ClickUp – New work management tool that keeps adding new features

What is ClickUp?

Hi, I am Kota Shimizu, doing web director in Japan.
In this article, I would like to introduce ClcikUp, an emerging project management tool.

I have been using ASANA as my main tool for project and task management for a long time, but now I use ClickUp as my main tool.

ClickUp is now more convenient to use with the release of version 3.0 in November 2023.

Basic information of ClickUp

Service name	ClickUp
Company	ClickUp
Official Site	https://clickup.com/
Service Launch Year	2017
Free Plan	Yes

ClickUp is a San Diego-based company founded in 2017 and began providing services in the same year, 2017.

ClickUp is a project and task management service that provides an aggregated platform for document collaboration, whiteboarding, spreadsheets, chat, and goal setting.

I think this is one of the fastest growing products in the market today, equipped with many productivity-enhancing tools and with many users switching from their current tools.

Personally, I have been seeing ads for “monday.com” on YouTube and other sites around 2018-2019, and I thought that ClickUp has started advertising around 2020 after then.

As a start-up company, it seems to have achieved funding well, raising $400 million in Series C funding in 2021, and the company has announced a post-funding enterprise value of $4 billion.

上記の記事では、以下のように述べられており、2020年前後から急成長している事がうかがえます。

That opened the company up to hypergrowth—ClickUp’s 50-person team at the time of the check has grown to more than 700 employees in 16 months.

Source: ClickUp Raises $400 Million At $4 Billion Valuation As Competition Heats Up In Productivity Software
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrickcai/2021/10/27/clickup-raises-4-billion-series-c-productivity-software/?sh=22e7f4092606

As of January 2024, it is not yet available in Japanese, but it can be used in Japanese using Chrome’s translation feature.

Even with the free plan, a sufficient level of functionality is provided for business use.

No-code and low-code tools can be a bit of a hurdle to set up, however, ClickUp is simple in its individual features.
By combining multiple features, you can improve productivity.

What ClickUp can do

Overview

It offers everything that most project management tools can do, plus features that are not available in typical project management tools.

• Create Project : You can create “Workspace”, “Space”, “Folder”, “List” to group tasks
• Create task : You can apply start/end date, assignee, priority, work time estimate, tracked time, status, etc.
• Switching task view: list, Kanban, calendar, Gantt chart, table…etc.
• Sprint
• Chat
• Whiteboard creation (like Miro)
• Documentation (like Notion)
• Dashboard
• Create form
• Automation (e.g., changing the person in charge when the status of a task changes)
• Two-factor authentication

It can be used to manage all types of businesses such as marketing activities, sales and customer management (CRM and SFA), and human resource management, not to mention systems and design development.

You can ask questions to support immediately if you have any questions.

This is not a feature, but it is something I want to tell you about.
What I find great about ClickUp over other tools is that you can ask support for anything you don’t understand right from within the app.

Although a chatbot will respond at first, you can post a question directly to their staff by typing “Contact” or “Contact Support,” and you will receive an answer to your question either in the chat or via e-mail. Moreover, they explain even the basic things in detail.

Because of the time difference from Japan, it may be difficult to get real-time answers, but it is still useful.

Create Custom fields

You can freely create items called custom fields for tasks. This makes it easy to manage projects and tasks for all types of business and work categories.

Let’s look at an example.

The following figure shows a task list for building operations. The items in the red frame are not provided by default. You can add these items freely to add extra information to tasks.

It is also easy to create.
As an example, I have created a video showing the process of creating a “Work Cost Estimate ” field.

ClickUp lets you create the following types of custom fields.

• Checkbox
• Date
• Dropdown
• Email
• Files
• Formula
• Labels
• Location
• Money
• Number
• People
• Phone
• Progress- Auto
• Progress – Manual
• Rating
• Relationships
• Rollup
• Tasks
• Text
• Text Area – long text
• Website

Displays tasks in various formats

You can display tasks in the following view format.

List View

Gantt Chart View

Timeline View

The timeline view shows tasks in chronological order from a different approach than the Gantt chart.
In the timeline view, it is possible to grasp “when and to whom many tasks are assigned” etc.

Table View

As shown in the figure above, the task list can be displayed in an Excel-like format.
Of course, you can freely choose fields to be displayed.

Board View

As shown in the above image, you display tasks in Kanban format (Board View).

Team View

Team View lets you see who has tasks and how much tasks have been completed.

Workload View

With Workload View, you can visualize workload by assignment in chronological order. You can choose either the estimated time for the work or the number of tasks assigned, and the results will be displayed accordingly.

Map View

If you create a custom field for addresses, ClickUp maps the addresses registered in tasks to a map.

Documentation

The Documentation feature is one of the useful features in ClickUp.
It has a Notion-like usability and supports markdown syntax. It is also nice to be able to use the “/ (slash)” shortcut to call up parts for documents.

Although Notion is a bit better in terms of usability, it is convenient to be able to complete document management within ClickUp.

Chat View

You can chat within a task but also create a Chat View and communicate for a specific topic (Like Slack Channel).

Time tracking (work time recording)

Task has a built-in time recording button. With this feature, you can track how much time was spent on each tasks.

You can also add estimated work time to tasks. These estimated and actual work times can be calculated not only by task, but also by folder and space. This is good when you want to see how much time a project needs and actually spent.

Form View

ClickUp lets you easily create forms by drag-and-drop.
In addition to the default form items, custom fields can be applied to the form.

The information entered into forms is converted directly into tasks.

I also produce and sell vegetables and use order form and suggestion box created with ClickUp on my farm website.
You can see the actual forms on the following pages (Currently Japanese only).

By using the combination of Form and automation features, the information sent turns into tasks, and appropriate person, priority and deadline, etc. can be set so that you do not forget to handle the tasks.

Whiteboard View

ClickUp also provides Whiteboard functionality like Miro. Although the usability is not as good as Miro, you can convert what you write on whiteboard to tasks, and you can paste tasks inside whiteboard.

Mind Map View

ClickUp also provides Mind Map functionality, which is similar to whiteboard. Like the whiteboard, you can call up tasks and convert what you have written into tasks.

Templates tailored to business purposes

ClickUp offers templates for a wide range of uses, including agile development, marketing campaigns, sales support and CRM, recruitment, equipment management, and accounting operations, as well as general project management.

Automation

ClickUp lets you create automations such as “do something when something happens”.

For example, you can do things like these:

• When someone other than your manager completes tasks, change the status back to Review and reassign the person in charge of the task to your manager. In addition, mentions the manager in the task and requests a review.
• Send an email to a specific person when a task is completed.
• Set the deadline date to “2 days later” for tasks in a specific folder, if the deadline was not set when the task was created.
• Create an Issue on Github when a task is moved to a specific location

You can automate a variety of jobs, depending on your ideas.

Integration with third-party apps

I will make other articles about how to use it.

ClickUp offers free plan, so use it and look around to see what you can do with this tool.