Notion is both a productivity and project management tool that can help you maintain a high level of productivity for business, artistic and/or personal projects. Notion goes about this a bit differently than other project management tools. Instead of focusing primarily on Gantt charts and Kanban boards, you create Teamspaces and then add resources to those spaces so team members always have access to up-to-date information required to get their jobs done. You can, of course, also add charts, boards and other items to help round out your Notion Teamspace.
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I like to think of Notion less as a project management space and more as a place to think, plan and organize. When putting together or managing a team, having such a space can be crucial to productivity.
One of the most helpful features in Notion is called Teamspace. This feature allows you to create a specific location where colleagues not only learn about a team and what they are doing, but for you to collect pages that come together to form project roadmaps and documentation to make it easy for teammates to locate pertinent information about their jobs, projects and the company in general.
With that said, let’s see how to create an effective Teamspace in Notion.
How to create a new Teamspace
The first thing we’ll do is create a new Teamspace. For that, log in to your Notion account, hover your cursor over the Teamspaces section (Figure A) and click +.
Figure A
In the resulting pop-up (Figure B), give the new Teamspace a name, select an Icon, type a description and choose the permissions you want to be associated with the space.
Figure B
With your new Teamspace created, you can begin the process of customizing it.
How to customize your Teamspace to make it effective
Now that your Teamspace is created, you should see a relatively blank canvas for which you can begin to customize. Here’s what you should immediately add to your new Teamspace:
- Name: Give the Teamspace Home a new name.
- Description: Add a description for the Teamspace (under the Teamspace name).
- Contact information: Can include Slack channels, email and team manager name(s).
- About section: So all team members know exactly what the space or project is about.
- Resources: Any resources you’ve created within Notion.
Most everything in the above list is self-explanatory. However, you might need a bit of help understanding the Resources option.
With Resources, you can add just about anything you’ve created within Notion. For example, let’s create a collection of documents. For my purposes, I’m going to create an Episode Bible that will be used to collect important information about every episode in a series.
To create the new resource, click + associated with the teamspace and then (in the pop-up window: Figure C), click Templates.
Figure C
Under Project Management, select Docs and then click Use This Template (Figure D).
Figure D
Once you’ve created the new resource, you can then begin adding new documents to it to create a collection of useful resources.
After creating the new resource, head back to the Teamspace home page and click under Resources. If you type @, a pop-up will open to reveal any resource you’ve created (Figure E).
Figure E
Continue adding as many resources as you need to the home page.
How to add a Kanban board to your Teamspace home
Next, we’ll add a board to the teamspace. You can also similarly add Gantt charts.
To add a board, click + associated with the Teamspace and then, in the pop-up under Database, click Board. You will then be prompted to select a data source (Figure F).
Figure F
A new sidebar will appear (Figure G), where you can select the data source for the new board.
Figure G
The Notion board doesn’t exactly look like a standard Kanban board, but it does make it pretty easy to check in on different pieces of your project (Figure H).
Figure H
Now that you have the hang of customizing a Notion Teamspace, you should be able to make it such that your teams can better collaborate and keep track of what’s happening within a team.
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