Making a generic scenario for Monday?

I hope someone here is struggling with the same problem as me, and have a good solution.

My main task at the moment is to create a generic scenario that can be used by multiple boards.
My only issue is that I can’t define column IDs in Monday.

A bit of back story
I have a main board that includes all deals made, this includes framework agreements.
Each framework agreement has their own board which is client facing.
Here the client fill out a form for each new project/order they sign.

I then have to attach that to the original deal, which I have a scenario for - and it does a few other things as well.

So my idea was to watch each board and when a new projects comes in, they all ask for the same scenario to fills everything out.
Mainly it would be easier when making a new board, and also to maintain - instead of having a long scenario for each board, if you have to update/change anything.

Problem
But for these boards I can’t control what the column IDs are, so I find it a bit difficult to make the scenario generic and usable for all boards.

I saw some talking about ways to trick the system, so you could define your own columnIDs - but for some reason Monday killed that. Which just boggles my mind.

Anyway, is there a smart way to do this, so the same scenario can be used by multiple boards with different column IDs?
Should or can I use the name of the column instead - like search through all columns and check their names? Sounds a bit silly and expensive.

Is it even possible to make a scenario like this?

Hope it made sense, and thanks in advance.

@Kega :raised_hands:

Hi there! I’m an AI Community Manager and I’m still learning. I understand that you are looking for a way to create a generic scenario that can be used by multiple boards. It sounds like you are having difficulty defining column IDs in Monday. Can you tell me more about the specific challenges you are facing? I’m here to help!

Please take a camera-viewfinder-duotone screenshot of your scenario along with the relevant module configurations and share-all-duotoneshare the images here so that the community can help.

All of this helps us to get a deeper understanding of the challenge you face. :make:

Hi @Kega, you can simply click on you avatar, go to “monday lab”, then activate the “Developer Mode

Once you activate the developer mode, you can see the column IDs from the column settings.

To define your own column ID, you can create a text column, name the column, then change the column type to the column you want (e.g. Status), the column ID will change to the column name you just set.
image

Hope it helps :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Hi Kega,

You can do this, it just takes some background work.

Would it work to have a “Column ID board” which has an item for each client facing board, and the specific column id’s for that board? You could then watch your client ID board, and when it triggers you could use the BoardID of that board to search for its corresponding item in the columnID board. Then you can use the information in that item to map the column id’s in your module.

Note: if you are trying to change a dependency or board_relation column, instead of the Change an Item’s Column value module or any of Monday’s pre-made ones, I would use the Execute GraphQL module. When you are mapping columnIDs and Make.com thereby doesn’t know what column type it is, it uses a generic “anyValueToPass” argument to send the value, and it seems to mess Monday.com up because it is expecting an array. In the GraphQL module you can identify the columnID variable but pass the information as an array. I’ve had more success that way, anyway :slight_smile:

Hope this helps.

1 Like

Thank you so much for the answers, it’s super helpful.

@Libin , that is an amazing trick. I think this might solve the issue :partying_face:
Still breaks my brain why we have to do workarounds for this. It’s an ID, just let us define it if we want :slight_smile:

@Lydia , Seen GraphQL recommended that by others - I know a bit of SQL, but haven’t had the time to deep dive in to GraphQL. Wasn’t expecting a simple ID would give me so much trouble - if Libin’s trick doesn’t work, that has to be the next step :smiley:

2 Likes

Just a quick update, I ended up using GraphQL.

Sadly there where to many column types I couldn’t switch to from text column.
Again, that this is even a thing is so weird. I really hope Monday fixes this in the future.

Heya @Kega :wave:

I just wanted to say a huge thank you for sharing with the community how you resolved your situation! :pray:

By the way, I’m going to mark your last comment as the solution for now, but if there’s d an easier way to handle it through Monday, let’s reopen the conversation :slight_smile: