Is ClickUp any good for localization project managers?
Welcome to another episode in this series, where every month we’ll check out a new project management platform and see how viable it is for localization. All online software will be either free or with a free trial, so you can try it on your own.
In this video, I’ll show you how to use ClickUp to schedule your localization projects. Together, we’ll plan two simple projects and create one dashboard.
Andrej Zito
This will be a new tutorial for beginners, it’s just me trying out a new project management software. In this one, it will be ClickUp and we’re going to schedule two localization projects step by step. I’m going to give you my explanation of what I’m doing, why I’m doing it and how I’m doing it. And you’re going to get to watch it and maybe try it out on your own. Let’s get right into it.
Andrej Zito
When you first create your account, what you’re going to get is you’re going to get some tutorial to guide you through the creation. You’re going to get probably some space with some templates, if you choose to. What I decided to do is that I cleaned up everything that was created here. So I’m just starting with a blank space with no folders or lists underneath it. The first thing when you start is to do is to actually go to your settings, and change the start of the calendar to Monday. Now that this is saved, calendar will show up and start right on Monday. Let’s get to into creating our projects using ClickUp.
Andrej Zito
So the first I would like to maybe explain from my very quick testing of ClickUp, how I understand the hierarchy of the structure and the structure of how you organize everything. And I think this is pretty much a strong suit of ClickUp, especially compared to something else I tried recently, monday.com. I like that ClickUp offers maybe a better hierarchy here. So you have a space, which I think in normal cases, you will have a space for, let’s say, all project management done within your team. And underneath it, you can create folders, which basically groups lists and list in this case, to me represents pretty much projects. The first thing that we’re going to do is we’re going to create a folder. And we’re focusing again just for experimenting how we can use ClickUp to create localization project. So I’m going to create this folder, which will be grouping my projects that I’m tracking for myself. So this will be I’m just going to call it my project. If you’re working with multiple people, you would probably name this, I don’t know, Andrej’s projects or something like that. So I’m going to create the folder. Leave this as default, and create the folder. Okay, there it is and automatically, it has created the first list. So the folders group the lists, which as I mentioned before, is where I would put my project. So one list equals one project. So we already have this list. So I’m going to rename it. And that’s done here. And just like last time, we have the same scope, we’re going to create two projects of different scope, and complexity. So this will be my project A.
Andrej Zito
We can do here is we can add a description. And so description, I’m going to just list the languages that we have for this project. And there it is, as you can see here, the hierarchy is pretty much indicated here by this thin border. So within our project, aka the list, in the ClickUp’s terminology, we are going to be adding to dos. Now the two dos are by default, grouped by status, you can only group them by certain columns. So assigning a priority and so on and including custom fields, which is something that we’re going to do for this purpose. And I’m going to show you how I utilize this later on. Or you can turn off the grouping and have pretty much I guess, manual sorting. And everything will be pretty much just one one big group, which is not ideal for our project B. But we’ll get to that later. Another important thing that you have here is that for your projects, and I think even for folders, you can set up different statuses and views, but you can also inherit them from the higher hierarchy. So in this case, I’m I could apply the status and views from space. And this is something that we’ll need to set up maybe right now because the statuses that are by default, and I can show you right now, if I go to spaces, I think it’s here, space settings.
Andrej Zito
And here we have a task statuses. So these are the statuses that are applied to the space level. And as you can see here, you can and inherit them on their lower levels. Right now, it’s very simple. By default, you just have to do and complete. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to add a couple more statuses that might be useful for our localization projects. First, I’m going to add in progress status. And I’m actually typing lowercase, but ClickUp, puts everything into uppercase. So this is basically to give us the third option to track the main tasks, which are still to be done, they are in progress, or they are complete. So in progress, and here, you can choose a color for in progress, I’m going to use, let’s say to start blue. And that is the progress. So this is what we’re going to be tracking for the main task. And this is maybe where I’ll just quickly switch back to quickly explain to you why we need to add more statuses here. So as you’re adding the tasks here, under your lists, aka projects, you are allowed to do one sub level. So one more extra level, so we can be adding tasks underneath this one. And I will be doing that very shortly.
Andrej Zito
The thing that you need to know is that if you are going to be using the default status, for the sub tasks, the options that you have to set the statuses will be the same as the one that you’re using for this level. So that means when we define the list of values for our statuses, we need to think about all the statuses that we want to use for the, let’s say, the main task, as well as the sub tasks. You could technically create custom field which would be only for the status is to be used on a sub task level. But that, of course complicates things because you will have two different columns to indicate status, which is not very good design, I would say. So that means that if I go back to the space settings, and to our task statuses, and what has happened here, did I not save it? In Progress? Blue? Review changes, save changes. Okay, I think I didn’t, oh, yeah, now it’s here. Okay, my apologies. So I forgot to save it before. So this will be the main statuses, very simple ones to do in progress and complete that we’re tracking for the main task. And then we’re also going to add statuses for the sub level, where I’m going to sort of hack this is because we want to have all the statuses within this one list of options, I still want to somehow distinguish them. So the way I’m going to do it is I’m going to use the bullet point to indicate that these are the statuses that should be used for the sub level. So here, we’re going to add that’s sent. And for the colors, what I’m going to do, I’m going to use something slightly less saturated. Now I’m going to add handoff sent, headsup confirmed, handoff confirmed. So now that I’ve added the statuses, and we have them sort of different from the main statuses, which are more saturated, and they don’t have the bullet point, I’m just quickly going to change the order. So handoff sent, handoff sent. So we’re starting with to do then we have the sub task statuses. And then we have the final, let’s say in progress status for the main tasks, and then we have the default complete. So I think I’m pretty good with this for now. So I’m going to save the changes. Okay, here we are. Now, let’s get into our project. So I’m going to go into project A. So now that we have defined the statuses in the space level, I’m actually going to inherit the status into this project so we can use it.
Andrej Zito
Okay, I think should be done. Now. For some reason, it ungroup this thing. I’m just going to put it back so we can add the tasks, okay. And I’m going to start with the tasks according to our scope for this project which is very simple. So we first started with translation, which is 30,000 adjusted words. So that will be our first task. Now as we entered the first task, I’m also going to define the columns, the things that I want them to tracking for each task. So I’m okay with assignee. I’m going to add next the start date. So the duration of the task is pretty much defined by the start date and the due date. Priority, I don’t think we need the priority so I can get rid of it. So I’m just going to hide priority. And then what we need is the status itself that we just defined. And for now, this should be it. Okay, so here, if I go to status, you can see different statuses that we defined on the space level, just like last time, what we want to do is we want to actually break this down into tracking the translation task for each individual language. So I’m going to use this link to create a sub task under translation. And I’m just going to type it for all languages. Good. So now that we have the sub tasks defined for the translation, what we can do is here we can utilize the statuses that we defined. And again, it’s easy to see that these sort of, we made them belong to the sub item level, because we prefix them with the bullet. So what I’m going to do is for German, I’m going to say that they confirm the heads up, they confirm the heads up. For French, we just send the headsup. And for Korean, maybe we already send the handoff, we are a little bit ahead. Okay. And because we’re technically working on this task already, I’m going to set the main task, as in progress. This also changed the grouping here. One more thing that we need to do in order to finalize the tradition task, of course, we’re going to set the start date and due date. So for this one, let’s imagine that we’re starting the project next week. So we are starting to translation on the sixth. And because it’s 30,000 words, it’s going to take us roughly three weeks to do the translation. Okay. So this is how it’s defined, it’s pretty neat that you can just start editing the start date, and in the same, or you can also add the end date.
Andrej Zito
Now, one thing that doesn’t work here is that you cannot copy or I don’t know how to do it. If by chance you know how to do it, please comment below, but I didn’t find a way how to copy the dates, and move them into the sub tasks. So I’m just going to punch this in manually. So that we also see that, for example, for French, we are going to give it, let’s say extra two days. So instead of 24, we’re going to give them until 28th. And then from 6 to 24, okay. So this is our translation. One final thing is that we can play with the assignee field. So this would be me. Another thing that I maybe didn’t show up in this video, I also added these fake emails that I’m using. So you can also directly assign the tasks here. So German, I was assigned to Christian, Japanese to I and French to Francois, just to demonstrate it. And if you want to go into the details, you simply just click on the task and you get this bigger window here. Here you can see the details of the task. You can add description, you can add a checklist if you want to go even deeper within this sub task. And here, you can add some comments. Hello, this is for you. Comment, commented done. But we don’t want to play with these details. Okay, so this is our translation. So next, what I’m going to do is I’m going to add a new task, which is for view thing we said for review, we have 40 hours. And this is not in progress yet. So I’m going to revert it back to to do and this is where you see that the grouping is set by the status. So it sort of like moved it away from the first, first task which is translation.
Andrej Zito
So I’m actually going to for now, turn off the grouping because I want to have this all in one. So review again for review, what I’m going to do is I’m going to create subtasks for this. Oh, right. And that’s done. So for these ones we haven’t started yet, so I won’t bother with it. And what I’m just going to do, I’m going to collapse this. And I’m just going to set the start date due date for the main task. So if we finish and the translation on 24th, this will be one week to do review, okay. And finally, the final sort of milestone task is the delivery to the clients. So this is a simple project, just translation and delivery. And we’re going to try to deliver it on the same date as we finished the review. So October 1, they’re here at the bottom, you can see that this view has unsaved changes. I think, as we customize the columns and everything, you can save this so that this view is available to everyone who has access to this project. Because from what I understand this views are there for everyone, I’m not sure if you can create your own personal view probably. But I’m just going to do the auto save view since this is just for me. And I’m sort of like the master designer of this for everyone. Now that we have the project outline here on the list view, we’re going to get to my favorite part, which is seeing this project on a Gantt chart. So for that, you just need to add a new view. So view pretty much just represents a different visual. I don’t know representation of all the information that you already put into your project. So it’s just a different way to display your project and when the tasks are an end. So again, chart, like I mentioned previously, is my favorite way to to look at where you are and what needs to be done. So we’re going to add a Gantt chart. And I really like the design of the Gantt chart here in ClickUp.
Andrej Zito
So here you can see our project. So it has translation, review and delivery. So all the tasks that we have, I can expand and collapse. And again, this is giving me this, this notification that I changed the view. So I’m just going to use the autosave view, as previously. And here you can see the different sub tasks and when they start and when they end. One thing that I really like is this thing here, sort of like centers on the task. Go to it to make sure that it’s in your view. But anyway, I’m going to collapse for now. And here you can see that this is our translation, this is the review. And this is the delivery, you can play with a different, let’s see scales. I don’t like the day because I think it’s too small. Month, probably too big, I really think that the week is the best one. If you’re daily actively monitoring your project. One thing that I don’t like is actually the weekends. As you can see, the weekends are just slightly different shade of gray. But I think it would be better if it also highlighted the whole columns, I didn’t find a way how to how to change this. You can also sort it here in the Gantt chart view. But I think what we want to do right now for this project is to leave it as it is because it matches the way that we punched in these tasks manually into the list, which actually represents the timeline when those things start. One thing that is very nice here is these things at the end. So these buttons, and you can use this to create the dependencies. So I can say that the end of translation is needed to start to review. And this creates this nice arrow here, which again represents the dependency. And that’s pretty much it. That’s how we set up our project A.
Andrej Zito
So now what we’re going to do is we’re going to create the more complex project B. And I’ll fast forward some of the things that are going to be the same as we did for this project. But I’m going to pause when we’re going to add something new. And I’m going to give you my explanation because it will be pretty, pretty important. So the way I’m going to do it is I’m just going to create a duplicate of project a. And I’m going to create named this project B and what would you like to copy we want to copy pretty much everything.
Andrej Zito
Do you want to include archive tasks? Nope. Location space, it’s under my projects. That’s fine. So copy list. Okay, there we have our project B and now we’re in it. So the scope for the the languages for this project are the same. But what is different for project B is that we have some tasks which are done for, let’s say, lang, which I’ve done language independently. So they are done for all the languages. And then we have different scope for German and Japanese, and different scope for French and Korean. And this is where we need to introduce a new column, a custom field, which will let us group these tasks according to this, let’s say language scope. So what are the tasks that we do for language independent and what are the tasks that we do for German Japanese, and what are the task that we do for French and Korean, because otherwise, the the the thing with ClickUp is that you cannot create your own groups for the tasks, you can only do it from what I see here by certain fields, so status assignee, or custom fields, and so on. So I cannot just manually type in my group and then drag the task which belong to that group, I need to create a workaround for that. So for that, we are going to actually create a new field. And for that, we’re going to use a drop down. And we are going to call this language scope. And the options for this will be so number one will be I’m just going to put all four all languages. And we have another option, which would be German, Japanese. And then we add another option, which would be French and Korean. The way I understood it is when I was testing this before, is that the way that you ordered options here, according to that it will be also sorted here. So once I enabled the grouping by this new customer field, the groups will be ordered according to option one, option two, option three. So this is it dropped down language scope, all German, Japanese, French and Korean, at the column.
Andrej Zito
Okay, so we have our column here. The tasks that are here are still from project a, so I’m going to start changing them. But for now, what I want to do is I want to go back to project A, and I’m going to add the new custom field that we just created. That is language scope. And I’m going to mark all of these as all. So for this project, the language score for this is all and in now we can group them by the language scope. So you can see that all these tasks belong to just one group, which is all. But things are going to change a little bit for this one. So what I’m going to do first for this project, because we’re starting with the language independent, ask, which will be for the language scope, all and we’re going to say this is pre processing, I think our pre processing is 10 hours work. So there we have pre processing, and I’m going to add it to all Okay, and now I’m going to select here to group by the language scope. And this is going to separate from the ones that don’t have language scope defined. So pre processing 10 hours, we’re going to start it the same way. So next Monday. So if it’s 10 hours, we’re going to put two days here, okay? And status, maybe this one we can set as complete. And this is where I’m going to show you that now you can see it that it simply disappeared from the list of the task. And that’s determined by this little thing here. So by default, it actually hides the completed tasks. This is purely your personal preference, I would probably unless I have like a very big project with a bunch of tasks, I would prefer to see here marked as complete, because then I get the pleasure from see tasks as they get completed and it all turns into green as we go through the project. This is again, just my personal preference. And I’m going to set the same thing here for project as well.
Andrej Zito
Even though it doesn’t technically make sense since this should be starting next Monday. But for this purpose, we’re going to set it as complete. Okay. And now what I’m going to do is I’m going to punch in all the asks for the German and Japanese scope, so forth. German and Japanese, we have translation of the 15. Okay. And since this should be just German and Japanese, I am going to delete these two subtasks. The way this works is very nice, you have this circle here, which is pretty much just like a checkbox, select box. And you can select these two, and I’m just going to delete them both at the same time. Okay, so we said that this is for the German and Japanese language scope. So I’m going to set the language scope here. And now you can see it separated from the rest. Statuses, I’m just going to leave them as the base because it doesn’t matter. This is just to demonstrate how this works. So now I can collapse this. And because we are finishing the pre processing on seventh, so we are technically starting on 8, right. And if it’s 15,000, that’s how many days that’s a two days if I’m not mistaking 12312345, right. So 15k, that’s seven, eight days, I should be correct here, hopefully. So September 8 to September 17. So this is the scope, for German and Japanese. Now finally, this is delivery. And one thing that I haven’t noticed before is that we have the dependencies that are still set from project a where we define it, once you click it, you’re going to get this nice window where you can define what it’s waiting on walking and the tasks and so on, I’m just going to delete the dependencies, because it’s bothering me. Delivery. And there’s delivery. Now, for the French and Korean, we have it slightly different keynoted, we have everything, all the tasks for project can be laid out here, we’re going to go to the Gantt view, it’s already here, because we simply copied from project A. So let’s see how it looks like. And here it is.
Andrej Zito
And this is the problem. So under project B, once you are in the Gantt view, you can see that you can do this few beautiful things, you can change the colors and so on, you can do the sorting, but what you cannot do is you cannot group by the language scope, which to me is weird because it’s offered here, but here, it simply it doesn’t exist. So here, it doesn’t respect the the groups that you define previously. And that is a problem that actually is available when you go to your projects as well. So here we are, this is the first time that we are in my projects view. And I’m going to inherit the statuses and views from let’s say, project A, apply. Okay, here we have it. And here we should be able to group this by what where’s my language scope? Do we not have language scope, use this field. Okay, group by language school. Okay, now that I’ve added this, I don’t know why I didn’t import. Now I’m able to group by language school. But I think in this case, it would make more sense to group it by the lists. And then by language scope within the things, but that would make it that would make another hierarchy, which I think is not supported by ClickUp. So anyway, the problem still pretty much remains. But it’s able to, to do it here on the Gantt charts are here on the Gantt chart, you can see and then why it’s listed like that. So we here respects the list that we have created. So this is let’s say your ultimate view of your two projects.
Andrej Zito
So you know what you need to do on I don’t know, September 8, just look here and you know, where you are in your project schedule. Again, the same thing remains that you cannot use the grouping here in the Gantt view. So all the tasks within project B which do require I mean it helps a lot. If you have those groups, it’s that information is here in the Gantt view. Alright, that’s the end of my tutorial for ClickUp. Let me know what you think below in the comments. Let me know if you have any better idea how we could have done this in a more efficient way. Because there were definitely some sort of restrictions on what I would like to do when it comes to scheduling localization projects. If you like this new series, if you like this tutorial, I’m going to be trying out all the fancy project management, team collaboration scheduling platforms that we have, and see how they cope with localization projects, the scope will be the same if you want to see it. Make sure you stick up with Localization Academy and our videos. So make sure you subscribe and hit that notification bell and I will see you in some other video. Bye bye!
