In this episode, I talk about ClickUp. This is my application of choice for task and project management. What it is about, my top five favourite features and tips on what to do you when you first explore the possibilities of Clickup.

If you have not had a look around ClickUp yet pop on over and signup for a free account.

Functionality and possibilities are endless. This solution creates the flexibility to design a space that is custom-built for you and your business.

Think of this as a big spreadsheet. Lines and rows of Data. ClickUp creates a focused view to removing the noise and creates a simple way to manage your day and business operations.

Where to start

Take it slow. It can be quickly overwhelming when you dive straight in with excited adding all the things and ending up in a bit of a mess.

ClickUp holds a vast array of functions, supporting many areas and types of businesses. This however can become daunting very quickly if you add all the things.⁠
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To encourage a successful implementation follow the below tips.⁠
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Step One: Design your workspaces⁠

Before you jump in and create a mountain of spaces and folders take some time to⁠

• Think about the structure of your business and replicate⁠
• What is the purpose for each space/folder/list?⁠
• What functionality, settings, and views might suit?

By taking the time to design your workspace, fighting the overexcited urge to just jump in and play will – I PROMISE YOU – save you soo much time cleaning up.⁠

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Step Two: Select a view you are familiar with.⁠

• Moving from Asana – select list view⁠
• From Trello – select board view⁠
• Creating a familiar setting will help you to transition and embrace all that ClickUp has to offer.⁠

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Step Three: Explore and learn⁠

Now you are familiar with the basic workings of ClickUp take it a step further⁠

• What problem are you trying to resolve⁠
• Which function will solve this problem⁠
• Understand all the info and how this works within your space⁠

ClickUp has a fabulous resource library when you are investigating new functions.⁠

Once you are familiar with the workings of ClickUp explore the functions and discover what is going to support efficiency in your business.

My Favourite Features Right Now..

• Home View

• E-mall Integrations

• Forms

• Custom Fields

• Dashboards

ClickUp releasee new features all the time. If you want to keep up to date with the latest pop on over and sign up for my weekly newsletter where I share a tip each and every week. And as a bonus receive a copy of “Decluttering with Four D’s”

I’m really serious about creating space and time freedom in my world.

Well you are in the right place. I love supporting my clients to explore the possibilities of ClickUp and design this to support your business to reach operations success.

This is how we can work together. The Artisans Services 

I look forward to connecting and supporting you through this process.

Coming up soon.

Ever wonder what it would be like to create organisational structure in your day?

Join the waitlist for our upcoming ClickUp MasterClass 

Connect with Nicole on Instagram.

Visit Nicole’s Website.

Get the Action Takers Guide to ClickUp here.

Join the Take Control with Nicole Facebook group here.

Join the waitlist for The Members Lounge here

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Full Episode Transcription

Welcome to take control with Nicole. as business owners, we experienced firsthand the fine line between our personal and business lives. During our conversations, we will look at simple hints and tips to create time, reduce, overwhelm, and help you to navigate through your journey to where you want to be. If you’re looking for smarter ways to work, and create space and time freedom in your day, then you’re in the right place. All right, let’s go.

Hello, hello, and welcome to this week’s episode of take control with Nicole. So this one I think everyone’s been waiting for for a little while. As you know, my favourite tool of choice is ClickUp and I have been talking every episode I’ve had so far about doing an episode, just don’t click up. So here we are. Yay, I am so excited about this, because click up for me is the really the only tool you need to start to bring in structure, organisation, organisation systemization automations, all the things automations into your world, and it’s going to just make things easier for you on the day to day. You know, most of my clients come to me and they’re like, I want to create simplicity in my world. I want to be more organised. I don’t want to miss those meetings I keep missing. What do I do? So then I talked to them about their task management solution or their project management solution, what and how are they capturing their actions for their business? How are they working day to day is it very much haphazard and just grabbing the next thing off the shelf, or they had spending some time planning their days out and having a solution that’s actually going to make it easier and support them on that journey. And click up. So when I first started my business last year, this was one of the first things that I knew as a business owner, I needed to implement to my business. So I did the thing that we all do. I went out, I googled, I searched I contacted and communicated with my community, what were they using? What do they love and dislike about the different solutions? I looked at Asana Trello, Monday, all the things, and then I found click up. Now yes, it can be a little bit overwhelming when you first start. If you are already a clickup user, then well, you’re on your way to be amazingly organised. If you haven’t delved under the sheets yet and discovered, click up. Take your time when you are moving into this solution. It’s about understanding what and how you need to work and then building and customising it to to suit you, there is no one person or one business, that’s exactly the same. That’s why I do love clickup. Because of the fully customizable options that are available at the click of a button, we have full control, we don’t need to go off to the development team and go, Hey, I want this in place, can you please get this done, you are able to really have quite a lot of control on designing your workflows, adding those automations filtering things the way that you want them to to be filtered the way that you like to work and how you understand looking and creating those custom statuses. So for instance, if there’s a process that you know, suits one way of working that’s really staged driven, versus just the standard type canberran in progress, going complete all of that, you can do that.

Everything’s customizable. As I said, warning, it can become quite overwhelming. So really strip it back to start with getting there, have a play, and then think about how you were going to be using this in your business. But today, I wanted to share with you my top five favourite features that I currently love right now in my world in my business, and then I share with my clients. Where are we going to start the home view, our goodness, this has only just been released about maybe three weeks ago, potentially four weeks, and it’s a game-changer. So previously, I would design click up using a custom field to remove all the noise. So remove all of the tasks that are creating your world and honing in on your priority actions for the next coming week or two weeks. But now with the home view, it does it all for you. You’re utilising the start and finish time to actually start to plan in, so I’ve talked about task blocking, start to task block your tasks in clickup. If you aren’t our click abuser, stop this right now pop into click up, go to the home view and have a look at it. You have your lists in there you have your tasks for the day, based on the times and the actions that you are going to be doing throughout your day. In your calendar view, you’ve got your trending tasks. So these are the things that you’ve been in and out of, quite often, they pop up the top, and you also have line up. So line up is another function that I’m not really going to dive into today. But in a nutshell, it really can help you prioritise what’s important. But if you have a team, you can actually add things to their lineup and go, Hey, actually, this is more of a priority than what you’ve got going on in there at the moment. And I had that conversation with them. So home view, this is a game changer in my in my views. So have a look at home. And let me know what you think. The next one email integrations. So mail in clickup is, again, another new functionality here. So we’ve always had the ability to connect our calendars up. So be that Google 365, etc. but now they’ve taken it a step further, if you are a G Suite user, then you will be in heaven here because you can have your emails fully integrated, all managed within clicker. If you’re 365 years old, like me, that’s still fine. I have mine connected, and it is fabulous. Now there’s two things with email integrations. If you are just looking to connect your application outside of clickup, to then be able to send tasks directly from your emails. So simple. I’m going to use 365 as an example, because that’s what I work in. But you add a plugin to the application and 365 You can also add in the plug into your Chrome browser. And it is as simple as clicking the clickup eye icon within those applications.

And then sending the task directly from your inbox, creating it as a new task in click up in the right space in the right folder in the right list, you’re able to assign people’s responsibilities straight there, you’re able to set deadlines, you can add comments, you can change the title, all the attachments come across as well. It’s a no brainer, I talk about not using your inbox as a to do list. So this is such a fantastic addition to following on with that method. When you are cleaning your inbox, we’re using that 4d methods that I talked about, that is one of those items that you’re going to be moving over to do later on as you start to prioritise your tasks. The other view on your email integrations, his clickup has now updated it. So you can actually manage your emails within clickup. And you can also communicate through with your clients through the tasks, you can send emails directly from clickup. So have a look, I’ll actually put in the shownotes a link to their information around setting that function up. I’d love to know as well. Let me know, are you using this right now? Could this be a possibility for your business and you’ll love it honestly, trust me now forms love forms. So forms have again, like Google Forms or you know forms in Microsoft Office 365. The one thing click out though, capture all the information and bring it into the system. So I use forms here a number of places I use them for my onboarding of my clients, I use it for my podcast production. And what it does is it removes the duplication of information. If you are capturing your information in Google Forms, or in Microsoft forms, you then have to come and manually populate it in or attach a date or anything like that, or add you know, as a PA or something like that to connect then make that automation. If you’re using forms within clickup that removes that additional sort of, you know, connection pace, it’s all in there, depending on the level of plan you’re on. So I am now on the business planning. So I’ve made the decision to upgrade to that because I love click ups I wanna I want all the functions and you can fully customise it. So you’ve got your logos and all your branding and all that stuff. What I do though, is I create the form and then I actually embed that into a custom landing page on my website. So it’s beautifully branded people go to my the page that I send them for my podcast guest information that go in there all the processes, so surprise surprise, I love it. Process love communicating that. So all of that information is there. And then there is the form embedded that can complete it directly from there, the user experience is beautiful. My end end experience is beautiful. Because it’s all in there. I said, I’ve set up some automations around notifications to make sure that we don’t lose the information when it comes in and were aware of it. As soon as it hits the click up, click up space. It’s fantastic. I have set this up for a few of my clients. And they are in love with it as well have a play with the form views. How do we get there. So there is but it’s basically a view. So when you are in, click up for those who aren’t in click up yet. When you get in there, you’ll understand at the top of the workspaces, there are the different views be that list view board view all of that. This is just another view. So you can create forms, in the lists in the folders, wherever you are that you need to start to capture that information. The next thing, custom fields. So click up has some basic fields that are across the entire platform that you need to add them. Right so assignee, they’ve got priority, they’ve got due date, start date, etc. all comments, last latest comments, all those things. They’re the standard ones that are across everywhere in clickup. However, this is where the magic starts to be created. The custom fields. Yeah, it’s endless. Again, the possibilities. Okay, some examples of how I use this. My CRM, I have a CRM and click up. And it’s basically a database of all of my clients. One of the custom fields I add in there are packages, my client packages, what programme and what service Am I providing to that client, there’s a drop down there that I have created, I’m not only created a list of all my packages. So I have, let’s begin step by step, all that jazz. And let’s investigate programme,

I’ve actually branded it, I have gone in, and I’ve added my custom colours. So when they’re using that form I spoke about before, and they’re going through that process. It’s still consistent with my branding, it’s all there, and it’s all beautiful. Another one we have used is the label fields. The label custom fields are also fantastic. There are dropdowns, there are all sorts of things, but labels in particular, you can add multiple labels to a particular task. So an example with my podcast planning, there are multiple actions that we do. So there also might be multiple types of episodes. So this one today is a solo episode. Hello, it’s just me here today. Whereas on another week, I might have a guest. So being able to apply those different labels, then can also be able to start to trigger the different workflows that are relating to that type of activity. And it’s fabulous to be able to have that differentiation between the two. And you can also have it filtered and sorted. So it’s really nice and simple. Another way you could use labels is if you have a space that holds all of your contacts for you might have suppliers or referral partners, or basically our information list of all of your contacts in your world, you might want to start to use labels to be able to identify easily, okay, there’s a web designer, there is a marketing strategist, there is my Facebook ad person, there’s my beautiful cafe who caters and maximising coffee, whatever it might be, being able to use those labels, again, can really bring home and create that simplification when you are looking at that data. My final tip, or my final love is dashboards of goodness, dashboards. Basically, its reporting, but it’s more than reporting, it is I create, I’ve just actually created it’s a new thing I’ve created for my clients that I have a dashboard in there, that is our home of communication while we’re working together. So it has a list of all of their taskings that they do as part of our transaction working together. You know, my clients come to work with me and we together go through that process. Part of that is that there is some work that they need to do. So making sure that they’re accountable. We have that task list happening in there or that tasking there. There’s a communication chat widget. So the chat function is a view as well available all through the spaces and clicker, but also in dashboards so it can be combined and all into the one location. I have some text fields there with an intro into who I am and who our team are. And then also, if we are, if we are doing a clickup build, I add a particular area that is around clickup. Specifically, these dashboards can be shared across whoever to whoever you need to share them to, there’s so many widgets in there as well for reporting for task progression.

All the things basically, if you’re in clickup, jump into the dashboards is the little fours, like two rectangles and two squares on the left hand side there, it’s down sort of in the middle, pop along there and have a play and see what you can create within clickup. Now, if you’ve come this far, and you’re thinking, Oh, my God, Nicole, that’s just like, sounds great. But I don’t think I could do that. That sounds just a little bit too complicated. The way that I explained click up to the person who’s just discovered it my clients that have come on board, and they’re like, Oh, that sounds okay. But I don’t get it. Think about clickup as massive Excel spreadsheet, right. So we’ve all used a Google sheets are an Excel spreadsheet, probably inside sometime in our world, it just lines and lines and rows and rows of data. That is what clickup is. But what clickup does is it views your tasks, your responsibilities in a different lens. So it allows you to have a look at the tasks that you have in your business, and be able to Section those out and simplify it. So instead of having one massive list that some of the other programmes do, and that’s, if you likeliest, that’s fabulous, you’ve got a ListView and click up. But it actually allows you to remove that noise, remove all the noise from that massive Excel spreadsheet, focusing on the bits that you need to what are your priorities for today, have those popped out right at the top by applying assign assignee, going to your home due dates, and they’re all there just removes the noise. So click up. In summary, if you are currently looking for a solution for your business, and you want more than just a basic list, or you want more than just a board view, you want to create a central location for all of your business information, your business processes, your business communication, you can you know reduce the amount of applications that’s happening in your world. I would love you to give clickup ago that I do have a link that will be in the show notes.

So pop along there and have a look. And reach out if you are really serious about creating space and time freedom in your world. And you need some assistance getting this up and running. As you can tell, I love it. So come along, have a session with me. And we can really just design it so that you are set up to start to explore and to build your business to be simply simplified, efficient, and enjoyable. Rightio Well, I think I will leave it there because I could talk for hours on click up and I’m sure I will be back to do another episode on some more of my favourite areas of clickup. But for now have a wonderful rest of your day creating space and time freedom.

Well, there we go. Thank you so much for joining me today. It’s been such a pleasure having you on board. Have we can adjust on socials. Yes, if not, please come on over. Say hi, I’m on all the platforms at the artisan solutions. So I’d really look forward to seeing you over there. And if you enjoy today’s episode, don’t forget to tag me and I would love it if you could leave a review. And of course share this with others so others can come and join us next time. All right, then everyone have a fabulous rest of the week. And until next time see you then