2021 is almost here and — before it begins — I want to take a moment to answer the question I’ve been getting a lot since LevelUp: “Layla, what features do you want to see?”
Here’s my ClickUp 2021 “Wishlist” of the 12 changes I’d like to see in ClickUp’s roadmap over the next 12 months.
Will any of them happen? I guess we’ll have to wait and see…!
Related Resources
➤ What happened?! | [ FULL RECAP ] ClickUp’s Conference, LevelUp
➤ Your ClickUp FAQs = ANSWERED | Pro Tips for How to Use ClickUp
Video Blog Post
What follows is an AI-generated transcript from this video. Please be mindful that this transcript may not be 100% accurate.
[00:00:00.060]
In this video, I’m going to go through the 12 features I have on my wish list for ClickUp in twenty twenty one. This video, filled with unsolicited feedback, was actually solicited by some of you who left comments and posted in the Facebook group, which, if you want to join description, has the link to that where you asked me Layla, what do you want to see happening? ClickUp Layla share your thoughts.
[00:00:17.250]
And I thought, OK, here we go. And that’s what this video is all about. And by way of warning, this video can be a little bit longer than usual. So use the time stamps in the description below to jump to a section that you are interested in. And just to start us off with a bunch of disclaimers here, because I know I’m going to get hate for this.
[00:00:32.070]
I haven’t worked a Silicon Valley startup. I don’t understand development as well. As I said, some of the suggestions I’m going to give today are not going to business until ClickApp until they should logically not do them. I don’t have all the information nor even a clear vision of what the full Roback even is. Just like you guys, I am basing my opinion the projections on incomplete information with the best information I have available from the candidates, from being a consultant, from the conversations I’ve had and from the trends I’ve seen.
[00:00:49.380]
I’ve not worked at a startup and I’ve not been a product of both of those things are something I want to do. I aspire to do something. So all the information I’m giving you today is based on my interpretation is not saying that this is the things that they should do. It is not dismissing ClickApp own analysis and her own roadmap and does not saying that the things I think are the only things that are right. It is just my opinion.
[00:01:02.190]
I waste my breath here thinking about giving feedback to company if I didn’t want them to succeed.
[00:01:05.370]
So without further ado, the first feature that I wish was on the ClickUp 2021 roadmap is switching the conversation from template management to process management. And this would mean changing their features rather than just having a template library where you create templates and their relationships of tasks or relationships of structures that you have, pop into your account instead have true instance control, which I know is something that he’s been talking about for a while. And and I think you’ve been talking about that as well.
[00:01:29.730]
If we were starting to think about templates as processes and not just as premade structures of tasks, we would start to realize that instance control is super important.
[00:01:39.870]
The ability to link all of your variations of one process, all of the live versions to all be updated in one click, that would be incredible. And that’s the kind of thing that would make sense to do if you started thinking about things in terms of process and not in terms of templates. Similarly, having an editing wizard, that would be something that we amazing for process control so that when you go to edit your template, right. You’re going into a separate editing area that pops up.
[00:02:04.740]
Maybe it’s a model. You edit the process there, you click save and it updates all instances of that template, which is really a process inside ClickApp because ClickApp is already focused on larger and larger clients, which makes sense, right, is where they’re going.
[00:02:19.050]
This is a great example of a feature that would serve ClickUp enterprise level ambitions. This is something that enterprises need more than any of us, but would hugely benefit those of us on the unlimited or business plan who also want to have a little bit of process control. The second item on my wish list is a soup to nuts revamp of how permissions are handled between admins, members and guests. I think it makes a lot of sense that guests can’t see everything view that they kind of lose pieces of the hierarchy.
[00:02:43.230]
But what I would like to see from guests is a little bit more access to privacy. So right now, if a guest creates a template or edits things, they can only make it public to everyone. You can try to make, say, a document that a guest created only public to certain people, but it won’t save properly. If I have someone as a guest, they should be seeing a compartmentalized view and by extension, they should only be able to create things in that compartmentalized reach.
[00:03:06.720]
They shouldn’t be able to create something that all users can see, in my opinion. So that’s something I’d like to see changed in the guest access. But between members and admins, there’s definitely a few more changes.
[00:03:16.110]
Things like trash should not be living only at the admin level.
[00:03:19.950]
You’re talking about saving me one day a week, having a large organization and ClickUp and having one person, your admin or maybe a handful of people, your admins being able to take things out of the trash.
[00:03:29.970]
That’s going to lose me one day a week because I don’t know about you, but I can sometimes accidentally delete things when I should archive them. And having to contact somebody else on my team to get it out of the trash is a total headache. So I’d like to see members be able to access their own individual trash cans, just like your desk has its own individual trash can. And while the admins can see everyone’s trash, I’d like to see members be able to access their own trash of what’s been deleted by them and to continue on the admins versus members comparison.
[00:03:56.400]
Right now, the members and admins have pretty much equal access to the whole interface of ClickUp. There’s not a whole lot that admins can do that members can’t. And right now you need to be on enterprise to be able to adjust any of that. I’d like to see some some. Come on, guys. Some of the enterprise permissions features roll down to the second highest plan because things like being able to create custom fields, create spaces, those kinds of things, they just can’t be at the member level.
[00:04:21.210]
Even for someone who’s not on your enterprise plan, I would love to see the business plan maybe increase five dollars per month per user rate.
[00:04:27.630]
The price goes up, but we get some of those permissions settings from the enterprise plan brought down to the business plan, because the level of permissions right now, the control we have a members, the amount of conventions and human support we need to have to keep a ClickApp Workspace in place.
[00:04:41.880]
It’s insane. It’s really unsustainable, considering a lot of the times I don’t see people jump to the enterprise plan until they have about twenty twenty five members in their ClickUp Workspace.
[00:04:52.380]
When you have a team of five to 20 people jumping, enterprise doesn’t always make sense at that point. But from five to 20 people, you still need those controls to really get. The benefit out of ClickUp, and if we don’t have those permissions as part of ClickApp, you might find people leading ClickUp because they find it too crazy, too chaotic, and switching to a particular competitor who has better permissions options, even though the price is much, much higher.
[00:05:12.970]
Number three is a user level home inbox and notifications. Yep, user level, not Workspace level. So right now in ClickUp pretty much everything is by Workspace. If I flip into ProcessDriven, I see all my stuff there. If I flip into my other place, I see all my stuff there. The two main things that follow me from Workspace to Workspace is my notepad and my reminders which show up in inbox. What I would love to see in twenty twenty one is home and inbox becoming user centric, meaning no matter how many workspaces I’m in, I want to see everything aggregate into home and inbox.
[00:05:43.180]
I’d like to have the option to filter by Workspace from home, just like I could toggle between them when I’m actually switching accounts. I’d like to be able to cut things down if I want to, but I want to have a universal area to see all of the stuff that’s assigned to me. And while we’re out of change the name of inbox or make it an actual inbox right now, Inbox is just my tasks in assignment. Basically, it’s just a summary of any task due today and earlier in ClickUp.
[00:06:06.190]
And this is really unhelpful.
[00:06:09.160]
You can get to the same information just by having an everything level view filtered by me, except when you actually have it in inbox.
[00:06:15.610]
It’s completely customizable and it shows your reminders. It’s the only real difference between everything to you and Inbox. So my point is, why bother having it? It’s a duplication of function and it’s doing it worse than just having it everything you. So my suggestion is either to just make inbox my tasks and bite the bullet that we’re copying isn’t here, or better yet, make inbox an actual inbox, make it combined with notifications, make it combined with perhaps even email and have it be the sorting round for pre tasks, bonus points if it’s able to be shareable.
[00:06:44.320]
The fifth item on my wish list is across the board template controls. Everything that you can save in a template, should have a template name, a template description and version control that includes things like dashboards, automations, custom fields and statuses.
[00:06:59.020]
And while the new templates that are is a step forward. Right, it allows us to have at least a description that’s kind of helpful. Having version control, being able to see how a template was edited over time would be super, super helpful. Having those explanations for things like status types rather than just having a status name and a preset bunch of statuses to be able to go a step further and have my status templates actually have an explanation of what does each status mean in this template or in this application.
[00:07:22.720]
I’m a little biased here, but I really think documentation helps things like this to have 15 automations in an area and not be able to give it a unique name or description explaining what exactly it does so someone can troubleshoot what’s wrong with it or when a system updates to know what pieces need to update. That’s a huge missed opportunity. I would like to see every single thing that’s able to be templated in ClickUp automatically saved to what we talked about previously of a template library automation’s status.
[00:07:46.880]
Is everything all there and fully editable from one centralized location.
[00:07:51.100]
Has that process controls as well as version history, maybe even commenting or at least a description?
[00:07:57.040]
As you can tell, I have big dreams for ClickUp. I have a big wish list here, but we’re going to keep going. We’re halfway through now. Number six is dashboard views. I don’t really need to explain too much here other than to say that the dashboards that we have quarantined over into their own section. I’d like to see them be views, period. Now, I already know some of the stuff that ClickUp is coming out with, with folders and stuff like that is going to kind of move in this direction.
[00:08:17.260]
How will we know that home is going to basically become a dashboard? But I would like to see is dashboards as just a general view. Forget the whole separate area and just centralize them with everything else. Seven. I’d love to see list level selections of item types. You know, if we’re going to do items which you guys haven’t seen the level of recap, watch that. But we’re going to start changing tasks to be just items. And these items can have different types, which I presume come with different settings.
[00:08:41.080]
Right? Some come with due dates, some don’t. That’s at least my understanding so far. I would like to see three different item types rolled out in this new item. Types feature one data or database, meaning a task that doesn’t have a due date, doesn’t have an assignment. It’s just a thing that’s storing information to document where all it is is writing and communication.
[00:09:01.120]
It’s just basically the task description, the task title and the comments area with an activity feed in there. There’s no other tracking of information.
[00:09:07.960]
There’s no other standard or custom fields, just a document three task. And this is pretty much exactly what we have now for our task. Those are the three item types that I would like to see, particularly documents just like dashboards. I’m tired of seeing them separate. I would love to see documents just be another type of task, but with specific information removed. And I’d like to have this decision made at the lowest level so we can have a whole container.
[00:09:29.830]
And I could theoretically have a list called Document Library, and every single record in there is a document number nine. I’d like ClickUp to fix Kanae. That’s right.
[00:09:39.340]
This isn’t really a feature request so much as a feature request for feature requests. If you’re not aware, ClickApp has a candy board where they track feedback from ClickUp users like yourself and myself. And I submit a lot of requests. I bet you do as well.
[00:09:51.130]
And when you go in to search for the status of those requests, the search results are unhelpful.
[00:09:56.770]
At best, there can be three or four different versions. Each feature request and some of them dozens, even where there’s a dozen different requests of different phrasing of the exact same request and so estimating what things are going to get worked on, what things are popular, what things are in the roadmap and what things aren’t in the roadmap, it gets really confusing. So my request is either one to have all new candy requests actually go through a human moderator who then aggregates that information and make sure that every request is uniquely new or to have community moderators have a swarm of ClickApp most avid fans who have moderation powers and the ability to merge different threads together.
[00:10:34.400]
This would allow us to actually be able to look at county and see what features are in request and not worry about seeing 10 different variants that I all need to individually upvote if I want to make sure that I’m notified when one of those features is moved into planned. Whether you restrict creation or you have moderators to to clean up afterwards, whichever way you do it, just something to make the county board a little bit more effective and concise. Quick aside here, if you like any of the points that I’ve talked about today, leave a comment and give this video a thumbs up.
[00:10:59.930]
And if you don’t like something I’ve said today, be sure to leave a comment. Tell me why you don’t like it. And then, of course, hit that thumbs down button and you know what? Hit it twice.
[00:11:06.500]
So that way you really are sure that I get the message No.10 clarify coaching versus consultants. This is a question I just got recently on the channel, but it’s been in conversation a lot lately. And basically what this system is, as far as I understand it, is it is customer support reps, perhaps senior ones, perhaps not, who are going to be providing phone calls to give you instruction on your ClickUp to give you directions based on a brief conversation that’s going to last up to 30 minutes.
[00:11:33.800]
And I’m really excited to see them taking support more seriously. So the reason the ClickUp coaching program has been a little bit of a stressor for me. A little bit, I don’t know, frustrating to see is because it’s a bit purposefully misleading. It’s marketed as if it is a consulting program, as if you can just book a free call with ClickUp and they’re going to tell you everything that you need to know about ClickUp. But the fact is that offer is physically impossible.
[00:11:58.430]
The promise of you can call up these coaches and they’re going to help you figure out your ClickUp Workspace in thirty minutes without any information about you, without any discovery, without any prep information. I just can’t imagine doing that. I would love to work a part time shift as a ClickUp coach to see if I could even deliver on that promise. I doubt it, honestly. I really do. I do one hour sessions, but I have a prep question that goes out beforehand.
[00:12:19.280]
I spent hours preparing and recapping every single session to make sure that I’m able to deliver value in a one hour container to hear that probably not super well compensated support representatives are going to be providing this information for free for thousands of teams. It’s just something’s not adding up. I still think it’s a net win to have that kind of option. I just think the way it’s been handled has not been the best. So what would I like to see? I’d like to see the ClickUp coaching program clearly explained, truthfully explained and contrasted with the ClickUp consultant program.
[00:12:53.330]
OK, so now number eleven, here are some easy ones. I’m just suggesting we change some damn terms. There are certain words in ClickApp that we all know don’t make sense, but we still use them. So here’s the full list. I’d love to see Workspace change to organization watchers, change to follower’s inbox, change to my tasks, sharing and permissions, the one that’s actually in the tasks area change to just permissions. So it’s not the same as the share button.
[00:13:16.220]
I’d like to see items, the new item types that they’re rolling out just be called records. So ClickApp doesn’t have to be this kind of unique snowflake.
[00:13:23.150]
And finally, and you knew this one was coming, coaches to ClickUp live support. Last but not least, the most impossible ask of them all. I would love to see ClickUp stop trying to be the app to replace them all. I’m never going to stop talking about this. I’ve been mentioning this in my videos for pretty much as long as I’ve been making videos. I’ve mentioned this in the level of recap and based on level up. I know ClickUp is doubling down on the app to replace them all strategy.
[00:13:47.960]
But personally, one day I wish the Zebb just wakes up in the middle of the night and decides who will be the app to manage them all. And we don’t have to try to live this lie of thinking that ClickApp is truly going to replace every other software application. I thought blue oceans were what marketers love ClickApp strategy and this catchphrase in particular is just red oceans all day. It’s trying to replace things that other apps already do perfectly well and make you want to switch to ClickUp.
[00:14:12.380]
Just for the pure fact of man, I wish you could all be one app. And as Justin very eloquently mentioned in this video up here, no one wakes up and is like, I want to start a business just so I can have a consolidated tech stack. No. So well, I know at this point there’s no way it’s going to happen based on the roadmap and the features and the things that we’ve heard from Zabin from level up going on recently.
[00:14:31.790]
I wish it would stop trying to reinvent Microsoft Office and instead try to become Windows OS and actually build the cloud based operating system, if you will, where all of your work apps connect. So in conclusion, that’s was on my twenty twenty one wish list for ClickApp.
[00:14:47.180]
Will any of it come true? Who knows.
[00:14:49.730]
And to wrap us up here, why don’t you share your top feedback for ClickUp in the comments below. What kind of features would you like to see prioritize any of the ones I mentioned here or maybe something I didn’t even think about because I. I’m sure there are a lot better ideas out there than the ones that I came up with here today. Leave a comment and let us know we can all kind of upvote and downvote and then, of course, translate those over to Kanae so we can make sure ClickUp hears us loud and clear.
[00:15:10.320]
And for those of you guys who have made it through this very long video, thank you for sharing with me. I hope this was informative and did answer the questions that I’ve gotten again and again of Layla. What do you think ClickApp should do? There you go. For better or worse, I put my opinions out there and I will see you guys in the next video until we talk again in twenty twenty one. Enjoy the process.
ProcessDriven helps small teams turn chaos into process. The ProcessDriven Approach™ combines software expertise with practical process-first strategies that have helped 2,020+ teams build a scalable foundation of business systems.