Sub-Tasks in Notion: The Ultimate Guide
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- Опубликовано: 5 июл 2024
- Notion can be used to create powerful task management templates - but what about sub-tasks? In this video, I'll show you exactly how to add sub-task support to your Notion task lists.
🧠 This is an advanced video! If you're just starting out with Notion, check out my free Notion Fundamentals series:
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🔧 ULTIMATE TASKS TEMPLATE (FREE):
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😎 CREATOR'S COMPANION (My mega-template for content creators):
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🧪 SUB-TASK SORTING FORMULAS REFERENCE:
thomasfrank.notion.site/Sub-T...
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⏱ TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 - Intro
00:12 - Showing Sub-tasks
00:56 - Ultimate Tasks Template Update
01:31 - Video Overview
02:18 - Going over Simple Tasks
02:41 - Create a Relation to allow for Subtasks
04:01 - Creating a Sub-Task
04:35 - Showing the "State" property
06:12 - Create a Template to Make a Subtask
07:20 - Self-Referential Filters
08:21 - The Issue with Default Subtasks
09:58 - A Workaround for Default Subtasks
11:06 - How to get Subtasks to Sort Themselves Under Parent Task
16:44 - Showing Subtasks Inside of Projects
18:54 - Wrap up
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All of this demonstrates for me how Notion needs to create a dedicated “Task Manager” block that doesn’t require 5 formulas and 23 steps to make sub-tasks work. Your average user is never going to do this. I find it easier just to use Todoist, and then embed individual Todoist projects into Notion when necessary, such as if I create a notion project page to track everything related to a project like files and notes, except for the tasks.
Fortunately that kind of already exists - it's all in in my template! I think 95% of people would be happy to just duplicate a template and use that, but I want to also teach the other 5% how it all works.
Notion's marketing sort of hides this, but Notion is more like a programming framework than a traditional productivity tool. The basic blocks are easy to use for practical purposes, but the real power lies in using those blocks to build more advanced systems. I don't think they'd ever code a dedicated "sub-tasks" block because they're all about modularity - Notion makes the parts, templates use those parts to build purpose-made systems.
@@ThomasFrankExplains Thanks for your reply, Thomas! Yes, it's a good point: your template largely solves the problem, and it's kind of you to offer it for free to your viewers. Plus, you break everything down very well. One other approach to all of this is for Notion to create some kind of more nuanced link with Todoist like they've done with Asana (I haven't used it, but I've read that it's more enhanced compared to embedding Todoist blocks). This isn't to contradict your approach; it's just another option for accomplishing the same thing: managing complex tasks inside of Notion. The power of your system is that it brings together everything into one app: notes, files, and tasks, with the option of organizing those into discrete projects.
YES! Brilliant workaround for adding default tasks into a new template. Thank you so much Thomas!
I love it!!! I spent all afternoon understanding every detail of this logic, taking notes to document it for me and replicating to my Notion. I'm a fan of your work, thanks for that
Amazing, beautiful, wonderful. At first I was wondering why there were so many variables - when some of the variables could be determined through more complex formulas, but I see the method in the end through the sorting. Nicely done - if you're trying to copy all this stuff and make it yourself you may need to slow this down to half speed to follow properly ;)
Hi Thomas, thank you for sharing! Very appreciated, which is super useful and can transform my life!! Thank you!!
i give appreciation for your tips in creating sub-tasks in notion; i came to your video as i love the reminders by apple; it is easy to create tasks and sub-tasks plus create dates of when to do them; but when i switch to a chromebook or windows, the magic stops; notion is compatible across ios, android, windows, and chrome os; so having the functionality of the reminders by apple on notion is something i need - comment by mico!
Big Thank you! Simply priceless.
Thomas this is great! Thank you so much :)
This was great, thank you so much.
Brilliant! I’ve been wondering how to do this on various DBs 👍🏻
Hi. I love your content. Could you do something on displaying "progression (bars)"? I've seen some stuff on Reddit and I think seeing how far you have come in a project can be very motivational :) thanks again for the great content.
What I only miss (and I really do) is to see the status of the Sub-Tasks on the board view under the parent task's ticket (when sub-tasks are hidden from the board and they are visible in the parent task ticket only). Great video, thanks.
thank you so much for this
Thanks for this detailed video Thomas! Will recurring parent tasks also show related sub-tasks as recurring?
Brilliant!
Very cool!
I have a question. Is it possible to create a dependent drop-down list in Notion database?
Suppose I have a list of objects that I want to give a category and a sub-category. The sub-category should only show options that are related to the selected Category. Sometimes, it is called linked drop-down lists. Please help or explain to me how to create it!
Okay but who else has seen the subtle update that u can duplicate tasks without getting the “copy of” now?
Makes my calendar a lot prettier I'll tell you that hahaha
How do you do this? Just the alt drag?
@@winstonbicklebert1989 if you use "CTRL + D" or right click and then click "Duplicate" it duplicates normal now
Jazaka allahu khayran
This is incredibly impressive. I love and use notion daily. I think I would just connect wrike or taskade, etc to do this natively.
Hello, I just started using Notion several weeks ago and I've slowly been integrating it to some parts of my daily life. It's great to have videos and content like this. I would also like to comment that after watching this video and playing around with "Formula" and "Rolloup" properties, I have found a way to make an n-level parent-children hierarchy that gets displayed properly in the table. For my use case it is only sorted by the name, but I think it could easily be expanded to include other criteria like dates, as in your example. For only sorting by name, we just need one formula and one rolloup property. Let me know if you want me to share with you the configuration of these properties and maybe an explanation
Hey Angel - interesting, how does yours work?
I built out an infinite-n level hierarchy as a proof-of-concept last year, but it required pulling my rollup value into a Formula and passing it down the hierarchy that way. This meant that I couldn't create a self-referential filter in my database template, since those only work with Relations and Rollups. With an explicit Formula value, I would have had to filter by a hard-coded text value, and it also meant that forcing functions didn't work since I was filtering by a read-only Formula property.
Would love to know if you've figured out how to work around these limits!
Hi Thomas, my approach was pretty much what you said you did: basically using a Formula that referenced the Rollup property (which itself referenced the Formula), to achieve some sort of recursion. With this approach I'm able to display the n-level parent-child relationship in the main table. Unfortunately, as you said, it is impossible to make the self-referencing function work with the Formula in the database page template. So, for now, when I click on the page of a parent task, it will only show me its immediate inner children, but I can click any of those children and it will take me to their respective page, where I will be able to see the children of them (and so on and so forth). As I said, that is the limitation, but at least in the main table I can see all the tasks at all levels ordered correctly
Man you're a genius
Hi, thanks for your videos, they are really useful and of great quality. If there is a way to add elements to a database like what you do on min 11 but that also fills other columns values? not just the task column?
Hi Thomas thanks for all the Notion videos! I'm wondering if you can point me in the right direction... I use notion to track customer requests, and I enter them manually into my database. There is 51 requests that are annually recurring. Is there a method of automating Notion to generate those requests 45 days before they're due?
Great addition to the tasks table, this is very helpful. It seems, however, the sorting is ambiguous when multiple subtasks are given the same due date, but the subtasks should be completed in a particular order. Simply ordering them in the table won't affect the sorting. Do you have a solution for sorting these subtasks relative to their completion order? I've looked into row numbers and it seems Notion doesn't support automatic row numbering, and I can't think of a formula that would adjust when you manually reorder the rows.
You could add an order property if you wanted, and add that as the final filter, or just add a final filter to sort alphabetically and add number prefixes to your sub-tasks titles - e.g. "1 - wash dishes" - "2 - dry dishes"
Hi Thomas - Is it possible when making a subtask to have the sub task populate fields from the main task. Example: Department or Assigne. Thanks
Have you thought about using the notion API to create a windows application in javafx or something to easily create new tasks?
With the newer subtask update I was wondering if there is a way to make progress bars? I can't seem to get a progress bar for the main task, or the secondary task to reflect correctly if I have a third tier of Tasks. For example Goal>Project>Tasks
Great, ty
Very well done. You taught me a lot. Wouldn't it be easier to sort as subtasks to create a single column/formula that simply concats "self-name - 1" if parent is blank or "parent name - 2" if parent not blank. You then sort by that column
Most likely yes - I made this when I had far less formula knowledge. Though I think it'll still require multiple sort criteria, as this needs both date and string-based sorting.
When creating a database view, Notion offers a sub-task item to be turned on for that view. Is this similar to the functionality explained in this video?
Some background: I'm fairly new to Notion--I was introduced to it about two years ago, but am really only just now diving in--and am working on developing a framework for my personal projects with a companion Discord bot. I came across your channel when searching "advanced notion tips."
Thomas, is it possible to add a csv file from another task manager (Clickup) to your Ultimate Tasks template? I've been trying for days, and I can't figure it out.
Great video, I really appreciate the help. I was wondering if there is an easy way to still allow priority sorting while maintaining the location of the sub-task (directly under the parent)
Hmm - so basically sorting by priority of the parent task? I can definitely think of how to do it with a formula, but I'm not sure if that'd limit the ability to drag tasks around.
You'd basically make a rollup like "Parent Priority", then make a formula called Priority Formula: empty(prop("Parent Priority")) ? prop("Priority") : prop("Parent Priority")
That will return the priority of the parent (if it's a sub-task), and it'll be formula output, so you can Group by it. But I don't think it'll let you add tasks in that view, since it's grouping/filtering by a read-only formula property.
However, instead of grouping a board view, you could make multiple tabbed views - Low, Medium, High.
Then you could filter by: Priority is High OR Parent Priority is High. That'd do it.
@@ThomasFrankExplains Hmm, I may play around with this since I sort my notion task manager almost entirely by priority rather than due date. Thanks for this starting point!
does notion allow us to do sub tasks in a template yet? if so, could you do an updated sub tasks video? i’m currently having trouble with this as a creator myself. Thanks!
I bought the Ultimate Brain a couple months back and see it working on a page I created, but I do not see it not on the "My Day" page under "Upcoming Tasks." Is it set up to work on that page?
The drag & copy checklist hack only works sometimes and when there is an existing task in the database. Has this functionality been changed since the making of the video?
Hi Thomas!
I've been building out a project management space for my content studio team, and I was wondering if you could help solve this issue. I've always created a Projects database and a Tasks database in Notion and linked them together where it was necessary to track projects (since the tasks are what make up the project, of course). Recently, I've been toying around with the idea of using one database for Projects, with the sub-items being the tasks that make up that project. This works, but my main gripe is that I can't create a customized view that allows specific Assignees to see *all* of their tasks across all projects. Filtering by Assignees of each project works, but it's the sub-tasks that i'm most concerned about, since that's where the accountability lies. Any solutions? Or is a 2-database system the way to go?
To add to your insane notion to do list have you thought about doing a second brain / digital brain? I understand that there's diminishing returns as you become more productive. But it really depends on the person and how big their ambition is. But there's also an argument to where no matter what tools are available ambition will drive them to be as productive as they need to be. Anyway just curious on your take of it. Thanks for all your work man
I'm working on an updated version of my note-taking system that will - at least for me - fill that role! "Second-brain" is a pretty loose term, so my ultimate goal is to create resources that will help anyone learn enough to make their own tweaks. But my template will roughly follow Tiago Forte's PARA method with a few of my own tweaks.
@@ThomasFrankExplains "learn enough to make those tweaks" I think that's perfect. Laying down the foundation. You plant beautiful trees of knowledge my man
@@ThomasFrankExplains cant wait!
It seems that it won't work as expected if the parent task doesn't have a due date but the sub-task does. In this case, the sub-task will be above the parent task and even above other tasks. The reason is that the sorting is initially by date and any task (including subtasks) with a due date will always be higher than the parent without a due date. The way to fix this issue is to change the "Due Timestamp" formula to:
if(empty(prop("Due")), timestamp(now()), timestamp(prop("Due")))
Also, you can simplify Sub Seed formula to
empty(prop("Parent Task"))
and Sub Seed Name to
if(prop("Sub Seed"), prop("Task"), prop("Parent Task"))
@@antonlvovych YES! thank you! came to comments to find the solution to this problem
everybody, please put this gentleman's comment higher by pressing Like
can anybody confirm that this is indeed a working method and wouldn't result in any unexpected behaviour?
@@antonlvovych Yes, there seems to be the problem that now tasks without a Due Date will always rank higher than tasks that have a Due Date that is in the future (not today / or overdue)
Is there a way to fix this?
What are your thoughts about august Bradleys ppv system ?
I haven't looked into it myself! I'm working on a more comprehensive life management template of my own so I don't want to unconsciously copy anything from other creators.
@@ThomasFrankExplains Very interesting. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with there! These videos are amazingly helpful.
Does anyone know how to open all Toggle subtasks in Timeline view with shortcut? Thank You!
Is it possible to force some sub-tasks' properties be the same as their parent task has (epic, priority, status, bla-bla-bla)?
Only if you use the API to automate it. However, you can create clever filter settings that mimic this type of behavior.
In Ultimate Tasks, projects filter to show tasks with EITHER:
- A relation to the project (for parent tasks)
- A rollup value of "Parent Task's Project is this project"
Basically, you can pull all the properties of parent tasks into sub-tasks via roll-ups, then filter for them.
@@ThomasFrankExplains Thanks, it is clear for me. Unfortunately, I use subtasks to split Task/User Story into subtasks, and they must have the same Epic, Sprint, Release, e.t.c. But Epic depends on the Task's Epic value. So, if I split Task with "Sign Up" epic, I want to have "Sign Up" epic in sub-tasks. The same for tasks with "Post" epic and so on and so forth. So, I want some kind of "clever" sub-tasks that get some strategic attributes from Parent Task when I create them (manually, of course).
Long story short: I want to have Jira behavior in Notion, because we work in Scrum framework.
When i click "+" button to create new sub task, but when i create, it bring to new page, how to make it simply stay on the page
Hey bro how to create template in notionhq please tell us
How do I "upgrade" the Ultimate Tasks template to at I have currently so I can put sub tasks?
I have the same question. TF mentioned that it's on the template page, but could not find it there...
Here you go - the upgrade guide is in the template changelog, which is by default linked in the footer of Ultimate Tasks: www.notion.so/thomasfrank/Ultimate-Tasks-and-Projects-2fccba2d42e544a687194b6337272192#d7317eaaaa0c4d33af34043fadca19ef
Has this feature been updated recently? I'm trying to add the default subtasks from 7:41 onwards, but once the self-referential filter is applied, the existing sub-tasks do not show up, nor can I click in the linked dashboard to create a new line (it opens a page on click meaning it doesn't have the auto-populated parent task, abse don the filter either).
This seems to be happening to me too
I was able to identify and fix what was happening here! When copying the synced block into my new content, the template value would not show up because the checkbox in the synced block was carrying over a different template property. For example, in my case, the task "Share on other relevant social media profiles" checkbox/task was copied into many synced blocks, but they all had the same template called "Video Template."
The solution: Delete and manually rewrite the content in the synced blocks. It seems to bring along some metadata if you copy and paste text from one synced block to another. After rewriting, when I copy and drag each item, it will auto-populate with the current task (instead of the original template)
Very Handy
Convoluted and both appear in same column
I really appreciate the method you present here, but still struggle with task management within the real world scenario of a multi-project work environment. You show a clever Notion way of displaying sub-tasks under a parent task, and then sort this list by an assigned Due Date in order to enable sorting.
However I don't see how this can take account the complexities of having to manage multiple ongoing projects, each with list of child tasks and sub-tasks. We rarely have the luxury of working only on a single project at a time, and so we have to be able to view a combined task list, comprised of tasks from multiple projects, where we can assign relative priorities. In this context, is the choice only to start working on the task with the nearest Due Date? (...or when timelines slip, the most overdue?)
In other task solutions (such as PPV), there are Do Dates, but the same issue exists - every day, we require to perform a tedious review all ongoing tasks, and then have to reassign Due Dates, (or Do Dates), based on their relative importance and what time we guess these actions might take - which is a burdensome amount of work and often overwhelmingly difficult to guess.
In an ideal world I feel we need tasks' Due/Do dates to be able to be dynamically updated based on several factors, namely (a) their dependancy on a preceding (or parent) task, (b) the suspected time they might take, and (c) an overall importance score of the task and/or the project they sit within, to perhaps allow automated, if not at least easily visualised prioritisation, of a cross or multi-project task list. This would allow for time-slippages without entire re-assigning of dates across many tasks, together with a way to help prioritise.
Without such power, I feel these task lists are only really useful for light or limited projects with timelines which are easily adhered to. Is it too much to dream that some day, a genius with a thorough knowledge of the Notion API might offer a means of processing this stuff and automatically updating dates and priorities for us?
Coincidentally I spent my entire workday thinking through this problem, and the answer I came to was to include an entire GTD-style processing center in my upcoming Ultimate Brain template (a total second brain for Notion: thomasjfrank.com/brain/).
In GTD, there is a Next Actions list in which tasks do not have due dates. They do get contexts in order to help you determine what to work on during day, depending on energy, location, etc. Additionally, part of the review process involves reviewing current projects and tagging tasks within as Next Actions, ensuring you stay on top of each project.
So my template will support this workflow when it launches next week, though it will be optional as Ultimate Tasks is mainly based on classical due-date-based task tracking.
All that aside, 10 years of biting off more than I can chew has taught me that the TRUE answer to this question is probably to do less and say no to more things - or to get really good at delegation once you get to a certain level of income. No matter how good my system is, the quality of my work starts to break down if I'm trying to juggle too many things.
@@ThomasFrankExplains Which brings us nicely into managing teams in Notion, and sharing and delegating tasks through it... a current project of mine. Totally agree with you on the delegation thing...bringing the different challenge of monitoring. There is a lot less information about this around. Thanks for your reply Thomas - I'll look forward to your coming videos!
In my template I have a time spent column. Is there a way to get the sub tasks time to sum in the main task time? I notice that even if it's the save column, it doesn't total at the bottom neither does it total in the main task. Any help appreciated.
You can do it, but you'll need a separate formula property.
Off the top of my head, it'd be something like prop("Sub Task").map(current.prop("Time Spent")).sum()
Basically you're getting all the tasks related to the Parent Task, mapping through to get their time spent property value, and summing them all up.
This will work only if your time spent property is a Number. But once you get the calculated value, you can format it: thomasfrank.notion.site/Format-Seconds-as-Hour-Minute-Second-00-00-00-d93d3f26e7bb49c8b2de4c89b24af450?pvs=4
Hope that helps!
@@ThomasFrankExplains thank you for such a quick response. In my example, they are entering their time in a number column for the subtask which is the same column as the main task. I can send you a screen shot if you like. How would I make the main task a formula of the subtasks?
The only caveat I think here is, if I check all the subtasks, the parent task doesn't get checked automatically.
This is Awesome! Thank you so much! 🤍
Hi guys! Can a kind soul please copy and paste the formulas here? The links do not work, and I cannot simply pause the video and type it out because the full text of the images is not showing. This is the best solution I've been able to find to this problem. Thanks!
Sorry about that! The page got deleted in my workspace and I forgot it was directly linked in the description.
I've updated the link in the description - here's the new link: thomasfrank.notion.site/Sub-Task-Sorting-Formulas-24dac60597484574926835b5cbb3bafb
Note that I've updated the Due Timestamp formula here - it's improved from the one shown in the video.
@@ThomasFrankExplains Omg, wow! I’m a little starstruck that you responded to this personally and sent the updated link! Thank you!
Hey thomas, big fan of your work, i know you would be super busy to see this comment. This might a question to the community here. I want to set the same Kanban tag to the subtasks created under one parent task, is that possible?
Like if YT videos is my parent task and I have one of my topic as my tasks there. So i want the subtasks of this topic to come under the same category of the the topic i have, I have been trying to figure it out.
A help or an advice on this will be more than welcome! TIA!
Unfortunatley this isn't possible directly in Notion - at least not in a way that would be really usable.
You could write a formula that displays the tag of the Parent Task, except in the case a task doesn't have a Parent, in which case it would display its own tag. But then you'd have to set the Group of the kanban board to that Formula, which would prevent you from dragging the cards around.
The only true way to do this I know of would be using the API and a custom automation that regularly searches for sub-tasks and applies the tag from their parent.
That's probably way more work than it's worth, but if you want to pursue it, here's my API tutorial! ruclips.net/video/ec5m6t77eYM/видео.html
Great! Thank you for the reply@@ThomasFrankExplains appreciate the effort!
I need to find a tutorial for the tutorial.
Wow. You've basically become an app developer inside the notion language, lol. It really hurts when you start to hit the limits of notion :(
well, it is much easier in clickup. There is just a function that creates several subtasks. Notion has to create such a function.
💭 Don't you think it's better to use Asana or other software to manage tasks? Since it is extremely complex to continuously create a "workflow" when you have already done them in other programs
I ask why I love Notion but when it comes to managing the tasks it is very complex and I feel like I waste a lot of time creating these things 😅
There are definitely other platforms (like asana, clickup, (maybe coda?), etc) that are natively much better for subtasks. It's not even close. I think if one wants to really stay in the notion ecosystem, then workarounds like this are very useful with the hope that the benefits on the back-end far outweigh the setup time. There's the "keep it all in one UI" purists for every platform and others who embrace the open API for bi-directional workflows to/from software A and B, who couldn't care less what the name on the box says as long as it gets the job done, quickly. I'm like you, I love notion and use it daily but it's not the end-all-be-all and imo it shouldn't be treated as such.
confused I have to rewatch this
first
not if sorted by latest replies 🥳
@@Od4n But actually it's me😝
Jesus, I don't know, this feels like way too much work. You have to create an entirely new class of a task in order to include sub-tasks within it? It should just be an option within Notion itself.
This video is old, and Notion does have a sub-item feature now - but it has some issues, which is why I haven’t made a video on it yet. Perhaps I should, and just cover the issues as best I can.
If you want to try it out, just try enabling sub-items in your database!
@@ThomasFrankExplains Thanks Thomas, it's actually a lot easier than I thought it was. Just did what you said now I have sub-tasks now.