5 Must-Have Tools for Herding Agency Cats

Art director turned project manager, Crosby is Coven's talented Creative Operations Director. Follow along as she shares insights into the tools and strategies used to keep Coven running smoothly.

Creative project management holds a special place in my heart—right next to pretty spreadsheets and an organized calendar. I am inspired by an in-depth process that's well documented. I could not, even if I tried very hard, be able to remember everything that needs to happen in a given day, week, or month at Coven. I've collected my MVP list of tools I use on the daily to keep us in line and make sure our work gets done.

#1

The PM Holy Grail: Airtable

My life, my love, my AT. Our single source of truth here at Coven and at several of my past agencies, Airtable is an insanely powerful, data-powered project management system. I lovingly refer to it as "Google Sheets on steroids," but it's so much more than that. I've been an almost every day user of Airtable since 2018, and each update has made it more user-friendly and functional than the last. It's insanely flexible, allowing for you to build almost any system to be customized to your business needs.

We use Airtable to track deliverable statuses, keep tasks in order, write creative briefs, track time, communicate through comments and so much more. We even share custom Airtable views with our clients so they have easy access to see what we're working on for them and when they can expect to have it.

I haven't even gotten in to the powerful automations, the dashboard building, and the overall aesthetic-ness of the platform. Seriously, I could talk about Airtable for hours, days, weeks, if only there were room in this blog.

🌟 A Quick Tip: Airtable's learning curve is steep, but don't let it scare you. It's so worth it to be able to have a platform for your specific use case with no coding but all the makings and usability of a custom-built project management system.

#2

Your Knowledge Aggregator: Notion

As a self proclaimed "bullet journal girly," Notion is my favorite place on the internet. The ability to create in-depth and organized wikis in a clean and easy to read way makes this tool indispensable. We keep meeting notes, training, and processes all in our own little Coven intranet inside of Notion. You can create notes, tables, and agendas all in one place. We basically use Notion as our collective notepad.

In previous lives, I would have used Google Docs to create a similar system, but the endless embedding opportunities, database creation, and even simple automation abilities make Notion my go-to for notes and knowledge.

🌟 A Quick Tip: There is an insane amount of content on YouTube about how to build out a Notion workspace. I find watching the people who actually use it to organize life (instead of work) give you better insight into the platform. The bullet journalers have the best tips and tricks.

#3

The Virtual Water Cooler: Slack

I'm sure I'm not blowing anybody's mind by including Slack here. You know it, you love it, you send gifs to your team on it, Gen Z employees be damned. However, it is by far the easiest way I've found to actually "herd cats" as it were. A team member is much more likely to immediately answer or take action on a Slack message over an email or notification.

The part of Slack that unlocks Next-Level Project Management is its ability to integrate with the other tools I've mentioned. So many of my most important reminders get pushed to Slack through Airtable. Did someone just mark a deliverable submitted? I get notified immediately. Want a round up of all the work you have due today every morning as a Slack message? Done. Want a warning when something hasn't been updated in time? Airtable and Slack are the perfect couple.

It's not just Airtable integration either. Calendar notifications, a dedicated direct message to yourself to capture quick notes or links you want to remember, the ability to pin important messages and sort conversations into specific channels all make Slack a communication hub that captures and stores so much more than a status can in a project management system.

🌟 A Quick Tip: If you're someone who doesn't want to forget something small, not a task but maybe to leave for an appointment or remind someone of something, use the /remind command. I ask Slackbot all the time to remind me to get ready to leave at 10:30 or remind me in 2 hours to renew my parking.

#4

Right Place & Right Time: Notion Calendar (Formerly Cron)

If you would have asked me a couple months ago, I would've said that Google Calendar is king. And I'm still there—with a twist. I live and die by my calendar, and as a person who is often setting meetings—kickoffs, statuses, reviews, etc.—a calendar app with all the bells and whistles is so important.

Notion bought Cron calendar in 2022 and just recently re-released it as Notion Calendar. It's clean, easy to use, and includes features most calendar apps do, just in an elevated and cleaner way. The keyboard shortcuts are extensive and the ability to keep multiple people's calendar hidden, but easily accessible is a nice touch. The best function, by far, is the command menu. Hit Command/Ctrl+K and gain access to a quick search bar that lets you search events, jump 6 weeks from now, share availability windows, and so much more.

🌟 My Biggest Tip: If you use a personal calendar just as much as your work one, use Notion Calendar to see everything all once! Create meetings from any of your attached emails, whether work or personal. I basically use mine as my life manager.

#5

A Comprehensive Email Tagging System: Gmail

When it comes to email, I prefer Gmail (as, I'm assuming, most millennials do). But if you (or your workplace) don't use Gmail, this tip still applies!

Most people know you can label your emails and get them out of your inbox. In my opinion, the best thing you can do for your brain each day is get yourself to inbox zero. What most people don't do, though, is stick to an organized tagging system. I have categories and subcategories that I tag for every email and kick them out of my inbox as soon as they're read. Any action items from emails get added to our PM system when they come up.

Categories like clients (always our established 4-letter client code), vendors (their name), or type (Invoice, SOW, Proposal, Specs, etc) help make navigating so much easier. I also always have a *Reference tag that I clean out every week for emails that I think I might need quick access to. This organization can mean the difference between being able to reference an important message and not finding it in the black hole that can be an inbox.

🌟 My Biggest Tip: Gmail is smart in so many ways, and dumb in others. If you find you're tagging emails but they're not showing up in date order when you open that folder, it's because you've only tagged the original email. Just remove and re-ad the tag and it'll be at the top.