Let's be honest, nobody gets excited about creating the same task every week, chasing a colleague for a review or realising a deadline has quietly slipped past.
These little admin tasks might not seem like much on their own, but they add up. Before you know it, your team is spending more time managing the work than actually doing it.
That's where automations come in.
With monday. com, you can build simple rules that take care of repetitive tasks, keep work moving and make sure the right people know what's happening. The result? Less manual admin, fewer things falling through the cracks and a team that can focus on getting things done.
Here are three essential monday.com automations worth adding to your project management toolkit.
1. Let recurring tasks create themselves
If your team does the same thing every week, why are you still creating the task manually?
Think about your weekly reporting process. Every Monday, someone needs to write a report, update the relevant information and make sure it is ready by a certain deadline.
Instead of relying on someone to remember to create the task, set up an automation that adds it to your board at the start of each week.
You can have the task automatically assigned to the right person, with a due date already in place. No reminders, no copying and pasting, and no risk of forgetting that weekly report.
Why it matters: Recurring tasks are a simple way to make sure routine responsibilities stay on track. Whether it's a weekly report, a monthly review or a regular client check-in, automating the process creates consistency without adding more admin to someone's workload.
2. Keep work moving with automatic handovers
A project rarely involves just one person. Work moves between team members, departments and stakeholders, and every handover creates an opportunity for something to get stuck.
Take the review process, for example.
A team member finishes a task and changes its status to indicate that it is ready for review. Normally, someone would need to notify the reviewer, assign the task and make sure they know it's waiting for their attention.
With monday.com automations, that handover can happen automatically.
When the status changes to 'Ready for review', the task can be assigned to the relevant reviewer and a notification can be sent to let them know it's time to take a look.
The work moves forward without someone having to manually manage every step.
Why it matters: Automated handovers reduce unnecessary delays and make responsibilities clearer. Everyone knows when a task is ready for them, which means less time spent chasing updates and more time spent progressing the project.
3. Make overdue tasks impossible to ignore
We've all been there. A deadline passes, a task is still sitting unfinished and nobody quite knows whether it has been forgotten, delayed or is waiting on something else.
The problem isn't always that people are missing deadlines. Sometimes, it's that the project team doesn't have enough visibility to spot potential issues early.
An overdue task automation can help.
For example, when a task passes its due date and its status is still anything other than 'Done', monday.com can automatically change the status to 'Stuck' and notify the project lead.
This creates an immediate signal that something needs attention.
The project lead can then investigate what's causing the delay, check whether the team needs additional support and take action before the issue has a bigger impact on the project.
Why it matters: Automated alerts give project managers better visibility into potential problems. Rather than relying on manual checks or waiting for someone to raise a concern, the system highlights issues as they happen.
The secret to better automations? Keep them simple.
It's tempting to build complicated automations that try to account for every possible scenario. But the most effective automations are often the simplest ones.
A useful rule of thumb is to give each automation one clear trigger and one clear action.
For example:
When a task is created, assign it to the project owner.
When a status changes, notify the next person responsible.
When a deadline passes, flag the task for attention.
Keeping your rules focused makes them easier to understand, maintain and troubleshoot. It also makes it much easier for your team to understand what's happening behind the scenes.
And remember, automations should support your processes, not compensate for processes that aren't working in the first place. Before automating a workflow, make sure the steps and responsibilities are clear.
Work smarter, not harder
Automations are one of the simplest ways to get more value out of monday.com.
They help reduce repetitive admin, create more consistent workflows and give teams better visibility into the work that needs to happen. But the real benefit comes when they are designed around the way your team actually works.
At mutherboard, we help businesses make their project management systems work harder for them. From building smarter monday.com workflows to improving visibility and connecting the tools your team relies on, we focus on making work simpler, more efficient and easier to manage.
Because your team should be spending its time moving projects forward, not chasing tasks around a board.
Ready to make your workflows work for you? Visit mutherboard. com to find out how we can help you get more from your project management setup.
We help you automate your business workflows and processes to improve productivity and efficiency. We are Platinum Partners of monday.com and help users get the most out of the platform.
