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monday Project Portfolio Management Setup: Structuring High-Level Dashboards in 2026
- Ishani Dhar Chowdhury
- Jan 14
- 7 min read
You've invested in monday.com but are unsure of how to maintain a strategic visibility across concurrent projects without drowning in administrative overhead.
Your team will need a properly configured monday project portfolio management setup. This feature can transform scattered data into executive-ready insights.
According to Harvard Business Review, only 35% of projects are successfully completed. That means, effective portfolio management becomes more critical than ever.
If you implement this, your team can consolidate data from up to 200 project boards into a single executive project dashboard. This enables PMOs and leadership to track RAG status indicators, budget oversight, and risk aggregation in real time.
In this blog post, we'll discuss how linking multiple projects in monday Work Management can drive organisational success.
Portfolio Management: Understanding How monday WorkOS Does It
There's a two-tier architecture that monday.com follows for effective project portfolio management. For example, the Enterprise portfolio solution provides a comprehensive framework that includes:
Portfolio Boards: High-level oversight.
Project Boards: Granular task management.
This enables seamless data synchronisation through Mirror columns and Connect Board columns. As a result, the centralised executive project dashboard will automatically pull critical metrics from individual project boards.
This market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 11.9% by 2029. It demonstrates the growing recognition that portfolio visibility drives success.
monday project portfolio management setup addresses the need by creating automatic connections between low-level and high-level boards or views. Proper configuration ensures the essential data (project health, timeline progress, budget, etc.) is visible without manual data entry.
Features You Cannot Ignore
Linking multiple projects in monday.com becomes easy because of the following:
Provides birds-eye oversight of all initiatives.
Shows risk insights through AI to identify potential issues.
Reflects real-time data from connected projects.
Health snapshots that show percentage completion and timeline variances.
Connects via Connect Boards columns for bidirectional data flow.
As a result, you get to eliminate information silos that plague traditional portfolio management approaches. Establish these connections during initial setup. This ensures that every change you make to an individual project is automatically reflected in the executive dashboards.
monday Project Portfolio Management Setup: Configuring the Executive Dashboard
You'll need a strategic configuration of the 'All Projects Dashboard' feature. This is available exclusively within the monday portfolio management solution.
Consider this a pre-configured dashboard that automatically connects to every project in your portfolio. It also connects up to 200 boards simultaneously and automatically when new projects are added or removed.
According to IBM, organisations that implement a centralised portfolio visibility experience can improve resource optimisations and ensure faster identification. monday Dashboards deliver this visibility through ready-made widgets that highlight KPIs across all connected boards.
Dashboard Creation Process
Here's a quick executive project dashboard creation process:
Click the three dots next to your portfolio.
Select '+Portfolio Components.'
Add the 'All Projects Dashboard' option.
Beyond that, the pre-configured widgets will display consolidated metrics and showcase critical capabilities, like:
Health status distribution that showcases at-risk vs on-track projects.
Resource allocation views across all projects.
Portfolio-wide task completion rate.
Aggregated timeline comparisons showing planned vs actual progress.
Budget consumption tracking with variance analysis.
Being monday consulting experts, Fruition can help customise these dashboard widgets to align with specific organisational KPIs and executive reporting needs. We'll offer your team the flexibility to slice and dice data across projects, providing executives with analytical depth.
As a result, you can make informed strategic decisions and maintain the simplicity required for quick daily reviews. Automatic data retrieval setup also eliminates the overall configuration time during our monday project portfolio management setup.
Linking Multiple Projects in monday.com: Advanced Connection Strategies
You'll have to combine Connect Boards columns and Mirror columns to link multiple projects in monday WorkOS. This is the backbone of portfolio-level visibility.
Here, you can create live data connections that will sync data across the entire project ecosystem without duplication. Let's explain in detail:
Connect Boards Column
This establishes the initial link between portfolio and project boards. With this, you get to link over 10,000 items per board (depends on your subscription tier).
You'll be prompted to select which project boards to connect. Remember to link multiple if necessary. This will create a comprehensive network for future project updates.
Note: You can create up to 60 Connect Boards columns on a single board. This provides extensive flexibility for a complex monday project portfolio management setup.
Mirror Columns
These complement Connect Boards by displaying specific data from the linked projects directly on your portfolio board.
After establishing this connection, you can add multiple Mirror columns to show different data types. These can include columns for project status, resource allocations, budget, timelines, and more.
You can also mirror up to three levels deep. That means your team can create hierarchies: Portfolio > Program > Project > Task.
Implementation Best Practices: Fruition's Suggestion
The team at Fruition has listed a few best practices for implementing an executive project dashboard:
Establish consistent naming conventions across connected boards.
Create hierarchical connections with Portfolio boards at the top level.
Configure Mirror columns to display status, timeline, priority, and budget.
Use two-way connections for bidirectional data syncs.
Aggregate data from multiple projects using multi-board mirroring.
If you partner with one of our 27+ monday.com experts, you can benefit from the guidance on optimal connection architectures to maintain board performance. We can help you balance complexity with usability and design connection patterns that offer maximum visibility.
Implementing RAG Status and Risk Aggregation on monday Project Portfolio Management Setup
Risk management ensures effective portfolio governance. Moreover, monday's portfolio solutions provide sophisticated tools for Red-Amber-Green (RAG) status tracking and AI-powered risk aggregation.
The Portfolio Health Snapshot feature offers an all-encompassing view of portfolio progress. It also displays health indicators to help executives quickly identify which projects need attention. For example, it displays completion percentages, planned vs actual timelines, and more.
Beyond that, monday Portfolio Risk Insights capability uses AI to analyse data from each project board. It reviews notes, team communication, status updates, timelines, and more to generate a prioritised list of potential risks ranked by severity.
RAG Status Implementation
Ideally, the RAG status implementation in the monday project portfolio management setup involves:
Setting up automated status updates based on timeline variances and completion rates.
Implementing regular review cycles where managers validate AI-generated risk assessments.
Configuring health status columns on project boards with proper standardised criteria.
Creating Mirror columns on the Portfolio board to aggregate every health indicator.
Establishing clear definitions for critical issues in Red, potential concerns in Amber, and on track statuses in Green.
You can drill down into any flagged project to understand specific risk factors and take action. Also, the Gantt view provides additional risk visibility by displaying timelines across all projects in a high-level format. This type of visual representation in monday.com helps identify resource conflicts, timeline overlaps, dependency chains, and more.
Budget Oversight in monday Portfolio Management
monday.com's portfolio solution delivers a comprehensive budget oversight through the numbers column. It'll track planned budgets, variances across all initiatives, and actual costs.
Moreover, budget data recorded at the project level automatically rolls up to Portfolio boards through Mirror columns. This creates a consolidated financial view for executives in the monday project portfolio management setup.
Did you know that projects experience cost overruns in multiple cases? That means transparent budget tracking is essential for portfolio success.
Some of the key financial management capabilities after linking multiple projects in monday.com include:
Formula columns calculating real-time budget variances and burn rates.
Customisable financial reporting widgets on the All Projects Dashboard.
Multi-currency support for global portfolio management.
Timeline integration that displays budget consumption vs project completion.
Automated alerts when projects approach or exceed budget thresholds.
Budget variance indicators can also flag projects that exceed planned expenditures. All you have to do is integrate financial data with health status and timeline data to correlate budget variances with project delays.
Your team can also identify at-risk initiatives before cost overruns occur to optimise resource allocations with executive project dashboards.
To End With
Did you know that a properly configured monday project portfolio management setup transforms organisational visibility and executive decision-making? You have to establish Portfolio boards with Connect Boards and Mirror columns.
These will help you implement AI-powered risk insights through the executive project dashboard to maintain transparent budget oversight. Moreover, the dashboard integrates automated risk aggregation and financial tracking to help you master strategically aligned initiatives.
Partner with Fruition to implement a customised monday project portfolio management setup that delivers executive visibility and strategic control. Ready to transform your portfolio management? Contact our monday.com consultants to optimise the architecture for maximum impact and sustainable success.
FAQs
Can you customise the pre-configured widgets on the All Projects Dashboard to match specific KPIs?
Yes, you can customise the ready-made widgets in the All Projects Dashboard. It will display your organisation's projects, metrics, and other operational data. Create custom views that combine data from multiple boards, configure formula columns for unique calculations, and design visualisation widgets.
What happens to portfolio dashboard data when team members don't have access to certain connected project boards?
monday.com implements a permission-based visibility for all connected boards in the portfolio feature. For instance, if users lack access to a connected board, that data won't appear in their Connect Boards or Mirror columns. Also, a lock icon will indicate restricted data. Users can request access directly, ensuring data security and transparency.
How do you prevent performance issues when connecting project boards to a single portfolio dashboard?
You can optimise performance by focusing on essential metrics rather than mirroring all available data. This will limit the Mirror columns to critical information, using aggregated views instead of item-level details. You'll also have to set up an automation that regularly archives completed projects. For portfolios approaching the 200-board limit, consider creating multiple portfolio boards to keep everything organised.
