Notion Training: Advanced

welcome to our advanced demo well go into detail about how to use databases and notion what they are how to build them customize them and the wide variety of workflows you can create with them first I'll show you what databases look like in notion and how to create one from scratch a database is a type of page that helps you to store information in a structured and accessible way creating a database in notion is as simple as clicking on the plus button and selecting a type of database here let's choose table we'll go into the others later a new page is created you can give it a name and an icon and start adding information to your database in the first column in all notion databases every entry is its own page which you can access by hovering here and clicking open you can use this page to add and edit all the information you want to each entry the body of the page here can be used like any other notion page add whatever type of content you want like text images sub pages and even other databases at the top of the page you'll find what we call properties properties are pieces of information about each entry in your database for instance if entries aren't tasks you can use properties to add due dates or owners if entries are customers properties can show what company they work at deal size etc notion lets you add all kinds of different properties like numbers single select menus like tags multi select menus dates people and more new tables give you two default properties files and tags the first is for adding attachments from your computer the second is for adding any keywords associated with the page add more by clicking add a property give your new property a name and select the property type let's say this is a task database I'll add a date property to capture a deadline and a person property to show who it's assigned to to add information click on the field you'll see the date property brings up the date picker and the person property lets you type the name of anyone on your team to tag them to delete a property click on the six dot icon next to it and go here everything about properties is fully customizable now if you go back to your table database you'll notice that our newly added properties appear as columns here's what a more filled out version of this database could look like you can also add and delete properties directly in your page like this now onto database views you can view any one database you create a number of different ways and you can switch between these views instantly so here's a table database this is a hypothetical road map for an engineering team every data entry here is a project and every column is a different project property they show who the product manager is the engineer is type of project priority status and timeline if applicable all of this information is a lot to process at once but if this information is shown to you in different ways you'll be able to make a better sense of it and use it faster to add a different database view click on out of you at the top left select the type of you you want here we'll add a board so we can see our projects flowing through a development process give your new view a name hover over the group by section of your board and say group by status you can also create views that show your data filtered in a useful way in this particular database there are three types of projects tasks epics and bugs if all you want to see in this board are tasks create a new view then add a filter click on filter then say type is task now this board only displays projects that are tasks you may also want to view your tasks in order of priority as you can see priority is another property in this database and ranges from P 1 to P 5 to do this create another view this time let's use a table again name it by priority then click on sort add a sort and say priority is ascending now the most pressing tasks are listed at the top of each column whenever you click on this menu you'll see all the views you've created so you can toggle between them and find what you need fast no need to apply this same filter again and again always have the right data set at the right time one more thing you don't have to display all properties in your database if you don't want to to only show the ones you want to see click on properties toggle on the ones you want to see and toggle off the ones you'd rather hide with database views you can create very custom subsets of data like a calendar view only for the projects that are tagged as epic or a ListView only displaying projects where you are the product manager you can call this view assigned to me finally a gallery view comes in handy when you want your data to be showcased through visuals and other images a road map may not be the best example to illustrate this but picture an employee directory like this one now that you know how to build your own database from scratch let's talk about the actual items you can add to them and how to make that easier this is where database templates can be great time-saving tools let's say you want to add the same type of info to your database again and again like in our roadmap example you always want to report bugs the same way or you want to ensure that every task starts with the same background information on the problem goals and metrics you may want to use a format like this every single time but you definitely don't have to recreate it every time I'll show you how to create a template you can instantly add to your database whenever you need to use a type of page repeatedly first click the down arrow to the right of the blue new button then click new template a window will open with the spar at the top indicating that you are editing a template give it the title bug report this is where you should create whatever format you want for example we'd add these headlines to create a bug report template we'd also enter bug in the type property click out of this window to automatically save and close it now next time there's a book to report you can simply go back to that down arrow menu on the new button and click bug report a new page will appear in your database and when you open it you'll have that format ready to go including the property you add it to the template you can always go back to edit duplicate or delete a template by opening the new template menu and clicking the 3d icon to the right you can use this all types of ways you could have a database for meeting notes we're creating a new meeting automatically adds usual attendees or a database for design specs where a template prompts you to add user insights and hypotheses now you can spend your time getting work done not doing work about work notion gets even more powerful when you connect data across multiple databases this is possible with notions relation property to demonstrate this I'm going to use these two databases used for managing a retail clothing business one of them tracks items that were purchased and the other attracts customers in the items database you'll want to know which customers purchased which items and in the customers database you'll want to know which items were bought by which customers to relate these two databases you'll need to add a new relation property to your items database click on the plus sign to add a property then select relation as the property type this will automatically open a window where you'll be prompted to choose another database you want to connect to in this case select the customers database and hit create relation a new column is added to your items table rename it customers click inside those cells and you'll be prompted to select which customers bought every item for example here Aileen Leonor and Nicholas bought a shirt every customer who bought a pair of shoes now neatly shows up here and the ones who purchased a hat are listed here now if you go to your customers database you can see the list of items each person bought in this new relation column that appear at the instant you connected these databases you can rename this column items what's more you can access pages in the other database this way if you're in the customers database just click on any of these items to open the corresponding pages there's no need to go to the other database to find them now let me tell you about roll-ups which go hand in hand with relations this feature allows you to pull data into a database based on the information in another that's connected to it say you would like to add another column that shows how much every customer has spent in total and the price of every item is listed in the items database add a property by clicking on the plus sign and select rollup as the property type give it the name order total click on any empty cell under your new column and you will be prompted to select three things the related database where you can find the price of every item the property you would like to pull from this database in this case price and the calculation you would like to make in this case a simple sum your new column will display the total cost of every customers order relations and roll-ups have endless applications depending on what you want to do create simple systems or complex workflows it's up to you in this last section I'll show you how you can add copies of the same database throughout your workspace wherever you want them and customize however you need these are called linked databases think of them as excerpts from an original database that lives somewhere else in notion let's say your entire company stores meeting notes in the same database there's a chance that you would like to see a filtered version of this database somewhere else for example you would want to bring up all engineering meeting notes here at the top of this engineering wiki page place your cursor at the top of the page type the fort /ki then the word linked and the create linked database option will show up press ENTER and then start typing the name of the database you want to link select it from the drop-down and here's your meeting notes database again it's an exact copy if all we want to see here our engineering meeting notes we'll need to apply a filter click on the 3d con at the top right of the database then select filter and add a filter team is engineering you can add the filters sorts and views you want to a linked database without having it affect any of these qualities of the original database however if you edit any content in the database these changes will be reflected in the original it's a great way to keep a shared resource up-to-date while only focusing on the information that's relevant to you and your team one more example might be a shared team tasks database where every individual can create a linked database view of their own tasks in their own page you and that's everything for this video you should now feel confident about creating a database in notion and using the many powerful tools I showed you to set up workflows and stay organized across many projects people and teams you

Channel: Notion

Views: 276,416

Keywords: productivity, remote working, remote work tools, spreadsheets, excel, sheets, startup tools, bullet journal, bujo, gtd, getting things done, productivity hacking, life hacks, project management, notion

Id: PxQjqYN23vc

Length: 13min 16sec (796 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 06 2020