Use Chat for "Private" Messages | ClickUp Tutorial

If you are trying to use ClickUp for one on one private messaging between two individual users, you might have noticed that you can't easily message in ClickUp between two one on one individual users. It's just not a feature that's built in. Even though there are user profiles and avatars and that kind of individual user feeling to parts of ClickUp, there is not a way at this point to send private DMs or messages or emails between different people in your ClickUp team without actually just writing an email. However, we can get a little creative with ClickUp to make this happen. The reason we have to get creative is because by default ClickUp is organized by topics, really context. In order to have a conversation around something, you need to have the something to have a conversation about. So if I want to check in on the status of this YouTube video editing, I would have to go to the task for this YouTube video and post a comment that said something like how's it going? And based on the context of where that comment is, someone who would see it would know, oh, she's asking how's it going on this YouTube video? Specifically regarding the editing because that's the status of this YouTube task. You get what I'm saying? Context is kind of factored into most communication in ClickUp. Now notice I say most. If we want to have an off topic conversation in ClickUp, we actually need to build a space for that off topic conversation to happen. By default it is not there in ClickUp. This is where things like views for chat or dashboards with creative layouts can help us create an off topic area for these kinds of not really task based conversations in ClickUp. So in this video I'm going to flip over to my answer to this question that I just provided for ClickUp office hours for my clients just a few weeks back. But before we do that, let me first say if you are interested in more videos, learning about what you didn't know, you didn't know about ClickUp, or just you using your SOPS or process as a competitive advantage, definitely subscribe to this channel. So without further ado, let's flip to today's video. ClickUp is not meant for one on one communication. Yet I think it's very likely that we will see one on one messaging come up, whether it's through the Reminders feature and the Inbox feature or something entirely different. But right now ClickUp does not have a profile to profile communication structure in place at all. So to actually communicate with just one other person, you would need to create a space, or actually capital S space, but a location of some kind where it's just you and that other person having access. And that would be how you can communicate one on one. You'd have to create that infrastructure. Hey, me again. I just want to pop in with a quick note. You know how I just, you know, past tense me just said that I think reminders will probably evolve to allow kind of one on one messaging. I want to point out that it kind of already does. And that's what's informing this opinion. If you go into your inbox and you look at the pings that show up there, all the stuff that shows up in that inbox location, everything from reminders to tasks, has this little delegate icon. And in that way, if you click that delegate button by creating a reminder and then delegating it, or creating a task and then delegating it, you kind of can send private messages between profiles in that way through the form of reminders specifically. So I could go in here, type a reminder saying, turn on the heat, delegate that to somebody, and it kind of works like a private message because it would show up just in that person's inbox. It's not as a reminder, it's not showing up anywhere else in the workspace. So I did want to mention that that's what I'm referring to. And that could kind of work if you're looking to just send one off messages versus actually having more of a chat or form like experience. So just wanted to pop in with that little note here. We'll get back to the video. So I did mock up a few different ways to do this. This is not a one on one example, but it is an example nonetheless. This is a dashboard. Two dashboard examples here. This is a dashboard that's recreating Slack. And basically what we've done here is we've created four different chat widgets. And I created that by going to add widget, finding chat, giving a name. In this case, I'm just copying Slack in some way. So we might give this, what do we want to call this? Goals. I'm just adding those chat widgets side by side in a layout that works for me. If I can click on it, there we go, dragging it to the size I want. And then I'm just able to type in whatever I want and comment. Now, just like everywhere else in ClickUp, only the watchers are getting notified about this. So if I wanted to make sure that my team was seeing this, I'd want to add them to the dashboards by sharing it and then make sure whoever I wanted to be notified became a watcher on that chat widget. I have a video coming out on 8 7, 2020. I'm pretty sure that is going to be diving into dashboards more in general. And I do do a mini rant about the watcher area. So if this confuses you, check that out. So there's that. And this would be one way to have kind of not one on one but private to a team group communication having a dashboard where it's shared with everybody. But the watchers are segmented. Now obviously everyone else can still see this. This is not truly private. Hint, almost nothing is in ClickUp. So this is one way to go. The other way to go would be to create something just like this, but just call it marketing slack and then only share it with the marketing team and then just get rid of the other areas that will ensure that only marketing can see the communication between them. I think most of the time we're looking at a very open communication structure if you're using ClickUp. So this is probably not your best. This is probably not a huge concern for most of you since most of you are pretty darn open. But this would be another way to create segments or dashboards per team. Now, one on one messages are a challenge and here's one way that you can do it, but it's not really great. This is once again not private, but it is one on one. So here I would add John and Layla as watchers. I would add Jane and Layla as watchers. I would have Jane and John as watchers, the three potential combinations and we would be able to message back and forth. And when I message in here, as long as my watchers were set up properly, both John and Layla would be notified, unless I am Leila, in which case I would not be notified because you don't get notified about your own stuff. But there we go. To use this, I would need to share it with both John and Jane in this imaginary world. And then we would all be shared on this area where we each have kind of private chats between the individual groups. Again, not private because anyone who can see this dashboard can see the other chats. But if you're bad talking people, I mean don't or use email or something else junky like that. So this is one on one messages. Again not private if you want it to be private. And one on one you have to make a dashboard. So sometimes I'll use this. Layla. And what do we Say John Doe one on one. You would actually need to create a one on one dashboard. And again I'm using dashboards. You could also use chat widgets elsewhere. So having a private list, private view, can't really do it many other places that I'm thinking of right now. But this would literally be a dashboard where you just have information between you and this person. So maybe you just. This could be used for performance reviews where you have a few widgets relevant to the person that we are need to do the thing, have it just showing stuff that John did add widgets. And we can have this dashboard where we could go back and forth talking about like anything John needs to know to be able to do his job. This is my one on one conversation area with John Doe. Now here's the problem with this. We have a team of three with three possible combinations of communication. If you have a team of 10 and you want to have one on one ways to communicate with each person in each possible combination of those people, that becomes a lot. So I go back to my beginning statement of saying that using ClickUp for one on one communication that is private is kind of a pain in the ass. But if you are persistent, you can do it. If you're okay with it just being like boss man or boss lady and each employee that's a little bit more doable. Or team leader and individual team member. But when you're looking at having one for every single possible combination of team members in your organization, depending on your team size, that could be a little ridiculous. So I would say I would use this one. I think I have something kind of like this set up in my own. I would consider this one if you really feel like you need that grouped by people, not by topic. And I would use this one if you are grouped more by topic or more of a function based team and you're communicating more about specific areas of the business rather than certain things. So that is how you can sort of get away with having one on one messaging and ClickUp. It's not a perfect solution, but it will get the job done. And I've seen teams have a lot of success with this, especially if they're a smaller team or just building out conversations that don't need to be entirely private. Now I'm curious to hear how you guys are currently working through this in ClickUp. Have you fully centralized your communications to ClickUp or do you still supplement by using another tool in conjunction with ClickUp because you haven't quite been satisfied with this one on one messaging piece. Do you even use one on one messaging? I'd love to hear it in the comments below. And of course, if you liked this video and you'd like to see more things like this, be sure to subscribe, like comment, all that good stuff so the algorithm knows that you enjoy this type of content. And if you'd like to see office hours or this specific kind of stuff in its full form, be sure to check out Clickingup Community this is something that's new just coming out here. It's actually a community we're building for people who want to learn ClickUp at a higher level, for people who want to really understand how ClickUp works and how they can use it in their business. It includes things like a ClickUp crash course, all of the templates I've been using with clients, or I'm building for myself, build along sessions where you can actually see how those templates are created and how you can modify them, behind the scenes interviews with other people who are using ClickUp and a whole lot more. So if you are interested in going behind the scenes into my ClickUp or seeing other people's ClickUp accounts, definitely check out Clicking up Community. It's actually in the description below the information about that new new thing that we're pulling out here. So thank you guys so much for watching this. I will see you on the next video and have a good one.