Switching from ClickUp to SmartSuite (+ 6 Common Mistakes)

As Both a verified SmartSuite consultant and a vetted ClickUp consultant, we get a lot of comments here on the channel asking for our tips about how to make the migration between these two powerful tools without causing a lot of chaos for yourself or your team. Well, actually, I thought that question would make for a great video. So here we are today. What I'm going to do my best to cover in this video is, well, a lot of stuff, but we're going to start off with some definitions. I want us to talk through the hierarchies of each of these tools so we can understand where they are the same and where they are quite different. From there, we're going to talk about translation. In other words, if I have a folder in ClickUp, what should that be in SmartSuite and vice versa. Once we go over translation, we're going to switch over to common mistakes, and I want to break down some of the hiccups I see people get stuck on when they're making that migration from ClickUp to SmartSuite. And despite how long I'm sure this video is going to be, I am sure I'm going to miss things. So as we go through, please do drop in the comments if you have any questions of your own that we don't yet cover. Oh, and I should say thank you so much to SmartSuite for sponsoring this video. If you guys want to try out SmartSuite for yourself, please do use our affiliate link below. Sign up Explore, check it out and it'll help you follow along with this tutorial at the same time. Ready? Let's go. Assuming you're switching from ClickUp to SmartSuite, let's begin our review section by going inside of ClickUp. Here we are in ClickUp and the beginning of our hierarchy appears up at the very top of our screen. We're going to where we can see our workspace name. This workspace is where we have all of our things happening and is generally your business name. Below this we have spaces in the hierarchy, while we do have an Everything view as well, which kind of summarizes it all up. Spaces are the next kind of permissions and organizational layer that we can use in ClickUp. Spaces are where many of our app features can be turned on or turned off, and it's also where we can set again those space wide permissions. Below spaces we have the ability to add folders. Folders are containers, much like spaces that carry their own permissions, and a few settings like statuses to help us cluster our list together now, that brings me to lists. Lists are one layer lower in the ClickUp hierarchy, and they can choose to be inside of or outside of folders, but they do have to be inside a space. Lists allow us to set certain fields. They do contain the ability to restrict permissions, and they're used for just about all of the things we actually need to do in ClickUp, because only only on lists can we create tasks in ClickUp. So inside this list, if I give it a click, you'll see we have one task sitting right here around this split test we're doing. And this is the overview of the ClickUp hierarchy. One note I'll make before we move over into SmartSuite is that in ClickUp, these tasks do indeed have permissions attachments with them as well, but nothing else really does. So our fields, we can make them hidden from guests, but not really internally. So our last layer of permissions power still stops at the task level. In addition to tasks, we have some other objects inside of ClickUp, like dashboards and documents that are kind of broken out into their own area. But for the most part, that's the hierarchy in a nutshell. Now let's flip over into SmartSuite land. In SmartSuite, we also start our journey with Workspace. At the top of our hierarchy, we can see the name right up here, very similar to what we saw in ClickUp. Below our workspace, we have solutions, which is where our actual data is housed. In this case, if I go inside this particular solution, you can see that we have apps where we contain different databases of information altogether. We can have many, many apps spread out across the top of this given solution here. But within each of those apps, we are going to find records. Records like the one you see here can represent all sorts of different things, including tasks or projects or dogs or split tests. And that's kind of the core of the SmartSuite hierarchy. Inside SmartSuite, we have permissions controls at the workspace, solution and app level, but we do not have it at the records level. Instead. Instead, we have it at the field level. So in SmartSuite, we are able to restrict our fields down with permissions, which makes for some interesting possibilities that are quite different than what you're used to in ClickUp. All right, so that's an overview of these two hierarchies. Obviously, they have a lot in common, but they're also pretty different. So let's talk about translation. So how exactly do we go about getting our information from ClickUp to SmartSuite? Well, the first thing we want to do before reorganizing is to actually pull pull our information over, if you haven't already. The way to do this would be following the import instructions inside the SmartSuite help docs at the time of recording. The Go to import method for ClickUp users is the CSV import, meaning we're going to take a section of ClickUp and export it as a CSV A spreadsheet, and then we're going to import that same file into SmartSuite. You can find detailed instructions on this inside the SmartSuite doc, so I'm not going to go over that in detail, but I should point out now, by the time you're watching this video or very soon after, there should also be a more automated wizard available for ClickUp users. I know SmartSuite's developing this right now, and it'll probably be there by the time you watch this video, so be sure to check out the Data Import section which we will link inside this video for the most up to date information on this method. Whatever method you choose though, once you complete this import, all of your information, both right now and historical information from ClickUp will get migrated over to SmartSuite, and that's when you can really start organizing the the reason we do this import is to ensure we don't lose all of that rich history of events and happenings that have happened inside your ClickUp account. Ooh. But I should say if you're someone who's never really used ClickUp for more than a few days, you probably can skip the import step. But for the rest of you, we do that import we're over here now it is time to translate. For the sake of brevity here, what I'm going to do for this next section of the video is list one area in ClickUp and tell you what that would be most often in general inside of SmartSuite. For all the things I list off, it is simply a rule of thumb. They are rules that can be broken based on certain factors, like certain features you need or other requirements of your workflow. But these are the general translations when it comes to ClickUp to SmartSuite disclaimer disclaimer okay, and if you'd like to see all of this information this translation in a written format inside our blog post, check the description for a write up of all of these, which will probably make your organization a bit easier. Our first translation is workspace. A workspace inside of ClickUp is in fact the same as a workspace in smartsuite There are some feature differences and so on, but more or less same thing. Next up, we have Spaces and ClickUp. These spaces right here, these would be roughly equivalent to solutions inside of SmartSuite right here. Now, below spaces, we have folders in ClickUp, and this is where our translation starts to get a bit murky. What would folders be inside of SmartSuite? Considering our apps to don't really have a container of any kind. For some use cases, depending on what your folder is, your folder will become its own Solution Inside of SmartSuite, you might end up getting rid of the space that was in ClickUp and instead just having that folder as the overall container. However, in other circumstances, you might find that that folder becomes an app and you just break things out by a field using the group methodology. And that's enough organization for you. When you pair grouping features with powerful views, this can usually get the job done. So despite this being a bit of a tie, I would say in general, a folder will be closest to an app in SmartSuite. Next up in ClickUp, we have these lists. When we compare that to SmartSuite, we're going to be looking at apps in SmartSuite. However, because of the power of SmartSuite's apps relative to ClickUp lists, sometimes you might find yourself being able to consolidate lists. So rather than having to have for lists, you might just have one app. They just kind of all cluster together because of how sub items and some other options work to give you a bit more flexibility. More on that later. Next up in ClickUp, we have our views, which is how we see our tasks. And in SmartSuite, those are also views. Views have folders and the options are a little bit different, but more or less that's the same thing. Beyond Views, we have tasks in ClickUp. These guys right here. As we talked about in the past, these tasks are comparable to records in SmartSuite. So if I go over to SmartSuite, give this a click, this record here is my equivalent. If we want to make it even more parallel, we can adjust our formatting here in ClickUp 3.0 and have it look very similar to what we are used to seeing in SmartSuite below. Tasks in ClickUp, we have custom fields. These guys right here in SmartSuite we just call them fields, but they are more or less the same thing. Albeit in SmartSuite they do have those permissions features, which is kind of a nice value add. But custom fields, fields, pretty easy translation. Next up, we have the activity panel here inside the task modal in ClickUp. In SmartSuite we actually break these things apart and rather than having comments and activity all on top of each other, we break them out into two little buttons here, Activity History and Communication center, but more or less the same kind of setup. Below Tasks and ClickUp we have subtasks and those are closest to sub Items inside of SmartSuite, which are fields that we can break down to show greater details around a particular thing using subitems. We also have checklists in ClickUp which are comparable to checklists in SmartSuite. Very comparable features between those two. Okay, we're about halfway through. I know this is a lot to remember, so just to remind you, we have the blog version of this if you'd like to just read all this and have it as a reference, be sure to subscribe and like while you're at it and down there in the description just to support this channel because I would appreciate it a lot. But with that let's go to the next half. Let's power through. The next section in ClickUp that we want to have a comparison to is usually the home area. Kind of our main hub of our day inside of ClickUp in SmartSuite, where we operate out of is My Work. It's this area right up here in the top corner. My work is closest associated with the My Work section of home in SmartSuite. There's not an exact parallel between these two tools when it comes to home. Next up we have Pulse inside of ClickUp that's probably closest compared at this point to the member directory in SmartSuite. It shows up a little differently, but it's more or less the same functionality. For our last overall ClickUp feature that we want to translate I want to talk about. The clip feature is one that our team here uses a lot and I'm sure many of you do as well. This is ClickUp's team and voice recording feature that allows you to send quick audio files or video files to one another. Right now when it comes to SmartSuite, there is not a built in functionality for this. However, you can add it in using ply. I talked all about ply in this video up here. So adding that button in by integrating with your video tool of choice such as Dub or Loom. We have links for those in the description. SmartSuite does a lot of stuff ClickUp doesn't, and in this case ClickUp has a clip feature that isn't there out of the box, but you can add it using ply. Next up we have dashboards inside of ClickUp dashboards are their own object type inside the ClickUp universe found in the Dashboards kind of directory area. And when we want to translate these over to SmartSuite, at first it can feel a little confusing, but all we need to do to bring Dashboards to life inside of SmartSuite is to add a view. That's right, they're not their own area in the hierarchy at this point point they fill right in to your normal work areas. And you can build just about any dashboard you have in ClickUp inside these dashboards by using the widgets that are available. For more about dashboards in SmartSuite, you can watch this video, but they're super intuitive and I imagine if you figured out the ClickUp ones, this will be a breeze. Beyond dashboards, ClickUp also has a whiteboards feature now worked into their sidebar where you can add little whiteboarding sections. I don't use this feature a whole lot, but if you're someone who does, your translation to SmartSuite is going to be a little bit interesting. There's not a build built in whiteboarding feature inside of SmartSuite, but you can embed whiteboarding tools inside of SmartSuite. What you might do is create a dashboard view, add a widget that is some kind of embedded resource, such as, let's just say maybe Figma here, add that into your dashboard view, and once you have that actual file embedded here, just max it out to full screen and there you go. You've got a whiteboard right inside your work management software. And because it's not directly created by the work management software, you're also going to have some more powerful features that it's harder to see inside of ClickUp Whiteboards. For more on ClickUp Whiteboards, you can watch our video up above. After whiteboards, I also want to hit on documents here. This is one that I know a lot of folks rely on heavily in ClickUp. It's not a tool that I use for so many reasons that we talk about in this video here, but these documents, when Translated over to SmartSuite, work very similarly to dashboards in SmartSuite, there is not a separate area or separate hierarchy for documents. Instead, once again, we're going to look to what we already have and expand that out. In this case, to recreate documents in SmartSuite, the easiest thing to do is to actually create documents inside your records themselves. I talk a lot more about that in this video up here, but leave it to say you basically a long writing field like this and utilize that as your document. You can even use sections and pages and collapsing toggles to make it nicely formatted and you get all the structured data benefits of having it in a record. Now I think we've hit on most of these here, except goals. The Goals feature in ClickUp is one that I don't use a whole lot for various reasons that we talk about in this video. If you are looking to recreate goals in ClickUp, you'd probably want to create them as records. For right now there's not a built in goals feature. Instead records because they are more powerful than ClickUp tasks, you can network them together to build a goal setting system. For an easy example of how to go about tracking your goals inside a SmartSuite locate the template that they have for their you some different ways to organize your goals and objectives directly inside of SmartSuite using linked records or just breaking things out by typing them. So those are all the main areas of ClickUp translated into smartsuite language. I hope it makes sense and if I missed any, please let me know in the comments. But before we move on to common mistakes, I do want to share some mistakes I have made around the translation process here. I want to talk about some ClickUp features that don't quite translate and you know, you might have a beautiful whiteboard. There's not a really good way to share that. So you'll just take a screenshot and set views when they were available, but when they weren't I would fall back into that export and screenshot. But the fact is in SmartSuite getting your information out is a little bit easier because they have some more sophisticated exporting functionality, particularly around email. And they also have a document design feature which allows you to take information that is organized in SmartSuite and turn it into a beautifully generated PDF or some kind of other file. Early on I did didn't really acknowledge this was there and I fell onto my default habits and I want to make sure you don't do that as well. So if you're making that switch, watch yourself. If you find yourself getting into export or screenshot territory, mistake number three is HR directories. In ClickUp there's not really a strong overall member directory. You do have your profiles in place, but they're not that great and I don't know, I never use them. You probably don't either. In SmartSuite the profiles are a bit more powerful, they show you a lot more information. So if you're someone like me who had a profile or HR human directory inside your ClickUp account, don't bother migrating it. In most cases it can be nice if you have advanced data in there, but for most things you will not need to do that because the member directory inside of SmartSuite and all of the fields that are baked in relieves you of having to have that dedicated structure inside your account. Instead of having to have a time off calendar or a personal profile like we have in our ClickUp, you can instead use the member directory and the working hours settings in SmartSuite and avoid that whole translation number. 4. Automations In ClickUp you need automation for everything, right? Anything you want to have happen automatically automate it. The only sneaky tricks you have are things like having a template applied from a form and other hacks we talk about in this video. But in general automations are your best friend in ClickUp when they work. But as much as I love ClickUp automations and automating everything in SmartSuite, when I tried to bring that over it was kind of a waste of time because there are so many automations in SmartSuite that aren't in the automations area. Things like default values that you can set for every field in the field settings and different options to allow you to automatically populate field values allow you to automate without having to set up separate automations throughout your solution. So if you're switching from ClickUp to smartsuite, really take a closer look at what your automations are. Odds are you may not need as many as you did in ClickUp because you can factor them into your overall design by using the default values and other pre made settings inside of SmartSuite. The next mistake is one that's a little bit for the more advanced ClickUp users who are making the switch, and this is around relationships and linked records in ClickUp. When we have relationship fields, which I use all the time, I'm guessing you do as well. These relationships allow us to connect information together by linking them or creating custom relationships, but once you do those linking things, you're kind of shackled. You can't group by that information sort by that information, filter by that information, let alone report on it. That'll change soon I hope, but right now you're kind of stuck. So if you want to have data connected together, but you also want to use that connection to group or organize information, you have to track information twice. You might have a task connected to a client and that's a relationship in ClickUp, but if you want to also have things grouped visually by that client you need to create a list or a folder or a custom field to break things out visually. Because in ClickUp, relationships cannot be used for any of those other things. In SmartSuite, that's no longer true. You can use the link records in SmartSuite and group by them, filter by them, sort by them, even make dashboard reports based on them. And so you can often get away with removing many layers of your hierarchy that you're used to having in ClickUp by just leveraging this feature. Grouping by related Data or in SmartSuite linked records allows you to get rid of things like folders and lists that don't serve a purpose, and can also help you eliminate custom fields that are again, just double tracking data. Now, the last mistake I made when switching from ClickUp to SmartSuite is not realizing how the support was kind of different between the two tools. When it comes to ClickUp, the community of user support that you mainly have is inside of Facebook, a platform that I it's like the dentist office of social media platforms. I know we're on there too, but ugh, gosh, Facebook, that's where you are for ClickUp. And so when I switched over to SmartSuite, that's immediately where I went to look. I was like, where's the official Facebook group? And there really wasn't one. And it took me a little bit and Some help from SmartSuite to get connected with their actual user group, which is actually off of Facebook on its own platform. SmartSuite's user community is kind of a totally different vibe than ClickUp's one, but finding it and finally getting connected with those features and being able to be updated on when things changed was a really nice compliment. Before finding this community, I was mainly just operating off of the public feedback boards that both ClickUp and SmartSuite have on canny, which is the public feedback board which we will link in the description below. And I particularly enjoy the ability to join and subscribe to certain areas so I can get updates that are a lot more detailed than just the topical marketing messages you're used to seeing with SaaS onboarding. So that's my last tip here. When you're translating and you're looking for support, skip Facebook, although there are some great groups on there as well. But head over to this community because that's where all the good stuff really is. Okay, so long story long, that is how you can take your information from ClickUp, bring it over into SmartSuite, and rearrange it to work for the hierarchy at hand. Now, if this was a lot to cover and you'd prefer a visual reference, please do check out the blog version of this video for all of the links and comparisons we talked about in here. And if you or your team could use a little bit of support on your migration journey, do check out the description where we have information about our how to SmartSuite mini course as well. We help users get up and running inside a SmartSuite and learn all of the daily habits you need in order to thrive and survive inside a SmartSuite workspace in less than one day. It's perfect for your team or for yourself if you're a newcomer. And do remember, despite everything I shared in this video, at the end of the day all we're doing here is switching platforms. Your process should not care what platform you are working in. Yeah, it's great to have the greatest and shiniest and most amazing tool possible, but it is not essential in order to have your business process succeed. If you're struggling to make the migration From ClickUp to SmartSuite, it may be an indicator that your workflows themselves could use a little love and care. If you're not quite sure what I mean by workflows or how you can make your processes stronger before you even start building them inside of SmartSuite, check out the next video over here where we're going to to go over how you can define your process and workflow and then take that and put it into SmartSuite once and for all. Thanks so much SmartSuite for sponsoring this video, guys. Use our affiliate link below if you want to get your SmartSuite account set up today and until next time, enjoy the process.