board-setup

Board Setup

Create and configure monday.com boards with proper structure - the right column types, meaningful groups, and initial items. In monday.com, a board is the central workspace where a team tracks any workflow: project delivery, sales pipeline, bug triage, content production, event planning, and more. This skill provides the domain knowledge needed to build well-organized boards that match how teams actually work.

Workflow

Step 1: Understand requirements

Before creating anything, clarify with the user:

1. What are you tracking? (tasks, projects, bugs, leads, requests, events, etc.)
2. What stages does work go through? (e.g., To Do > In Progress > Review > Done)
3. What information do you need per item? (owner, deadline, priority, status, budget, etc.)
4. How many people will use this board?

If the user gives a brief request like "create a project board", use reasonable defaults based on the use case and confirm the structure before creating.

Step 2: Design the board structure

Based on requirements, plan:

• Board name - clear and descriptive
• Groups - represent workflow stages, categories, or time periods
• Columns - the data fields for each item (see Column Type Selection below)

Step 3: Create the board

Call create_board with:

• boardName: descriptive name
• boardKind: "public" (visible to all team members) or "private" (visible only to subscribers)

Step 4: Create groups

Call create_group for each workflow stage or category.

Position the new groups above the default group. A new monday board ships with a default empty group named "Group Title" (id topics). To put your workflow groups in the right order at the top of the board, pass positionRelativeMethod: "before_at" and relativeTo: "topics" on each create_group call. Create groups in workflow order (the first group you create becomes the first group on the board, and top_group - which is where new items will land by default).

Clean up the default group at the end. Once your workflow groups exist, the default topics group is a leftover empty group that confuses users. Delete it by calling all_monday_api with the delete_group mutation: mutation { delete_group(board_id: <id>, group_id: "topics") { id } }. Skipping this leaves the board with a dangling empty group below the workflow.

Common group patterns:

By workflow stage (most common):

• "To Do", "In Progress", "In Review", "Done"

By priority:

• "Critical", "High Priority", "Medium", "Low Priority"

By time period:

• "This Week", "Next Week", "Backlog"

By team/department:

• "Engineering", "Design", "Product", "QA"

By category:

• "Bugs", "Features", "Improvements", "Technical Debt"

Step 5: Add columns

Call create_column for each data field. For each column, specify:

• boardId: the board ID from Step 3
• title: the display name
• columnType: the monday.com column type (see Column Type Selection below)
• columnSettings: JSON-stringified label config when the column needs custom labels (see "Custom labels for status columns" below)

Add columns in this order (left to right on the board):

1. Status column (workflow state)
2. Person column (owner/assignee)
3. Date or Timeline column (deadline/duration)
4. Priority column (if needed)
5. Additional data columns (text, numbers, links, etc.)

Custom labels for status columns

status columns created without columnSettings always get the default monday labels: "Working on it" (orange), "Done" (green), "Stuck" (red). That is fine for the primary workflow Status column, but it is wrong for any other status column the template needs - Priority, Severity, Stage, and Risk all end up with confusing default labels unless you pass custom ones at creation time.

Pass columnSettings as a JSON string with the shape:

{"labels": [{"label": "<name>", "color": "<color_token>", "index": <0..n>}, ...]}

Each entry needs label, color, and index (other fields are optional). The color token is a string from monday's StatusColumnColors enum. Useful tokens by category:

• Calm / low: sky, bright_blue, aquamarine, saladish
• Mid / progress: working_orange, orange, egg_yolk, purple
• High / warning: dark_orange, sunset, lipstick
• Critical / blocked: stuck_red, dark_red, bright_green (only for "approved")
• Done / success: done_green, grass_green

Reference label sets to use in the templates below:

• Priority: [{"label":"Low","color":"sky","index":0},{"label":"Medium","color":"working_orange","index":1},{"label":"High","color":"dark_orange","index":2},{"label":"Critical","color":"stuck_red","index":3}]
• Severity: same as Priority.
• Pipeline stage (CRM): label set should match the named groups (Lead, Qualified, Proposal, Negotiation, Closed Won, Closed Lost) so item-status and group can stay in sync.
• Risk: [{"label":"Low","color":"saladish","index":0},{"label":"Medium","color":"egg_yolk","index":1},{"label":"High","color":"dark_orange","index":2}]

If the user requests a status column whose meaning is not workflow ("Priority", "Severity", "Risk", "Stage", "Health", "Confidence", etc.), default to a Low/Medium/High/Critical scale unless they tell you the labels they want. State the defaults you used so they can override.

For the primary workflow Status column, leave columnSettings off - the defaults match what most users expect.

Step 6: Seed initial items (optional)

If the user provides initial items, call create_item for each one. Follow the column value formatting rules from the task-management skill.

Step 7: Present the result

Report what was built in plain language - don't narrate the API calls. Include the direct URL returned by the MCP tool.

Summarize what was created:

Board Created: [Board Name]

• URL: [board URL]
• Type: [public/private]

Groups:

1. To Do
2. In Progress
3. In Review
4. Done

Columns:

Column	Type	Purpose
Status	Status	Workflow state
Owner	People	Item assignee
Due Date	Date	Deadline
Priority	Status	Importance level
Notes	Text	Additional context

Then suggest 2-3 logical next steps:

• "Want me to add some initial items to get started?"
• "Should I invite team members to this board?"
• "Want me to create a dashboard to track this project?"
• "Should I set up a form for intake requests?"

Column Type Selection

Choosing the right column type is critical. Using a text column where you need a status column means losing filtering, grouping, and automation capabilities.

For the complete column type reference, see references/column-types-guide.md.

Quick selection guide for the most common needs:

What you need	Column type	Why not text?
Workflow state (To Do, In Progress, Done)	status	Enables color-coding, filtering by status, automations
Who's responsible	people	Links to monday.com users, enables workload views
Deadline	date	Enables calendar view, timeline view, overdue detection
Date range (start-to-end)	timeline	Shows duration bars in timeline view
Importance level	status (labeled "Priority")	Color-coded, filterable, sortable
Effort estimate	numbers	Enables sum, average, and formula calculations
Category tags	dropdown	Multi-select from predefined options
Yes/no flag	checkbox	Visual toggle, filterable
Free-form notes	text	Simple text input
Long description	long_text	Rich text with formatting
File attachments	file	Upload and preview files inline
Web link	link	Clickable URL with display text
Email address	email	Clickable mailto link
Phone number	phone	Clickable tel link
Budget/cost	numbers	Supports currency formatting and formulas
Rating	rating	1-5 star visual rating
Progress	progress	Visual progress bar based on subitems or linked column

Plan-tier awareness

Most column types work on every monday plan. Two are gated and the skill should handle this gracefully:

• Formula column - Pro and Enterprise plans only. If the user is on Free / Basic / Standard and asks for a formula column (e.g., "I want a column that calculates total cost from quantity and price"), explain the gating and suggest one of:
  • A numbers column the user updates manually
  • A text column with a calculated value the user pastes from elsewhere
  • Adding the formula calculation to a docs/dashboards skill output instead
• AI / Automation features at the board level - some are tier-gated. If the user asks the skill to set up an automation, redirect them to the monday automation UI rather than promising it via the plugin.

If the user is unsure of their plan, just create the board with standard columns first and offer to add formula columns later if their plan supports it.

Board Templates by Use Case

Project Tracker

• Groups: To Do, In Progress, In Review, Done
• Columns: Status, Owner (people), Due Date (date), Priority (status, custom labels Low/Medium/High/Critical), Notes (text)

Bug Tracker

• Groups: New, Triaged, In Progress, Fixed, Verified
• Columns: Status, Assignee (people), Severity (status, custom labels Low/Medium/High/Critical), Due Date (date), Steps to Reproduce (long_text), Environment (dropdown)

Sales/CRM Pipeline

• Groups: Lead, Qualified, Proposal, Negotiation, Closed Won, Closed Lost
• Columns: Stage (status, custom labels matching the group names: Lead/Qualified/Proposal/Negotiation/Closed Won/Closed Lost), Owner (people), Company (text), Deal Value (numbers), Close Date (date), Source (dropdown)

Content Calendar

• Groups: Ideas, In Production, In Review, Published
• Columns: Status, Author (people), Publish Date (date), Content Type (dropdown), Channel (dropdown), Link (link)

Event Planning

• Groups: Planning, Logistics, Marketing, Day-Of, Post-Event
• Columns: Status, Owner (people), Timeline (timeline), Budget (numbers), Priority (status), Notes (text)

Sprint Board

• Groups: Backlog, Sprint [current], In Progress, Done
• Columns: Status, Assignee (people), Story Points (numbers), Sprint (dropdown), Due Date (date), Type (status)

Request/Intake

• Groups: New Requests, Under Review, Approved, In Progress, Completed
• Columns: Status, Requester (people), Assigned To (people), Priority (status), Due Date (date), Request Type (dropdown), Description (long_text)

Error Prevention and Remediation

• If create_board fails due to permissions, suggest using an existing workspace the user has admin access to, or ask which workspace they want to use.
• If a column type is rejected (e.g., formula on a non-Pro plan), explain the plan gating and propose an alternative column type.
• Detect name collisions before creating. monday allows two boards with the same name in the same workspace, which is a usability trap. Before calling create_board, call search with the requested board name scoped to the target workspace. If a board with that name already exists, ask the user: use the existing one, create with a suffix (e.g., "Board Name (2)"), or pick a different name. Skipping this check and creating a duplicate is a fail.
• If columnSettings JSON is malformed, create_column returns an error. The label format requires an array of {label, color, index} objects, not a name->color map. See "Custom labels for status columns" above.

Tools Used

• search - preflight check for board name collisions before create_board
• get_column_type_info - understand available column types and their schemas (including the columnSettings shape for status columns)
• create_board - create the board
• create_group - add groups to the board
• create_column - add columns with correct types and custom columnSettings for Priority / Severity / Stage / Risk / etc.
• create_item - seed initial items (optional)
• all_monday_api - delete the default topics group after the workflow groups are in place

Additional Resources

• references/column-types-guide.md - Complete guide to all monday.com column types, when to use each, and configuration options