How to Use ClickUp Folders

All right, let's talk about ClickUp folders. What are they, what are they good for, and what are the things you should watch out for when you're looking to incorporate folders into your ClickUp account? Also, hello, my name is Layla. I'm a vetted consultant, process geek, and someone who tends to default to talking at two times the speed of a normal person. So if you're having trouble keeping up with any of the content discussed in this video, head down below and you will find timestamps to jump to specific moments in this video to reference them later or re reference them and and you can adjust the speed of this video to be slower if that's your preference. But without further ado, let's talk ClickUp Folders ClickUp folders are containers that allow you to group lists in ClickUp when it comes to the ClickUp hierarchy. Folders fall right below spaces, so they are the second highest visual layer of organization that you have inside one workspace. And if that's a whole new concept to you, and I just threw a bunch of stuff at you, you might want to go to this video first and then come back here. Because that video gives you a kind of metaphoric overview of the ClickUp hierarchy and can help kind of the big picture of this make sense. Folders are a lot like Spaces in that they have views, permissions, and other settings to allow you to adjust key features, including custom fields. Now, I did mention that folders have settings very similar to Space, but I also want to highlight that there's one key difference when it comes to click Apps, meaning actual features you can turn on or off, like priority flags, maybe you don't want those, or tags, maybe you don't want those. Maybe those kinds of qlik app settings are managed at the space level and in Settings. Now, when it comes to comparing a folder in a list, we also have a lot of similarities. Both folders and lists have ability to do views, permissions, and other settings like we've talked about, including the ability to create templates just like Spaces. But lists have a few features that folders do not include. This includes the ability to have an owner, basically an assignee for the entire list. Lists have the option to add dates to the list, which a folder cannot do. Lists also have a List Info section which is super super valuable for documentation which a folder does not currently allow you to add. Last but not least, for those of you who use the Portfolio widget, lists report more substantially. They have greater details in a portfolio widget than what you'd see in a folder for these reasons. So when we're comparing spaces, folders and lists in terms of complexity and features, all lists have the most features and folders are there at the bottom as the simplest piece of these three layers of the hierarchy. So now we get what folders are. What's a good time to incorporate folders into your workflow? Well, this might sound a little basic, but the best time to incorporate folders into your setup is anytime you need to group lists. I know that sounds like kind of a cop out answer, but by default I would suggest people start with just spaces and lists. And if you ever get to a point where say you have a list for each new hire and and you want to collect them all under a folder called New Hires, that would be a good time to introduce a folder because it will allow you to group a bunch of lists together. In addition to the ability to collapse and expand, this folder would allow you to have folder level views to summarize all of the stuff inside the folder. So as simple as it sounds, the best time to incorporate a folder is when you actually need to group lists. If you don't feel strongly that, ah, I really need to group these lists together, don't have a space and have folder lists, floating lists and just keep creating lists that way. Sounds like a ROM com, but when the time is right to add a folder, you'll know. And then you can incorporate a folder into it and drag your lists into that folder very easily Related to this first point. Another time where it makes a lot of sense to add in folders is when you need to give permissions to a group of things within one space. So again, let's say that this is our space example here. If I was constantly hiring new virtual assistants on my team of virtual assistants and I always needed to give those virtual assistants access to these six lists, well, it's kind of inconvenient for me to share one list and another list and another list and another list. It would be a lot easier if I just made a folder called VAS and then shared that whole folder with all of my VAs. So when a new VA joins the team, I can just share that one folder and everything inside it is shared as well. And that'll save me time when it comes to adding people and removing them, should that come up. Another good time to introduce a folder into your structure is if you want to have a custom field that's applicable to all lists. So to go back to the example of the VAs, maybe you want every single one of those tasks to have a checkbox to say, was it paid or not paid? Right. Was it billed? Rather than going through and adding every single list, that custom field where you need to go to the column, select the field, look up existing field, check the checkbox, add it in. Rather than doing that six times, I could just go to the folder, add a custom field for the whole folder, and that field would show up in all of the lists when I look into the tasks. So we've talked about summary, we've talked about permissions, we've talked about custom fields. The last major reason, and certainly not the only reason reason, but the last major reason to incorporate folders in your workspace is to give context. Let's just imagine that your business has a list for each client, right? You have John Doe and you have Susie Q. Those two lists make sense to you because you know those are your clients. But let's think about other people here. If you have members in your workspace, they're going to see which space those lists are in. So you might have a space called Clients and those two lists are in it. Great. Other members are going to understand that those two lists, based on where they're at, are clients. But maybe you also want your team to know what service their clients for. So adding a folder in that instance would give people context. So you would have a space called Clients, a folder called ProcessDriven Members, and a list for each of your clients. Then every member that goes into that client space is going to see, ah, these are our process driven member clients. Great. I know why they're here. I know what they're here for. To take that example to one more extreme, let's imagine you have guests in your workspace, and that's a different role in ClickUp, which you can learn more about here. If you have guests, they do not even see spaces. No context on spaces. So all they're going to see is John Doe and Susie Q just floating in there. Shared with me. They have absolutely no context for what that is. Is that a collaborator? Is that a sponsor? Is that a service A purchaser? Is that a service B purchaser? They have no idea. So if you have guests in your workspace at all, incorporate folders to replicate the spaces that they are not seeing. So in that case, if I was working with guests, I might create a folder called Clients of Process Driven Membership and put those two lists in there. So that way all of that context is delivered to my guests, who again, do not see spaces. Now that was a lot of info. So I'm going to wrap us up here with just some pro tips around folders. Pro tip number one is it can feel like lists get stuck in folders. In fact, some of you have reached out to me with this issue where you add lists into a folder and then you feel like you can't get them out. But the fact is you actually can put lists not in folders. I talked about this a little bit earlier on the video, but click on those three dots on a given list and there is an option there to move out of folder or to make that list folderless. Pro Tip number two is that you can reorder your list alphabetically or manually. Just keep in mind that your folder list stuff, the stuff that's just floating in the space for guests, will still show up kind of chaotically no matter what you do there. The last Pro tip I have here is more of a Pro watch, meaning watch out for Nested folders are we're being told they're coming very soon, so at the time of recording this we do not have a definitive date. But but I am going to put in the description below the feature request for nested folders. So if you click on that link, no matter when you're watching this video, you should see the current status as to whether that feature has come out yet or not. Nested folders, in theory, will be the feature to allow a folder to be inside a folder, and we don't know how many layers they're talking, but ClickUp has mentioned that it's in the works. We have no idea again on the timeline, but that is my last Pro tip for you. So if you are someone who's feeling cramped in the ClickUp hierarchy right now, spaces, folders and lists don't feel like enough. Check out that feature request in the description. Give it an upvote if it's not already a thing by the time you're watching this. And as long as you're following that thread, you'll be updated when that feature does eventually come out. Or maybe you'll just see it when you click down there that it is already out. But at the time of recording this video, nested folders is still in the works and something you definitely want to keep your eye on. So that is our video all about folders. I know. So exciting. If you have any questions about folders that I did not cover in this video, please do leave them in the comments below. And while you're down there, do your public service earn some good karma and like and subscribe. Those activities cost you nothing and they help the YouTube algorithm show this video to more people. So if you want to support this channel for free, just click the button over here. You could already be done by now. Thank you for your support and thank you for watching either way. And until next time, enjoy the process. Sat.