How do I use formulas across monday.com boards to update board columns?

Are you looking for a way to perform cross-board calculations on monday.com to update board columns? In this guide, we'll explore how to build advanced formulas and cast their results to board items.

Use the navigation to quickly jump to your desired section and learn more about the pros and cons for each option or head straight to the conclusion.

Introduction

Why you would consider calculating formulas across monday.com boards to cast their results into a column of another board

Before we deep dive into all the available options, let's take a quick look at potential use cases why you would want to make use of advanced cross-board formulas to calculate data with Excel-like functions that can be casted into another monday.com board column. You can learn more about real-world use cases from monday.com users in this forum thread about cross-board formula implementation, which has more than 70 upvotes at this point.

Formulate in one board from another boards column and cast the result to a third board
Manage budget related queries and timely payments for projects across boards
Cross-reference a board with a schedule to associate someone with a time stamp
Cross-query a board by a tag and do a sum of the completed time within a timeframe
Reference another board and filter by task in order to populate the date on the main board
Sum the total work remaining for each person from one board and cast it to another board
Gather project invoices in one board, sum the totals and cast the sum to a main board

Option A

How to perform cross-board calculations with monday.com's native Formula, Connected board and Mirror columns

This option is viable if you simply want to use and include connected items and mirrored columns in formula columns. You can learn more in the monday knowledge base about the Mirror Column, Connect Boards Column, and the Formula Column. Though by choosing this method, you are unable to reference columns from different boards within that formula, without having to use mirror and connect boards columns. And since mirroring means you only have one single source board that is "sending" the monday.com board column data to the destination board, this option lacks flexibility for many advanced use cases.

Pros

Automated processing
Available across all plans
Viable for simple use cases

Cons

Lack of flexibility when many boards are involved
Floods boards with many connected and mirror columns
Lack of cross-workspace board formula calculations
Limited functions to perform advanced Excel-like formulas

Option B

How to calculate and cast formula results across different monday.com boards with Spreadsheet Gorilla for monday.com

This option also includes the use of monday.com's connected board columns for referencing items across different boards. But it denies the mass usage of multiple mirror and formula columns on your main monday.com board. All the magic is relocated to the so called Spreadsheet Templates. These templates are basically an abstraction layer of your monday.com boards, where you choose and combine all the boards which need to be used for calculations. Furthermore templates are used to map board columns to "headless" or "virtual" spreadsheet columns across Excel-like worksheets. Head over to the tutorial video down below to get a quick overview of the apps' capabilities.

Pros

Complex calculations across boards and workspaces
Single board item updates or in bulk with preview
Create and perform formulas like in Excel
More than 200 Excel-like functions

Cons

Semi-automated process
Additional monthly or yearly costs

Tutorial

Learn how to use Excel-like formulas across multiple monday.com boards and update board items in another board

The following video tutorial covers one quite simple use case that basically assumes that your team gathers invoices from different projects in one board, and you want to add up the total amounts of those invoices, to finally cast that sum into another board for having an overview of all budgets left for each project. Feel free to book a demo, to discuss your individual use case and see if Spreadsheet Gorilla for monday.com is a fit.

Conclusion

What is the best way to create advanced formulas across different monday.com boards and update related board columns with their results

In conclusion, incorporating cross-board calculations into your monday.com workflow offers a multitude of benefits, from managing budgets to streamlining project updates across multiple boards. While monday.com provides native options such as Formula, Connected Board, and Mirror columns, they may lack the flexibility needed for advanced scenarios. However, tools like Spreadsheet Gorilla for monday.com offer a comprehensive solution, allowing complex calculations and seamless updates across boards and workspaces akin to Excel-like functions. Though there are additional costs involved, the efficiency and capabilities provided make it a valuable investment for optimizing your monday.com workflow and enhancing collaboration across teams.

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