Airtable has recently unveiled Portals, a feature designed to streamline collaboration with external users like clients, vendors, and partners. With Portals, you can create a tailored, secure experience for guests by offering a custom sign-in page that provides easy access to your Airtable app. This innovation makes sharing relevant data simpler and more secure than ever.

Why is this a big deal?‍

Portals enable you to give external users or guests access to Airtable Interfaces without requiring them to purchase a full Airtable license. This means you can collaborate with external stakeholders at a fraction of the cost. Pricing for the Portals add-on starts at $8 per guest per month or $120 per month for 15 guests and one portal.

Key use cases for Portals:

• Client portal: Provide clients with real-time access to project updates and deliverables.
• Vendor management: Simplify communication and document sharing with suppliers.
• Partner collaboration: Enable seamless data exchange with business partners.
• Customer support: Enhance customer experience with self-service options, FAQs, and support ticket tracking.

It’s important to note that a guest is defined as a user who does not share your team or company’s email domain, or uses a personal domain (e.g., gmail.com, yahoo.com). This ensures team members cannot be treated as guests to reduce licensing costs.

How is different from Airtable interfaces?‍

Airtable Interfaces have been available for some time and allow you to share access to underlying Airtable data in a customized way. With Interfaces, you can control what parts of the database are visible and editable, tailoring the experience to suit your needs.

The key distinction with Portals lies in the external login capability. Instead of logging directly into Airtable, external users access your custom partner portal to interact with Airtable Interfaces. This provides a more professional, branded experience.

Key features:

• Custom sign-in page: Allow external collaborators to access your Airtable Interface without needing to log into Airtable itself.
• Granular permissions: Control exactly what guests can see and edit, ensuring secure and tailored collaboration.
• White labeling (coming soon): Personalize your portal by matching it to your brand. Add your company logo and customize the background for a cohesive, professional look.

How to get started with Portals?

Portals are currently in beta for Teams, Business, and Enterprise Scale customers. If you’re eligible, you can add the Portals add-on to invite external users and manage their access easily.

As a trusted backup provider for Airtable, ProBackup ensures your data remains secure no matter how Airtable’s features evolve. Stay tuned for more updates on this powerful tool!

See Portals in action‍

Here are a few tutorial videos to help you explore Airtable Portals:

ProBackup Picks ClickUp's Highlights of 2024

ClickUp ended 2023 strong with the launch of ClickUp 3.0. As 2024 wraps up, we're eager to see if they kept their momentum (spoiler alert: they did!).

Here are some of the biggest updates ClickUp added or improved in 2024.

ClickUp Chat

ClickUp is fulfilling its promise to become the "one app to replace them all" with ClickUp Chat. Previously, you could communicate by commenting on tasks and docs, but now ClickUp Chat has its own spot on the sidebar (here's how to activate it).

The feature set is familiar: post announcements, message colleagues directly, and create channels for each department. The biggest advantage is its deep integration with other parts of the app. Here are two examples:

• Create a chat view for a specific list to ask for general updates related to that list or team.
• Turn conversations into tasks with one click and link chats to related work items.

Additionally, you can use the AI option to suggest replies and summarize threads. This leads us to another significant improvement...

ClickUp Brain

The rise of AI was initially met with skepticism, but 2024 proved it's here to stay. Many big SaaS players are integrating AI into their apps, and ClickUp is leading the way with impressive AI features for productivity.

When you log in, the new AI features are easy to find. The pink widget in the bottom right corner gives quick access to summarize, write, or ask a question. It's a clever way to highlight the three main AI use cases within ClickUp.

Summarize: Select text in ClickUp and "ask AI" to summarize, improve, lengthen, or shorten it. You can also check spelling and grammar or translate it. It's super handy and quick!

Writer: This feature helps you draft new text. Use it for anything: generate a meeting minutes template, draft a brainstorming agenda, or write an email with feedback. While the output is often impressive, a human review is recommended.

Ask AI: This option lets you ask questions to the ClickUp Brain. It's the most exotic option, and we haven't explored it much. In theory, you can ask AI to summarize project updates or explain a team process.

Whiteboards 3.0

In December, ClickUp launched the third version of ClickUp Whiteboards. This version is a complete rebuild, featuring a sleek design and powerful capabilities. With improved features and impressive speed, it's easier than ever to work and chat with your team in real-time on the same board.

ClickUp added hundreds of new, professionally designed templates for brainstorming, project planning, and more. They also introduced AI-powered image generation to transform text into stunning visuals in seconds. These updates make it easy to jumpstart sessions and get ideas flowing quickly.

Once you're done, convert whiteboard ideas into tasks, making it simple to turn brainstorming sessions into assigned tasks. You can also export the whiteboard as a PDF, PNG, or JPEG.

Clips 3.0

With Clips, you can instantly create and share videos, making it easy to convey your message clearly and effectively. The process is as simple as hitting record, sharing your screen, and sending your ideas to your team faster than typing a response.

Clips stand out because they integrate seamlessly into the platforms where you already work. There's no need to switch to Loom or upload files.

The flexibility in sharing Clips is remarkable: embed a Clip directly within ClickUp, send a public link to anyone outside your Workspace, or download the video file. Every Clip you record, whether in a comment, task, or Doc, is automatically stored in the Clips Hub (accessible via the navigation bar).

Conclusion

It's clear that ClickUp has had another banging year with new and improved features. This exciting development makes us even more eager to see what innovative features they'll bring in 2025!

When it comes to project management, there are a lot of tools on the market. While having options is great, the truth is that all of these competing platforms can make choosing the right project management service for your team feel like searching for a needle in a never-ending haystack. 

That’s where we come in.

Today, we’re taking a deep dive into three of today’s leading project management platforms: Asana, Trello, and Monday.com. Not only that, we'll be giving you insight into the types of teams and projects best suited to each platform so that you can make an informed decision about your operation's future.

Let’s get straight to it!

Asana

As a legacy project management platform with more than 15 years in the marketplace, Asana offers teams endless options for collaboration, automation, and creating a fully integrated workflow. With both free and paid plan options, Asana makes it easy for organizations to customize their plans based on the size of their team, making it a strong choice for operations looking to scale. 

Pros

100+ Software Integrations

Tired of constantly switching between platforms in your workflow? Asana eliminates speedbumps in your operation with more than 100 software integrations featuring the tools your team already knows and loves, like Microsoft Teams and Google Workspace. 

Customized Automation

Your workflow is about your rules. That’s why Asana strives to offer more customization opportunities for its users, allowing you to automate your process based on your own criteria. This feature helps to take the stress out of routine tasks and gives your team the freedom to focus on more pressing jobs. 

Multiple Views

From Lists and Timelines to Calendars and Progress Tracking, Asana allows all users to access multiple viewpoints for every single task. Ultimately, this leads to fewer errors in your workflow and greater prioritization for your most high-stake projects. 

Who It’s For?

Asana is a versatile platform for teams of every size, but we think this tool works best for agile organizations with lean teams. In the free plan alone, Asana allows up to 15 users, with additional users costing just 10.99 per user per month beyond that point. 

Cons

Since the paid version of Asana charges per user each month, this platform can be somewhat pricey for larger teams or organizations who anticipate adding new members as they scale. 

Trello

Launched in 2011, Trello gives users a unique approach to project management that fuses simplicity, efficiency, and collaboration all in one. Unlike other popular team-driven platforms, Trello features a Kanban-inspired layout that uses visual cues to encourage better organization and streamlined workflows. Simply put, Trello is a sleek, modern approach to project management that is easy and accessible for every member of your team. 

Pros

List-Style Format

At its core, Trello is a list-making tool. Although that may sound restrictive in terms of managing projects, the platform allows users to create unique columns, boards, and project cards that can seamlessly be moved from one list to the next. This creates a visually-driven project-tracking system that takes the stress out of figuring out which tasks require the most attention. 

User-Friendly Interface

Because Trello follows a simplified Kanban methodology for organization, the platform is naturally easy to use. In just a few clicks, team members can assign tasks, create sub-projects on each card, and move their work through the project pipeline without the need for additional tools or training. 

Optimized For Mobile

One of the most alluring features of Trello is its mobile optimization, which allows teams to work more effectively from anywhere in the world. This makes it an ideal choice for teams with members who work remotely around the globe or who need to adjust their workflow while on the go. 

Who It’s For?

Thanks to its simplicity, Trello is the ideal choice for teams who need to work quickly at moving projects through their pipeline and regularly onboard new members. Most importantly, Trello offers both a free plan and three paid tiers, allowing you to find the perfect price for your operation. 

Cons

While we may love Trello for its list-style format, this can also make managing complex tasks more challenging and may require additional integrations to handle large-scale projects. 

Monday.com

Despite being one of the newer project management platforms on the market, Monday.com has amassed a loyal following of users since its launch in 2019, and for good reason. This cloud-based platform offers some of the best customization and collaboration tools on the market, earning it plenty of recognition from organizations with diverse teams. Plus, Monday.com offers 24/7 live customer support for its users, a rarity in the project management space. 

Pros

Visual Dashboards

When you need a quick snapshot of your project status, Monday.com has you covered. The platform uses visual dashboards to give you insight into all current projects and customizable Kanban, list style, and other views. 

Real-Time Collaborations

Collaboration is the heart and soul of Monday.com’s project management approach, offering real-time collaboration tools that can be utilized by multiple team members at a time. This allows you to create custom access for specific users to edit tasks, assign collaborative projects, and everything in between. 

Customization-Driven

Like Asana, Monday.com also leans heavily into customization and automation. This allows organizations to set their own rules and create a workflow unique to their tasks, and the platform has over 200 customizable project templates to help you get started. 

Who It’s For?

Monday.com offers both free and flexible plans that go up to 16 per month, which makes it a great choice for small teams and entrepreneurs who are just beginning to grow their operations. However, thanks to its growing prominence in the market, we suspect that organizations of every size will soon be leveraging Monday.com’s benefits. 

Cons

As Monday.com is still relatively new, the brand is continuing to evolve its approach to project management, which may result in hesitation from higher-ups and senior management. 

Which Project Management Tool Is Right For You?

No matter the size and scope of your team, there are certainly plenty of project management tools designed to meet your needs. Whether you’re looking for a traditional approach to organizing tasks like Asana, a scaled-down alternative like Trello, or Monday.com’s innovative mix of both worlds, your team is sure t1o work more efficiently than ever before.

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When you have five tasks due by the end of the day, three meetings to attend, and four follow-up calls to make, it's easy for your thoughts to get jumbled. Staying on top of your tasks and duties without a way to keep organized, the quality of your work can start to decline. One of the best ways to add order to your to-do list is with a work management app like Monday.com. 

Below, we'll highlight some of the best features of Monday.com and help you see how to use it to ease your daily schedule. By optimizing your tasks, you'll find yourself accomplishing more in less time, thus freeing up valuable moments for the things that truly matter. 

What is Monday.com?

Monday.com is a cloud-based work management tool that virtually connects team members and provides a flexible platform for all types of work. Designed to boost productivity and foster collaboration, it offers ways to delegate and track responsibilities for teams and businesses of all sizes. 

Its user-friendly interface and customizable templates, like Kanban boards and Gantt charts, make it a popular choice for streamlined project management. This platform is best for groups looking to organize their work, track progress, and collaborate more efficiently in a centralized space.

1. Streamlining Workflow with Automation

Automation in platforms like Monday.com allows for the replacement of manual, repetitive tasks with automated processes. This shift saves time and minimizes the chance of human error. For example, when a task's status is updated, a notification can be sent to the relevant team members. With this, everyone is instantly advised about project updates, decreasing the frequency of manual follow-ups. 

Automation allows for the uniform execution of routine tasks. This consistency helps maintain a smooth flow of operations and keeps team members focused on their core responsibilities. Monday.com facilitates better resource management. It promotes the allocation of tasks based on team members' availability or expertise, leading to a more balanced workload distribution and a more streamlined, error-free work function.

2. Enhancing Collaboration with Team Management Features

Monday.com's team management features are designed to foster a collaborative environment, making it easier for teams to work together efficiently, regardless of their location. One significant feature is the real-time communication capability. This allows team members to discuss projects, share updates, and solve issues directly within the platform. Doing so eliminates the need for lengthy email threads or external messaging apps, keeping all communication centralized and accessible.

Having a shared workspace where team members can view, edit, and manage tasks collectively maintains transparency. This keeps everyone on the same page and helps managers or task leaders monitor the status of each project. Similarly, team leaders can assign tasks to specific members and track progress to ensure accountability and evenly distribute the workload.

These collaborative features enhance teamwork and contribute to a more organized and productive work environment. By providing tools that facilitate easy communication and resource sharing, Monday.com can improve the overall efficiency of teams.

3. Customizable Workspaces for Tailored Efficiency

Customizable workspaces allow businesses to suit their online boards to their specific needs. This individualization extends across the whole platform, including project boards, workflows, and dashboards.

For instance, a marketing team might customize their board to track campaign progress with columns for campaign stages, budgets, and deadlines. However, a software development team can set up a board that follows their sprint cycles with columns for sprint planning, development, testing, and deployment.

Because customization takes time that companies often don't have, Monday.com offers a wide variety of templates, like a content planning template for editorial teams or a project roadmap template for project managers. These can be further tailored to meet specific project requirements. The ability to adjust these elements means that every team, regardless of its size or the complexity of its projects, can set up a workspace that aligns perfectly with its operational requirements. 

4. Integration with Other Tools

Integrating management apps with other popular tools and services allows for seamless synchronization and data sharing across different platforms, ensuring that users can maintain a cohesive workflow without constantly switching between applications. Monday.com integrates with common communication tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams, making group collaboration more streamlined. It also connects with cloud storage services such as Google Drive and Dropbox, simplifying file sharing and access. 

These integrations save time and reduce the potential for errors from transferring data manually between systems. They enable a more efficient workflow, where information updates in one platform are automatically reflected in others.

5. Tracking and Reporting Data

While many business management apps offer data analytics features, they don’t all add up to what insights Monday.com can provide. Some of the specific analytics tools used in Monday.com include:

• Overview Widget: Follow the status of all projects based on the number of remaining assignments. The widget visually depicts whether projects are on track, completed, or at risk by displaying an easy-to-understand progress bar next to each assignment. 
• Performance Insights View: This feature tracks how long items have been spent in specific statuses or phases, offering valuable data on team tasks and project progression. It's similar to the Overview, but more specific to timeframes. 
• Search Everything: Like the “Find” function on documents, the Search Everything tool allows you to find any keyword in your Monday.com board. Say you need to find your assigned projects - simply search your name. Alternatively, try the word "Stuck" to locate the tasks that take longer than expected to complete. 
• Word Cloud: This visualization tool turns textual data into more meaningful insights, highlighting key terms in a visually impactful way. It tells you which key terms are mentioned the most across your board.

There are dozens of additional tools on Monday.com to analyze business performance. Each one leads to more informed decisions and streamlined processes by enhancing workflow management and productivity.

Unlocking Productivity and Collaboration with Monday.com

When you want to add a little - or a lot - more order to your company’s workflow, Monday.com may be your tool. Its host of features can help enhance team collaboration and boost overall productivity. 

As you use Monday.com, though it's cloud-based, don't let unexpected data loss hinder your team's progress. To safeguard your work, consider the added security and peace of mind with Pro Backup. This way, all your content and sensitive information is safe and retrievable, no matter what happens. 

In my role as product manager for Pro Backup I work a lot with the project management apps that we integrate with: Not only do we explore their core features to ensure a deeply-integrated backup solution but we also keep track of their new features and updates. We speak with a lot of implementation partners about their needs and requests, which gives us a good grasp of the strengths and weaknesses of the most popular project management apps.

With an array of options at our fingertips, choosing the right tool can significantly enhance productivity and streamline workflows. In this article we wanted to give an overview of the best tools currently dominating the market, each excelling in unique ways. Whether for data management, automation, or collaborative whiteboarding, we've got the insights to help you make an informed choice in this digital era.

Why Use a Project Management App

In our competitive environment of digital outreach, the use of a project management app has become more of a necessity than a luxury. These productivity platforms offer many benefits that streamline workflows, enhance productivity, and foster collaboration, regardless of your team's size or industry. Some of the top reasons you may consider utilizing a management app include: 

1. Enhanced Organization: Apps provide a structured platform to manage tasks, projects, and deadlines. They allow you to organize work into manageable segments, ensuring nothing falls through the cracks. This organization is crucial for keeping track of multiple projects and meeting deadlines.
2. Improved Communication and Collaboration: These apps often include tools that facilitate better team collaboration. Whether assigning tasks, sharing updates, or giving feedback, everything happens in one place, reducing the need for lengthy email threads and meetings.
3. Accessibility and Flexibility: Cloud apps have cloud-based functionality, meaning they offer the flexibility to access your work anywhere and anytime. This accessibility is essential for remote teams or individuals who travel frequently.
4. Time Management and Efficiency: By providing an overview of tasks and deadlines, these apps help prioritize work, leading to better time management. Many of these cloud apps also include time-tracking features, offering insights into time spent on each task, which is valuable for productivity analysis.
5. Data-Driven Decision Making: Many of these productivity platforms have reporting tools, providing data and insights on project progress, team performance, and resource allocation. This information is vital for making informed decisions and strategizing future projects.

Project management apps are the backbone of modern, efficient, and practical work methods. They simplify task management and contribute to a more organized, collaborative, and data-driven work culture.

Task Management Tools with Asana

Asana is an extensive project management tool that excels in organizing work into manageable tasks and projects. It offers various views, including lists, calendars, timelines, Gantt charts, and Kanban boards, making it versatile for different team needs. Asana enables effective top-down task delegation, starting by defining goals & milestones, to then structure your projects with clear due dates and responsibilities. 

Its custom fields feature allows for personalized task organization, facilitating easier sorting and filtering. Additionally, Asana provides real-time status updates, time tracking, and reporting dashboards, offering insights into team progress. It supports automated workflows, resource management, and integrates with various popular tools, enhancing overall team coordination and efficiency.

Prioritization Tactics with Trello

Trello is a versatile project management app known for its ease of use and visual approach to organizing projects. It employs a the classic Kanban system with cards and boards, allowing teams to create, assign, and track tasks visually. These days many apps offer a similar kanban option but we think the Trello's Kanban system is the most fun to work with. Trello's flexible setup is ideal for various methodologies, including Scrum and Kanban, making it suitable for a wide range of projects and teams.

Its features include customizable boards, lists, and cards, along with integrations with other popular tools, enhancing its functionality. Trello's simplicity and visual appeal make it a popular choice for teams prioritizing ease of use and clear communication.

Doing it All with ClickUp

ClickUp stands as a multifaceted project management tool, offering a suite of features to cater to diverse work needs. It's highly customizable, with over 35 ClickApps to tailor task management. Key features include nested subtasks, checklists, time tracking, voice & video recording, and a variety of views like List, Board, and Calendar. 

ClickUp enhances team collaboration with real-time chat, document sharing, and proofing tools. It also excels in automation, offering over 50 actions to streamline workflows. It even offers features like video recording and whiteboards. The platform integrates seamlessly with more than 1,000 tools, making it a top choice for adaptable project management, remote work, and team collaboration. With all of these ClickUp is making good on its promise to build "one app to replace them all". If you want avoid switching apps too often, then ClickUp might be the ideal solution for you.

Visual Representation with Notion

Notion is renowned for its exceptional visual dashboards, which allow for a highly personalized and flexible project management experience. Its interface supports intricate project planning and tracking with customizable tables and timeline views. Notion's strength lies in its ability to represent complex information visually, making project oversight more intuitive and accessible. 

The platform's versatility extends to managing tasks with calendar views, embedding diverse content types, and offering a cohesive workspace that can adapt to various project requirements. This visual approach ensures a clear and engaging overview of projects, enhancing team collaboration and productivity.

Present Data Sets with Airtable

Airtable excels in managing complex data sets and creating linked tables, making it a powerful tool for data organization and analysis. It offers the flexibility of a database with the ease of a spreadsheet. Users can customize fields to store various types of data, link records between tables to show how data is related, and create views that display this information in meaningful ways (e.g. table, kanban, calendar).

Airtable's rich field types, like checkboxes, dropdowns, and file attachments, enhance its capability to handle diverse data needs, making it ideal for detailed project management and comprehensive data analysis. Its focus on the table view make Airtable the ideal candidate when you have to deal with a higher amount (let's say more than 100) records in a project or base.

Automate Your Work with Monday

Monday.com is a dynamic project management platform that uniquely combines automation with other advanced features. It offers customizable automation for streamlining workflows and reducing manual tasks by automating task assignments, status updates, and notifications. Most project management app offer some form of automation but we believe that monday.com excels in this domain. The process of creating new automations is both very intuitive & detailed, allowing you to build advanced automations in no time.

Alongside this, Monday.com provides customizable templates, diverse views like timelines and Kanban, and seamless integrations with other tools. This blend of automation and versatility enhances team collaboration and productivity, making Monday.com a comprehensive solution for various business needs, all while maintaining a user-friendly and visually appealing interface.

Operate Whiteboards with Miro

Miro is a robust platform known for its extensive whiteboarding capabilities, ideal for creative brainstorming and collaborative planning. It features an infinite canvas that allows teams to map out ideas freely, with tools like sticky notes and smart drawing. 

Miro also supports various workstyles with customizable templates and seamless integrations with other cloud apps. This makes it perfect for diverse teams to collaborate visually, regardless of location. Miro's emphasis on whiteboards and visual tools fosters a dynamic and engaging way to manage projects and ideas. If you want to focus on ideation and brainstorming, rather than following up on tasks and projects, then Miro is the ideal tool for you.

Cloud Apps Today

Each of these apps have approached project management from a different angle: Trello started with its Kanban design, Airtable focused on spreadsheets, Miro on whiteboards, etc. However in the last few years each of these apps have added features that brought them closer to each other. This complicates the selection process, though each apps caters to different aspects of work and project management. Choosing the right app depends on the specific requirements of your projects and team dynamics, making it crucial to explore and understand the strengths of each tool.