At the start of 2026, we asked a simple question to the monday.com community: What were your team’s biggest workflow challenges last year? We received qualitative form submissions and reviewed them alongside patterns we consistently see in our work with customers across industries.
The headline finding is clear: most teams struggle with the same underlying workflow challenges, communication gaps, siloed information, manual admin, and scaling pains, but those problems show up in very different ways depending on the team’s tools, structure, and maturity in monday.com.
Across the responses, teams weren’t asking for “more features” as much as they were asking for less friction, less double work between email and boards, fewer disconnected systems, clearer ownership, and better visibility into what’s next.
The most common themes among workflow challenges we saw:
- Bridging the gap between communication (email/Teams) and execution (monday.com)
- Reducing manual work and “administrative drag”
- Handling cross-board complexity, automations, and platform limitations
- Building governance for adoption, consistency, and change management
- Scaling workflows from “simple and templated” to complex and high-variance
- Improving portfolio-level visibility and decision-making
- Turning AI inspiration into reliable, repeatable workflows
Methodology & Context
This article is based on:
- Anonymised, qualitative responses collected via a short research form shared in the monday.com community and organically through our social media channels and newsletters.
- Additional learnings from Omnitas’ broader work with teams implementing and optimising monday.com.
These insights should be read as directional, not statistically representative. However, the consistency across submissions and how closely they match what we observe in real implementations makes the patterns highly actionable.
The Headline Finding: Same Root Problems, Different Symptoms
When teams describe their “biggest workflow challenges,” they often describe different pain points:
- “Our CRM became a glorified Rolodex.”
- “We can’t trigger a status from a formula.”
- “Everything happens in email, then we update monday.com manually.”
- “Our board worked great… until the work got more complex.”
But when you zoom out, these are frequently symptoms of a few root causes:
1) Silos & Handoffs
Work gets fragmented across tools, departments, and owners. Information is scattered, and handoffs become risky.
2) Lack of Transparency
Teams lose confidence in their system when statuses are inconsistent, updates are delayed, and ownership isn’t clear.
3) Manual Admin Overload
The more copying, updating, and chasing people have to do, the less the system is used, and the less accurate it becomes.
4) Scaling Pains
Many workflows are designed for “version 1” of a business. When complexity increases, the workflow design often can’t keep up with it.
A useful framing we often share with customers is this:
monday.com can track work very well. The challenge is making it run the workflow end-to-end. That requires the right structure, the right integrations, and the right operating model around it.
“Work Lives in Email; Workflow Lives in monday.com”
One of the strongest patterns was the tension between communication tools (email, Teams) and workflow tools (monday.com), especially for teams handling case-based, document-heavy work.
A respondent managing legal/financial “case files” described a reality many service businesses recognise: a single case can generate 20–50 emails and multiple PDFs. monday.com works well as a dashboard, but the team still has to:
- Read emails
- Interpret instructions
- Download and rename attachments
- Update multiple columns
- Move status stages
- Notify stakeholders
In other words, monday.com tracks the work, but doesn’t “catch” the work as it arrives, so the team does the intake manually.
Another respondent using monday.com CRM described how the system drifted into an overwhelming project-management setup, partly due to a lack of Outlook/Teams integration support and the burden falling on one power user.
Why This Happens
- Email is still the default communication channel for many external parties.
- Without a reliable intake process, updates and documents stay in inboxes.
- Teams duplicate information to keep boards current, which creates friction and errors.
What To Do About It
- Create a single “case file” item structure: one item per client/case/deal, with a clear stage model and required fields.
- Standardise document handling: naming conventions, storage location, and a consistent “source of truth.”
- Introduce structured intake where possible (forms, standard templates, automated routing).
- For automation: start with semi-automation (e.g., “triage first, then automate”), so humans validate critical case changes until confidence is high.
Manual Work & “Administrative Drag”
Manual work was a recurring theme, especially where monday.com relies on upstream systems.
One team uses monday.com to track work orders generated in an ERP system, but the hurdle is getting them reliably entered into monday.com. Even a strong team can miss entries occasionally, which undermines trust in reporting and dashboards.
Another team described challenges syncing monday.com contact/company data with Mailchimp. When customers unsubscribe from marketing emails, it can unintentionally impact the deliverability of service emails, forcing manual management of lists and exceptions. This is a classic workflow gap: one system changes state, another system doesn’t reflect it, and people become the integration layer.
Mobile experience also came up: when teams travel heavily, any inconsistency between mobile and web usage increases friction and reduces adoption.
Why This Happens
- Processes depend on people remembering steps.
- Systems aren’t connected, so teams do duplicate work.
- Data quality decays over time, and the system becomes less useful.
What To Do About It
- Automate intake wherever possible (API, Make, Zapier, native integrations) for ERP → monday flows.
- Reduce required manual inputs to the minimum viable set; add optional fields later.
- Design for “in-the-field” usage: mobile-friendly views, simplified update flows, and role-based dashboards.
Cross-Board Complexity, Automations, and Platform Limitations
A number of submissions highlighted the friction that emerges once teams start scaling beyond a single board.
Examples included:
- Difficulty triggering automations across boards or keeping linked items aligned
- Pain around sub-items behaving differently in automation logic
- Desire for better ways to group or structure work via linked columns
- File handling limitations (e.g., Excel imports losing embedded images)
These aren’t “beginner problems.” They show up when teams begin designing more sophisticated systems with dependencies and shared data.
Why This Happens
- The system grows organically without a clear architecture.
- Teams attempt to “connect everything,” creating fragile setups.
- Automation logic becomes hard to understand, test, and maintain.
What To Do About It
- Choose a clear architecture pattern:
- Hub-and-spoke (one central source of truth + supporting boards)
- Master data boards for entities like Clients, Projects, Products, or Candidates
- Define the purpose of each connection: visibility, dependency, reporting, or data reuse.
- Document automations like you would document a process: inputs, triggers, outputs, exceptions.
- When a platform limitation blocks you, decide intentionally:
- Accept a manual step with clear ownership, or
- Use an integration layer (Make/Zapier/custom) for reliability.
Workflow Design Maturity & Governance
Several responses weren’t about a specific feature; they were about how to build and evolve workflows without breaking daily operations.
One respondent asked how to start building and implementing workflows in an existing extensive system, with many boards, dashboards, automations, while keeping everything running with minimal disruption. Another described building an ATS (applicant tracking system) inside monday.com from scratch, learning automations and dependencies as they went. Managers are now using it daily, but the workflow is still evolving.
We also saw the challenge of “single-person ownership”: when only one person knows the platform, it becomes hard to onboard others, maintain consistency, and avoid overwhelm.
Why This Happens
- Systems are built quickly to solve an urgent need, then scaled without governance.
- Teams don’t define ownership, standards, or change control.
- Adoption falters when workflows feel “too much” instead of supportive.
What To Do About It
- Assign workflow owners by domain (CRM, delivery, HR, etc.).
- Introduce lightweight governance:
- Naming conventions
- Status definitions
- Automation standards
- Release notes for workflow changes
- Roll out changes in phases:
- Pilot → refine → scale
- Train by role and outcomes (“how you do your job”) rather than platform features.
Scaling From Templated Work To Complex Delivery
One respondent shared a powerful story: they conquered a visibility and prioritisation challenge using a central board and views, but now face a new wave of complexity. Their core board was built for a simpler, templated job type. Due to external changes, work is shifting toward longer timelines, more site visits, more deliverables, and more stakeholders.
This is one of the most common lifecycle moments for any operational system: what worked for thousands of simple jobs doesn’t naturally work for fewer, more complex jobs.
Why This Happens
- Work changes, but the workflow model stays the same.
- Teams try to capture complexity by adding columns, which increases noise.
- People struggle when the system stops being “simple and predictable.”
What To Do About It
- Re-check the core “entities” you track (Job, Site Visit, Deliverable, Call).
- Decide what should become:
- A subitem
- A connected board
- A template-based checklist
- Create role-based views, so staff see only what they need, not the entire system.
Visibility, Portfolio Status, And “What’s Next?”
A recurring need was decision-ready visibility:
- Understanding portfolio status
- Identifying critical next steps
- Connecting effort to outcomes (e.g., billable hours)
- Ensuring the right work is prioritised
Even when boards contain a lot of information, teams often lack a consistent mechanism for answering:
What should we do next, and what is at risk?
What To Do About It
- Standardise a “Next Action” or “Critical Next Step” field.
- Define a consistent status taxonomy across teams.
- Use dashboards to support decision-making, not just reporting:
- WIP limits
- Blocked items
- Overdue next actions
- Workload vs capacity
AI Inspiration & The Execution Gap
AI appeared in multiple submissions, but in different forms:
- A desire to use AI inside monday.com for content/social workflows, but uncertainty on where to start
- A sophisticated bid-writing use case combining AI + Make + monday.com using a library of past submissions
- AI-driven extraction of data from emails and documents into boards, with reliability challenges
A common theme: teams are inspired by what’s possible, but struggle to translate that into a stable, repeatable workflow.
What To Do About It
- Start with a narrow use case (e.g., summarisation, classification, first drafts).
- Define success criteria and a quality check step.
- Keep humans in the loop where accuracy matters (compliance, legal, finance).
- Improve data hygiene first. AI is only as good as the structure and inputs.
What These Challenges Have In Common
While the submissions covered CRM, ERP, ATS, portfolio management, casework, and AI, the underlying story is consistent:
- Silos create blind spots.
Work is distributed across email, CRM, ERP, marketing tools, chats, and mobile. Without alignment, ownership gets unclear, and steps get missed. - Manual work creates leakage.
When people become the integration layer, accuracy drops and trust erodes. - Scaling requires redesign, not patching.
Growing complexity demands better workflow architecture, clearer governance, and intentional change management. - Tracking work isn’t the same as running the workflow.
The goal many teams are reaching for is end-to-end flow: intake → processing → approvals → communication → reporting, without constant copying and chasing.
A simple model to assess and improve your workflow stack is:
- People: ownership, training, adoption, accountability
- Process: stages, handoffs, definitions, exceptions
- Platform: boards, automations, integrations, AI
When all three are aligned, monday.com becomes more than a tracker; it becomes a system teams can rely on daily.
Practical Checklist: Where To Start
Email + Documents
- Define a “case file” structure with required fields
- Standardise document storage and naming
- Introduce intake forms/triage steps
- Add automation only after the process is stable
Manual Entry From Another System
- Identify the “source of truth” system
- Automate creation and updates via an integration layer
- Add safeguards (missing item checks, exception views)
- Design a mobile-friendly update path for field teams
Cross-Board Complexity
- Reduce boards where possible; clarify the purpose of each board
- Use connections intentionally (not everywhere)
- Document automation logic and test changes before rollout
- Standardise naming and status definitions
Scaling Or Rebuilding
- Run a workflow audit: what’s used vs legacy
- Roll changes in phases to minimise disruption
- Train by role and outcomes
- Set governance: owners, rules, and change process
“We Want AI”
- Pick one use case
- Define a quality check workflow
- Improve your data structure and templates first
- Measure time saved and accuracy before expanding
What’s Next
Thank you to everyone who contributed to this initiative. Your submissions reflect real operational challenges, and also a clear desire to build smarter, calmer ways of working.
We’ll continue sharing practical patterns and solutions based on what we’ve learned, both from this research and from our broader customer work. If you’re facing any workflow challenges that weren’t captured here, we’d love to hear about them. Don’t hesitate to contact us through the link below!
