Tasks in Multiple Lists in ClickUp
ClickUp lets you add a single task to multiple lists at once. The tutorial covers enabling the feature, practical uses like sprint planning and client directories, and how permissions and task statuses work across lists.
Did you know you can have tasks in two places at once inside ClickUp? If not, this video is for you. Today we're going to be talking all about the Tasks in Multiple List feature inside ClickUp. It is not nearly as confusing as it sounds, but it's one that I found that many people just don't know about. So we got you covered. So to turn on this feature for the very first time, we need to go into the Click Apps. This is located inside the settings in the bottom left corner of your account. If you are an admin. If you are not an admin, this is your prompt to phone a friend and have them watch this video instead. Because you will not be able to do this without admin permission. So if you have admin permissions, though, you'll be able to go into your ClickApp Settings, scroll down, way down, until you see. Here we go. Tasks in multiple Lists. This is the feature that you need to enable if you want to have tasks appear in more than one place at the same time. And if you're watching this video, I'm guessing you want that, so enable that for yourself there. Once you have this turned on, you can go back into your workspace and you're going to see a new option when you're actually in the details of a task. So. So it looks something like this. Here we go, we have a task for Susie Q. And at the very top we have this one, which is Move Task. This is showing us our location. And this little move page icon is saying that we can move this task to another spot in our ClickUp hierarchy. Well, hovering right next to that, we now have a plus sign. And this is saying Add Task to another list. Note this is the word add, not move, so it is active, adding it without moving it from the original location. So here we are, we're going to go ahead and put this in the console calls and also in Inbox. Voila. We have these in two places at the same time. So if I go inside my ClickUp account and I go to the Inbox area, we see Suzy Q. If I go to consult calls, we see Suzy Q. We have done it. It is magical. Now, one little feature that pairs nicely with tasks in multiple lists is to actually go into your columns available and look for the hidden columns, meaning a column that is already there but is just not showing up. And turn on the Lists column. This shows all of the locations that a particular task is in. So if I want to widen this, you can see Console Calls and Inbox are both available. Here. There's also a plus sign here. This plus sign, even though it looks slightly different than the other one we were used to, does the same thing as the plus sign inside the task. If I click on this plus sign, it will allow me to add this task to yet another list. And there's really no limit to how many lists you could have something as a part of. Just notice that it gets a little bit cluttered here once you add too many. If I click inside the task, I'm going to see the exact same thing, just in a different layout. Notice as I hover over these tasks, I have the option to switch the home task for a list. The home list is basically the primary location of a task. The home list is what determines what custom fields and statuses are applicable to a task. So if you wanted to say, have it in all three locations, but have it live primarily in inbox, you can do that by clicking the home icon and you see how it kind of shifts the arrangement there. I could switch it to promote content and again it switches things around. It just change where is the primary location. For certain widgets in ClickUp or for certain reporting, you have the option to say only show me tasks that are in their home list. That's one other reason why you want to make sure that the home one is the main location of the task. So let's just try to play this out in real life so you can kind of see what it looks like. Here we have a list with a task that's in multiple locations. The statuses here are pretty unique. New, active, complete, and there's even some custom fields that are pretty unique to this list in. In particular, Suzy Q lives primarily in this leftmost list, which is where all of this stuff is being applied. This is the home list. So that's why susieq has the statuses and custom fields associated with this home list. If we were to look into another list, you'll see how this kind of makes things look a little bit strange. If I go into consult calls where susieq also shows up because she now has different statuses and different custom fields, she shows up at the bottom in a section called from another list. This is basically ClickUp's way of saying, hey, these statuses aren't usual. Just so you know why it's showing up here. There you go. The reason susieq shows up is because as a default in the show area, I have show tasks in multiple lists turned on. If I turn this off, it'll hide tasks that are in multiple locations. But I probably want to keep this on. If I go inside susieq, we'll see that she still has the example custom field there. But if I go inside another task in the same area like Jane Doe, or we'll see that she does not have that checklist field because that checklist field is added in the primary home list of Promote Content for some reason. That's where our example is. So the custom fields that were with Susie originally followed her over into that other list. So did the statuses. And because those kind of mixed like oil and water with the location that she's currently in, she's showing up a little bit strangely compared to the other people. Similarly, if I go into the inbox area, I'll see that she also shows up a little strangely there because she doesn't have the same statuses as the home tasks do. But if all of the locations have the same exact statuses, this issue does not come up. So if I go under Promote Content, if I change her back to having the default statuses now if I go to Susie Q and I go to the consult calls, she's blended in just with the other ones, even though she's in multiple lists because the statuses are identical and that's what we're grouping by in this example, she blends right in. So to have her kind of stand out, if I wanted to have that happen, I might have that list column. There it is. I might have that visible. So I can see that she is indeed in multiple lists, even though she's blending in oh so very well. Now, just a quick note about permissions with tasks in multiple lists. Mainly, there really aren't any. So once you have tasks in multiple lists like we have with suzyq here, suzyq, this task is going to be accessible to everyone in every one of these lists. So as soon as I add susieq to a second list, everyone in that second list is going to have access to the suzyq task, which is just something to keep in mind if you're trying to use multiple lists in your strategy. Just remember, while the custom fields will be kept with whatever the home list is, the permissions do not follow the same way. Permissions are kind of a separate thing which are pretty much blasted wide open once you use the Tasks and multiple Lists feature. So now whoever has access to the Share Constant Calls list is going to have access to suzyq, even if they don't have access to the actual folder where Susie Q is originally living. One of the most common use cases where people will create tasks in Multiple lists is if they are planning sprints inside ClickUp. I actually have a video with every about that up here. So if you want to watch that live stream conversation with him talking about Agile in ClickUp, watch that. The other common use case I've seen people do is when they want to create a central client directory. So they might have something like this where they have service delivery and then they have a list somewhere called client directory. In the client directory they have a task per client like we kind of do here. If I delete these ones where they have the email address, the logo, the general information about the client, and this is where they keep the deliverables for that client engagement. It's important for them to keep all of the client directory custom fields which are going to be things like email, phone number, contract link. Those are a lot of custom fields. They don't want to have them apply to all of the project tasks. They'll create one complex directory with all the different values associated with that client as if it was an address book. And then they'll use tasks in multiple lists to make sure that this general information shows up inside the project for when people are working on it. So in case of John Doe, we'd have John Doe show up in the client directory primarily, but then also show up inside John Doe's website. Then we'd go into John Doe and we'd make sure that he's also added into the service delivery folder. So again, this is the reference tasks, the phone book, and this is the list of to DOS and deliverables that we owe John for the website project we're doing. So I'm going to add him to both lists. So this reference task with general client information, things like who do we talk to, what are their values, what's their time zone, what's their contract link, that kind of stuff all lives here and inside the website area. We have all of the tasks involved in delivering that website to John as well as at the bottom from another list we have the reference task with the general context about who that client is, what they value and all that kind of stu. This becomes one source of truth for all general client information that remains the same from project to project. This is one pretty common way to use the tasks in multiple lists feature because it lets you avoid docs while having a living and breathing client directory. Just keep in mind again that those permissions are per list. So anyone who's working on the John Doe website project can edit the general client info. So you want to be pretty clear about your team expectations and just kind of make sure that people know what what that task is so they don't mark it complete by accident or edit something that's pretty important to you. The downsides of such a flexible system, but I hope that was a helpful walkthrough of the Tasks in multiple lists feature, which again is a click app you need to turn on, then can be adjusted per task and involves changing where a task is appearing, even if it doesn't change the home list of a task. Ooh, and just one quick note here. Subtasks have to move with your parent tasks, so you cannot move a subtask to one location and have a parent task in another. It's not currently possible. So just something to keep in mind. Tasks in multiple lists mean parent tasks, so the child tasks have to follow the parent around like a mother duck and her little ducklings. They're all stuck in the same spot. I don't know why that was the best metaphor I could come up with, but you get the idea and hopefully you won't forget it. Right? If you have any questions about this topic, please do put them in the comment below. And I would also love to hear if there are any other features in ClickUp that you are particularly stuck stuck on. This particular one. The reason I'm making this video is because our clicking up members inside our paid membership community, they've been asking about this. We had a lot of questions come up in recent weeks about this topic, so I wanted to make a standalone video for it. But if you have any questions about a particular feature that is stumping you that we haven't yet covered here on the channel, I would love to hear about it in the comments below. But otherwise, thank you so much for watching and until next time, enjoy the process.
