Notion's New Grouping Feature is a Game-Changer

Notion’s new “Group by” feature lets users visually split database rows inside virtually any view—tables, boards, lists, galleries, and timelines—based on any property, including relation fields. The practical payoff is immediate: teams can stop cramming unrelated items into one scrolling mess and instead create clear visual structure, such as separating tasks by assignee, projects by status, or content ideas by the YouTube channel they belong to.

In a task manager example, tasks initially sit together even though they belong to different projects. After switching the view’s grouping to the “project” relation property, tasks automatically reorganize into distinct sections per project. The grouping menu also supports manual ordering (so important projects can be pinned to the top), optional hiding of items without a relation (useful when “unassigned” work should be excluded), and the ability to hide empty groups. Sorting and filtering don’t get lost in the shuffle: any existing sort criteria (like due date ascending) apply within each grouped section.

The biggest shift appears in board views, where “Group by” combines with a new “subgroup” layer to create swim lanes and grids. One board can group by “status” for the main columns—such as To do, Doing, and Done—while sub-grouping by “project” turns each status column into a matrix of project-specific rows. That structure replaces older workflows where projects were effectively jumbled inside columns and couldn’t be cleanly surfaced as their own labeled lanes. The same grouping controls apply at the subgroup level, including manual ordering and hiding empty or irrelevant groups.

Beyond status and projects, Notion’s grouping extends to date-based relative groupings (like last seven days, today, tomorrow, and next seven days) and even relative calendar buckets such as weeks that can be aligned to a Sunday-to-Saturday range. Assignee-based grouping is also highlighted as a management-friendly way to see who owns which tasks, including a dedicated “no assignee” group when ownership hasn’t been assigned.

Several workspace use cases show why relation grouping matters. In a content ideas system, ideas can be grouped directly by their related “channel” database, eliminating the need for interim workaround properties. That same structure supports tag-based organization within a channel’s idea list, letting creators filter productivity-focused ideas without losing the channel context.

A project manager view then uses swim lanes to separate the content pipeline stages (planning, research, writing, etc.) while still visually isolating work by channel. Task management benefits too: tasks can be grouped by the related video, so each video’s action items appear together rather than mixed across the whole backlog. Finally, a “writer’s room” beta page demonstrates how filters plus swim lanes can create a department-specific Kanban board—showing only research/writing items, grouped by assignee, and sub-grouped by channel—so writers can focus on what’s currently actionable across multiple properties.

Overall, the feature turns relational data into navigable structure. Instead of building custom pages or relying on manual workarounds to keep projects, channels, and owners visually distinct, Notion now lets users generate that separation directly inside the database views themselves—making planning, execution, and review easier to scan at a glance.