Tips For monday.com Users: The Art of Automating Boring Tasks

by Deb Cinkus, PMP

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Thursday, 14 April 2022

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Responding to emails, assigning tasks, sending out notifications . . . these are just some of the manual duties you are stuck with daily.

Yes, they're important, but let's face it — they're also boring and incredibly time-consuming.

Fortunately, there's an answer to this problem, and that's automation. Automation uses computer algorithms to take care of these tedious tasks for you.

Is automation a popular thing? Well, a 2020 McKinsey survey found that two-thirds of businesses automate at least one of their business processes, cutting down the time, finances, and resources they have to spend on the little things. So, yes, automation is pretty well-liked.

Ready for even better news? Monday.com users can use "automation recipes," or a combination of triggers, to automate various tasks and optimize daily workflow. Don't worry — you don't need an advanced coding degree to use automation in your Work OS.

Let's break down everything automation.

The benefits of automating (boring) tasks

Besides removing the dullness from routine tasks, what are the other benefits automation provides?

Monday.com automations give you the following advantages:

• Increased productivity: Employees spend an average of three hours per day on tasks that could easily be automated instead. Considering the average workday is eight hours, that's nearly 40% of the entire day. Can you imagine the amount of high-value work you could complete instead of worrying about the little things?
• Reduced human error: Human errors are inevitable, regardless of profession or level of expertise. This is especially true of repetitive tasks. After doing the same thing over and over, concentration fades, leading to slip-ups. That's where the consistency of automation saves the day, leading to increased efficacy with less errors.
• Ensured compliance: Compliance with rules, regulations and security standards is not always easy, particularly when there's a lot of it to follow. This is where automation saves the day once again, as it can ensure compliance and keep up with any new security or regulatory updates.
• Lower costs: Who doesn't love to save their company money? Over 30% of business leaders have stated automation helped save their company on labor costs. With inflation ramping up lately, everyone is looking for ways to save and automation can deliver.
• Saved time: And finally, automation helps you save time, perhaps the most precious resource of them all. Get back to focusing on the bigger picture.

Now that you know all about the amazing benefits of automation, let's get to the nitty-gritty of monday.com automation.

Five Tips for Monday.com Automation

When you first look at the monday.com platform, you may feel a little overwhelmed. After all, the software offers some of the most comprehensive automation tools on the market. Throw in the phrase "automation recipe," and things may look even more perplexing for you.

Let's not get too technical, though. These initial monday.com tips and tricks will help you get an understanding of what you can automate:

1. Do a productivity audit

Before trying out any of the handy automation tools, monday.com users should undergo a productivity audit to see what they need to focus on first. For example, begin by asking yourself some essential questions:

Are you killing precious time by sending out the same emails over and over again?

How about having to keep track of those pesky project updates?

Or perhaps employees are struggling to remember important deadlines?

Nailing down your problem areas will help set you up for success and determine what automation flows you should implement. Some of monday.com's most popular automation categories include:

1. Status change: Initiates an action, such as sending out an update on a certain task, when the status changes.
2. Recurring tasks: Sets up recurring tasks that occur regularly each period (great for those repetitive chores!)
3. Date reminders: This is for those pesky deadlines. Get reminders on items as they come due or streamline your automations to only notify your team when something slips and becomes past due.
4. Item creation: Let monday.com take care of the manual effort of setting up a new item when something specific happens, whether that's a project or a simple task being completed.
5. Custom recipes: Feeling innovative? Custom recipes allow you to create an automation workflow that is entirely your own, tailored to your team's needs.

You can start with a small handful of automation recipes and then gradually expand them, as you learn more about helps you meet your company goals.

2. Integrate your favorite tools

Already have tools outside of your Work OS that you use and love? You can integrate them right into the monday.com system to help with your automation efforts. For instance, if you use an email marketing campaign like Mailchimp, you can integrate your Mailchimp campaigns into the system to sync all your information. Even better, monday.com ups your game by getting all the latest stats on your email marketing performance.

But it's not just all about email. You can integrate your lead generation with the HubSpot integration, event data analysis with the Eventbrite integration, or social media advertising with the Facebook ads integration, to name a few popular examples. You don't have to leave what you love behind. On the contrary, using monday.com's automation integrations makes working with these integrations even better.

And if by some chance monday․com's built-in automations aren't enough for your specific needs, you can always use Make (formerly Integromat) or Zapier to boost the automation power even higher.

3. Up your team’s email game

By far, one of the biggest mundane tasks anyone has to face at the office is dealing with their emails. In fact, “email fatigue,” or the burned-out feeling that employees get from having to keep up with and compose and reply to emails, has only gotten worse in recent years. At the same time, a missed or late email response can lead to other issues like miscommunication between team members, leading to forgotten deadlines and project delays — you know the drill.

Fortunately, email automations on monday.com can help you and your team keep track of all emails opened, sent, and received across the board, both to each other or with clients. For instance, you can trigger notifications to send a specific email when certain requests are complete.

To save even more time, you can configure preset email templates that make sending out ad-hoc emails quick and easy right from monday․com, no matter what kind of message you’d like to send. You can also personalize the template for each recipient. There will be no more wasted time coming up with the right words to say each time for every single email.

4. Nail your sales operations

Automation can help you make a sale, thanks to the tools provided by sales automation. You can automate countless sales tasks, including updating the status of your lead generation, assigning team members to leads, and organizing important data like deal size, close probability, and forecast value. Best of all, you can receive reports on sales success to see just how productive your sales process is (and come up with better strategies if needed).

Monday.com has many sales and CRM features that allow you to customize your sales operations, whether you're just beginning your sales journey, are currently nurturing leads, or need post-management sales automation. You can automate various tasks directly from the templates themselves, sourcing all your data and info from one place. Sales automation allows you to focus more of your precious time on the most important part of sales: the customer.

5. Get visual with customizable views

Of course, you can't gauge how well your automation is going without getting a good view of it all. Monday.com offers visual evaluation tools like charts, graphs, calendars, and progress reports to give you an idea of your progress. You can also receive feedback from your team via forms so you can adjust any processes as needed.

Even better, you can keep all this information directly in your monday.com boards and dashboards. After all, automation is only as successful as you track it.

The Takeaway

As you can see, monday.com offers plenty of ways for you to decrease the time you have to spend taking care of those dull but oh-so-important tasks. Of course, it's not just about getting rid of the boring factor. Automation via monday.com can increase your entire team's productivity, efficiency, and compliance while decreasing your company's costs and wasted time. This can help you focus on the bigger goals you have set out for your company.

You may still be concerned about getting started with monday.com's software, even with no coding required. That's totally understandable. As an official monday.com partner, Polished Geek is your go-to monday.com consultant that works with you in fully understanding, using, and optimizing the automation platform. You don't have to sail this ship alone. Schedule a time to chat with us so that you can start reaping the benefits of automation now, and leave those boring tasks behind.