The hierarchy of data in Monday.com

Account

When you sign up to a new Monday.com plan, you will create a new Monday.com account. Each account has it’s own custom url and can contain multiple Admins, Users and Guests.

You can also be invited to join an existing Monday.com account as a user or guest. If you are invited as a user, you will be able to set your own user name and password but the account url will have been preset by the account owner.

If you are a member of more than one Monday.com account, you can easily switch between accounts by clicking on your avatar then "Switch account".

Users & Guests

Every paid plan in Monday includes a minimum of 3 Seats AKA paid users. The free forever Individual Plan allows a maximum of 2 seats AKA users.

In addition, all of the paid plans allow you to invite an unlimited number of free viewers (AKA Guests) to your account.

Workspaces

Workspaces are a way of organising Folders, Boards, Dashboards and Docs within your Monday.com account.

Once you sign up for Monday.com AKA Monday Work Management Account, you will be able to create as many Workspaces as you want. Within each Workspace, you can create/move multiple Boards, Docs and Dashboards and organise them within Folders.

Favorites

There is also a "Favorites" section in the Workspace dropdown that displays any Board, Dashboard or Doc that you have marked as a Favorite. (Note that you can't add folders to Favorites, only Boards, Dashboards and Docs).

Folders

Folders can only be nested one layer deep. Ie you can have a Folder with a Sub-folder or Sub-folders within it within any given Workspace in your Monday.com account, but you won't be able to add any folders within the sub-folders.

Right, now that you have a good understanding of some of the core building blocks in Monday.com and what they are called, let's start working through each topic in more detail...

Boards

Boards are where almost all of your data lives in Monday.com. The only other place you can actually store data is in Monday Docs AKA Work Docs. Dashboards for example, only display data that lives in a Board or Boards somewhere. You can't add new data directly within a Dashboard, you would need to add it to a Board.

You can add multiple Board Views of all different types (Gannt, Kanban, Maps, you name it) to a Board in Monday but the default view is a Table view comprised of rows and columns.

Board Views

By default, every Board has to have at least one Table View but you can add many other types of Views (including Map views, Gantt, Kanban, even multile customised Table Views) to display the information in the Board in hundreds of different ways, filter out certain items or Columns etc.

By default, every Board has to have at least one Table View but you can add many other types of Views (including Map views, Gantt, Kanban, even multile customised Table Views) to display the information in the Board in hundreds of different ways, filter out certain items or Columns etc.

Groups

Every Table View in Monday.com must contain at least one Group but you can add as many Groups as you like. Within the Table View, Groups are one of the 5 fundamental levels of organising and also automating your data.

Those levels are;

1. Board
2. Table View
3. Group
4. Item
5. Sub-item

Groups allow you to not only organise and automate the Items within the Table but also to hide or display the Items within each Group so you can focus on specific Items.

And because in the default Main Table you cannot save a filtered or Customised View, Groups are particularly handy because you can collapse one, multiple or all Groups to hide/focus on what you want.

Items

An item in monday.com is a core object that holds data within the board. It displays all of an item's information in one centralized area, eliminating the need for endless scrolling to find what you are looking for.

The data contained within a row in a Monday Table is known as an "Item" in Monday speak.

Each Item is comprised of, in this order;

1. The Item Name - ie a name or description for the Item (doesn't have to be unique)
2. The Item View button. (This is what I call it, I don't actually know what it's official name is. Note that often people refer to this icon as the Updates Section.  However, the Item View button actually opens multiple views of which the Updates Section is just one). The icon for the Item Views Button is a speech bubble with a plus symbol inside of it. If there have been any comments AKA Updates added in the past 7 days, the icon will be blue with a number representing the number of comments/updates in the 7 day period.
3. Another way to open the Item View; If you hover over the right hand end of any Item name (just to the left of the Updates Section icon), the "Open" button will be revealed. Click on this to open the given item in the Item View. The Item View button opens multiple Item Views including the Item Card, Info Boxes, Files, and Activity Log Widgets. You can also add one or more of dozens of other Item Views, making it truly powerful.
4. One or more Columns. Monday.com has dozens of different Column types (think of each Column as a Custom Field) and you can add as many columns as you like to your Board/Board View. You can delete all Columns in a Board in Monday.com, leaving you with just the item name and Updates Section Widget, but I can't imagine why you would want to.
5. Sub-items.  You can add one or several Sub-items to any Item in Monday.com. Sub-items allow you to break down your work into smaller tasks with more granular detail, adding an extra layer of information to each item.
6. Updates. Just click on the Item View button (a speech bubble with a plus symbol within it) and then click on the Updates tab to see/add/reply to comments and other updates (awesome rich text editing).

WorkDocs

Docs are online documents with awesome collaboration features (think Google Docs on steroids). Not only can you comment on a specific part of the Doc or reply to comments within a Doc, you can even embed, filter and edit Boards within a Doc and add a whole host of other Widgets.

Dashboards

Dashboards are standalone items that can display data from one or multiple Boards in simple colourful charts, graphs and all sorts of other Widgets. Dashboards are a great way to get a good high level understanding at a glance of the data in multiple Boards.