickUp, any kind of linking like this is essentially just a really glorified hyperlink. So when you have a dependency relationship and you only template or duplicate half of that relationship, you're always going to see the fixed value come over. Meaning if I duplicate this a million times, it doesn't matter. It'll always be connected to task number two. That's because it's essentially just like a URL that ClickUp is remembering. So if we had the URL in the description or the URL in the dependency, doesn't matter how many times we duplicate it, it's Always going to carry over if we want to have things be variable. So that way if we duplicate stuff, it's not connecting to older versions. What we need to do is create our templates or our duplication higher in the hierarchy. For example, if I wanted to say four was waiting on three, three was waiting on two, two was waiting on one, and I want to preserve that whole combination of the relationship there. I actually want to go into the list level one layer higher and duplicate the whole list. If I duplicate that whole list, that will be creating a new version and it will not cause those same issues you're experiencing by just duplicating half of the dependency relationship. To show you what I mean here, I'm going to rename this copy I just created to be task B. And you'll notice that this particular task, task number three, is waiting on task B, not the original, but the new version, because I've now created a duplication at a higher level of the hierarchy. That's your trick for this one. Okay, so if you've got subtasks, duplicate or template the parent task. If you've got parent tasks like we have here, you want to duplicate or template the list. If you want to do the list, do the folder folder, do the space, and so on, you always want to be templating or duplicating one layer higher in the hierarchy. If you want variable data to show up here. Hope that helps. Our next question is from AD, who's asking about MSproject versus ClickUp dependencies? And there's a few levels of trickiness here. Essentially, we want to have our dependencies set our ClickUp due dates. And to do that, we can't just use dependencies, but we can if we use them in combination with a template. For example, if we want to have task number three always 18 days after task number two, we can use the Reschedule Dependencies click app, the one I told you to turn on earlier in this video. And with that on, we can have these dates automatically adjust backwards. So let's just go ahead and say this got delayed by one day, and we go to 4. 5. If I go ahead and do that, you'll notice that these other pieces also got delayed one day, that is the Reschedule dependencies clickapp that we talked about turning on earlier, and that will solve this particular use case. However, the only challenge I'll point out is if we go in the opposite direction in a regular view of ClickUp, that does not occur if I go from the 5th as my due date to the 4th, moving everything one day forward, you'll notice no pop up appeared and my due dates did not move forward. That's currently just how ClickUp works when you're in a regular view. If you want to prevent this and always keep things in lockstep with each other, the easiest thing you can do is use a Gantt view. I do not know why, it seems a little strange to me, and it might be strange to you too, but only inside of this Gantt view can we adjust in both directions. You'll notice if I move it back, everything moves back. If I move it forward, everything moves forward. And that is the only view where this happens. The reason this works is because of under customize customize this guy here for some reason rescheduled dependencies behaves differently when you're in a Gantt view versus any other view in ClickUp. Very odd, but that is the ticket for you. So if this is your question, guys, if you are in this situation, what you want to do is follow our instructions from our last question where we actually created templates for our whole container and then when we want to move dates, use only a Gantt view if you want to move it forward or backwards to make sure that you've got everything adjusting how you need it to be. The last thing I will add on this particular question is please keep in mind with ClickUp, unlike Ms. Projects and more sophisticated project management tools, ClickUp treats all dependencies the same. They are always finish to finish dependencies, meaning if I try to finish number three before number two, it will yell at me, but it will not yell at me for trying to start number three before number two. Does that make sense? So there's many different types of dependencies, start to finish, finish to start, finish to finish, and so on. In ClickUp it is always finish to finish. That's what they're looking at to establish a dependency, one being done so the other can be done. The last question is one I actually don't have a source from because we've gotten it from so many different places. And the question is, will dependencies in ClickUp be changing in ClickUp 3.0? I'm recording this video in ClickUp 3.0 and I can confidently say that not much has changed other than the interface. However, I can also say that this overall look has been around since way before ClickUp 3.0, so I would very much expect this overall experience to get an upgrade, if not just a facelift in the years to come. But in terms of functionality in the short term over the next 12 months or so at ClickUp, we've got no indication from ClickUp's level of events or other documentation that dependencies are going to be changing in any way. So while I do hope there's going to be new developments, new features, and things to be made easier at this point in time, we don't expect any major changes. All in all, dependencies are just one useful feature to help you take your workflow and your processes and embed them inside of ClickUp's interface. If you'd like to learn more about getting your process into ClickUp, feel free to check out our free training below, where I go through kind of our Go to strategy for getting your workflows into your work management software. Totally free in the description below. Be sure to check it out. And if you'd like to learn more specifically about dependencies, you may want to watch this video next. It's a bit of an oldie but goodie, but in this video I go over seven different pro tips for how to use dependence using ClickUp, and while the video is a little dated, don't judge the setting, the film quality. It goes over some really good tips that are still valid here as we go into ClickUp 3.0. Thanks so much for watching everybody and until next time, enjoy the process.