monday.com Auto-Populate Team Rosters on New Boards

meta_description: “monday.com can’t auto-populate team rosters from a master list to new project boards. Learn why manual item creation is necessary, and how BoardBridge clones roster items with status mapping.”

You just created a new project board for client XYZ. Now you need to add your team members so you can track confirmations, assignments, and availability.

You open your master Team Roster board. Scroll through 25 names. Click the first one, copy it, switch back to the project board, click “Add Item”, paste. Repeat 24 more times.

15 minutes later, your roster is loaded.

Now imagine you’re running 60 projects per year. That’s 900 manual copy-pastes of team member names. 15 hours annually spent copying names from one board to another.

There has to be a better way.

Boards Pain Point #7: Team Members Should Auto-Populate on New Project Boards

Here’s what teams need:

When a new project board is created, team members from a master roster should automatically appear as items on the project’s confirmation, assignment, or availability tracking board:

• Master roster (25 team members) → Project board (25 items created instantly)
• Each member as a separate row ready for status tracking
• No manual item creation
• Works for any roster type: team members, vendors, contractors, band members, crew, suppliers

What monday.com offers:

Nothing. There is no native automation to copy items from a source board (the roster) to a newly created target board (the project).

You can:

• Manually duplicate items one by one
• Use “Move item to another board” automation — but this moves items away from the roster (leaving it empty)
• Use “Duplicate item and move to another board” — but this creates unwanted “(copy)” naming and doesn’t sync ongoing roster changes

The result: Manual item creation after every new project board.

What Monday.com Users Are Saying

Thread: Auto-copy items from one board to another — November 2023 | Source: monday.com Community

“I have a list of employees in one board in monday that are rated each month…” — Soroh, November 22, 2023

“So what you need to do is an automation that duplicates an item, then moves an item to another board.” — anon29275264, November 22, 2023

“The catch here is that the item that gets moved is the original, and the duplicate stays…” — anon29275264, November 22, 2023

Native monday.com duplication creates items with “(copy)” appended to the name. Duplicated items don’t retain ongoing updates from the source roster. The workaround is convoluted and breaks the roster-as-source-of-truth model.

Thread: Is it possible to automatically create and connect Items to a Board created from a template — November 2023 – August 2024 | Source: monday.com Community

“how can we connect board automatically if the board is created from a template?” — Maayango, December 28, 2023

“Did you ever get an answer to your question above that worked?” — tkthieme, August 11, 2024

Monday.com staff (BiancaT) suggested a mirror status column workaround but acknowledged no native solution exists for simultaneously creating boards from templates AND automatically connecting/populating items.

Thread: Automation when creating new board from template — April 2022 | Source: monday.com Community

“I’ve created a board template with tasks already pre-populated. The dependencies between tasks as far as due dates is already setup.” — pbeaudry (Phil), April 26, 2022

“I am not sure the dependencies will get triggered in that scenario.” — basdebruin, April 2022

Even pre-populated template boards don’t auto-update when roster data changes. If you add a new team member to your master roster, template boards don’t reflect it.

How BoardBridge Solves This

BoardBridge’s roster auto-population workflow runs immediately after new project boards are created. Source: BoardBridge Product Documentation Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Configure Roster Mapping

You define which roster boards feed which project boards. For example:

Roster Configuration:

• Source: “Team Roster” board (ID: 123456)
• Target: “Team Confirmations” board (created from template)

• Source: “Band Roster” board (ID: 234567)
• Target: “Band Confirmations” board (created from template)

• Source: “Vendor List” board (ID: 345678)
• Target: “Vendor Management” board (created from template)

You can configure as many roster-to-board mappings as needed. Each project type can have different roster sources.

Step 2: Fetch All Roster Items

When a new project is created, BoardBridge queries each source roster board via monday.com’s API:

“graphql query { boards(ids: [123456]) { items_page { items { id name } } } } “

Result: A list of all team member names (or vendor names, band member names, etc.) from the roster board.

Step 3: Create Items on Target Project Boards

For each roster item, create a corresponding item on the target project board:

“graphql mutation { create_item( board_id: "789012", item_name: "Alex Johnson" ) } “

Repeat for every roster member. If your Team Roster has 25 members, 25 items are created on the Team Confirmations board.

The items are created sequentially via API. For 25 items, this takes approximately 5-8 seconds (limited by monday.com’s API rate limits). Source: BoardBridge Performance Specs and monday.com API Documentation

Step 4: Items Appear Instantly on the Project Board

By the time you open the new project’s Team Confirmations board, all 25 team members are already there, ready for status tracking:

• Alex Johnson
• Maria Garcia
• James Chen
• Sofia Rodriguez
• … (21 more)

Each row is ready for you to mark “Confirmed”, “Pending”, “Declined”, or whatever statuses your workflow uses.

Zero manual item creation.

Real-World Example: Event Management

Master Rosters:

• Band Roster board — 12 band members
• Team Roster board — 8 production team members

When a new event project is created:

1. All template boards duplicated (Event Overview, Band Confirmations, Team Confirmations, Travel, Production)
2. On Band Confirmations board: 12 items created (one per band member)
3. On Team Confirmations board: 8 items created (one per team member)

Result: Both confirmation boards are pre-populated with the full roster within seconds of project creation.

The event coordinator opens the Band Confirmations board and sees all 12 band members ready for outreach. No setup required.

Different Rosters for Different Boards

You can configure multiple roster sources that feed different target boards within the same project.

Example configuration:

Project Type: Corporate Event

• Team Roster → Team Confirmations board
• AV Vendor List → Vendor Management board
• Catering Roster → Catering Coordination board

Each roster feeds its corresponding board. The system handles all mappings independently.

Project Type: Wedding Event

• Band Roster → Entertainment Confirmations board
• Vendor Roster → Vendor Tracking board

Different project types can use completely different roster configurations.

Roster Changes Reflected in Future Projects Only

Important: Roster loading is a one-time snapshot at project creation time.

If your Team Roster has 25 members today and you create a project, those 25 members appear on the project board. If you add a 26th member to the Team Roster next week, existing projects are unaffected — they still have 25 members.

New projects created after the roster change will have 26 members.

This is by design: each project is an independent snapshot. You don’t want past projects changing when you update your current team roster.

If you need to add a new team member to all active projects, you’d do that manually or via a separate workflow rule (not part of the roster auto-population feature).

Column Values Are Not Mapped

Roster loading creates items (rows) on the target board using the item name from the source roster. It does not map column values.

Example:

If your Team Roster board has columns like:

• Name
• Email
• Phone
• Department
• Availability Status

Only the Name transfers to the project board. The email, phone, department, and status do not automatically populate.

Why? Because project boards and roster boards typically have different column structures. Your roster might track hiring date and salary; your project board tracks confirmation status and travel needs. The column structures don’t align.

Workaround: If you need roster data (like email addresses or phone numbers) on the project board, you can:

1. Use Connect Boards columns to link project items back to the roster
2. Use Mirror columns to pull roster data into the project board
3. Configure secondary data mapping (advanced setup, not part of the default roster load)

For most teams, loading the names is sufficient — the rest gets filled in during project execution.

Limitations You Should Know

Only the item name is transferred. If you need full column data from the roster on the project board, roster loading alone won’t do it. You’d need Connect Boards + Mirror columns or custom mapping.

Roster changes don’t propagate retroactively. If you remove someone from the Team Roster, they’re not automatically removed from past projects. Each project is a snapshot.

Large rosters take time. If your roster has 100+ items, the creation process takes 30-60 seconds due to monday.com API rate limits. The system creates items sequentially to avoid hitting rate limits.

Duplicate names are allowed. If your roster has two people named “John Smith,” both will be created on the project board. There’s no deduplication or uniqueness check.

Subitems are not supported. If your roster board uses subitems (e.g., team members with sub-roles), only the parent items are copied. Subitems are not transferred.

Eliminate Manual Roster Loading

For teams managing 50+ projects per year with team rosters of 10-50 members each, manual roster population is a serious time sink. At 15 minutes per project for 60 projects/year, that’s 900 minutes (15 hours) of pure busywork annually.

BoardBridge automates the entire roster loading process — when your new project boards are created, all team members from your master roster appear as items instantly, ready for tracking and confirmation.

Ready to reclaim those 15 hours per year? Book a free 30-minute demo: https://calendly.com/rp-spaceo/call-with-rakesh-est-timezone

Related Articles

• How to Auto-Duplicate Multiple Template Boards on Deal Close — The full multi-board project creation workflow that roster loading is part of
• How to Auto-Populate CRM Data to Project Boards — Similar automation for CRM deal data