Trello is one of the very useful tools that many people may not be familiar with and in this article, we want to talk about this tool and its capabilities and how to use it in detail.
To begin with, you should know that Trello is a project management tool developed by Atlassian. One of the great advantages of this tool from the point of view of its users is that it is much easier to work with than other project management tools. Using Trello, you will have a smooth tool with beautiful visual effects for managing digital marketing projects and tasks. It should be noted that if you need more complex functionality, you can try Jira, which is another project management tool provided by Atlassian. If you are working on a project that does not require very complicated rules and regulations, Trello can be your best choice. As you will see in the rest of this article, working with Trello is very easy and has a basic and simple user interface. Many users find this tool not only easy to work with but also fun! So let’s see together what this tool is and how it can help us in project management.
Table of Contents
What is Trello?
To put it in the simplest language possible, Trello allows you to create different cards to track tasks. They are placed in lists that organize the cards and can be used to mark process steps. Then multiple lists are put together to form a board and display a project.
Trello can be used to track almost anything. Whether you’re planning a family vacation, managing a development team, or running a business, you can even keep track of just the notes you’ve written with Trello. For example, let’s say you use Trello to track your family vacation to-do list, so you might want to create a board called “Family Vacation.” You create cards for things like “buying a chicken” or “taking up a tent,” and then you move these tasks from the “to do” to the “doing” and finally the “done” columns.
Create a Trello board.
The first thing you need to do is go to Trello.com and sign up to create an account. Don’t worry, Standard and Basic accounts are free. Another cool thing is that Trello is highly location-based and detects your language, making it easier for you to get started depending on the language you speak.
After doing this, you need to create a board. You can have as many boards as you want on your account. For example, design businesses usually have a separate board for each of their clients, so they can keep everything organized and defined. The rest of the teams use only one board to track the team’s progress or product development.
To create a board, you need to click on the + sign at the top right of the screen and then click on Create Board. Then you have to choose a name for the desired board along with the background that will be displayed behind your cards.
You can set your board to be public, private, or visible to the team, and usually, except when it’s in your best interest to have your board visible to the public, you’re better off with the private or visible-to-team options. choose
A little further in the article, we will discuss how to invite people to your board, but it is necessary to mention that only the people you invite to your private board can view it. This makes Trello a great choice for working as well as having a private board for working at home.
To find all the boards that are on your account, you need to click on the Boards button at the top left of your screen.
Use lists
In the next step, you need to create a list to fill your board. In this case, you can create as many lists as you want. A global standard board usually consists of 3 columns “to do”, “in progress” and “done”. But they can be anything you want, like “marketing-related tasks” or “food-related items”.
To change the title of a list, you only need to click on the title field. If you want to change the order of your lists, just click on the list title area and drag it anywhere you want with your mouse pointer. If you want to add more lists, click on the Add a List option, which is located on the right side of the image.
Add Trello cards
Now that you have your lists in place, it’s time to add the cards. You can do this by clicking Add a Card in the lists or by clicking the “…” next to the list title and then selecting Add a Card. Then you need to add a title for your card and click on Add.
You can assign different cards to specific people on your team. A little further in the article, we will deal with assigning different roles to team members.
For now, you need to know that you can see all the individual cards related to you in all your boards and lists. To create a list of all your cards, click on the avatar on the top left of the image and then select Cards from the drop-down menu that appears.
Guide to using Trello cards.
Trello cards with rich data
Trello cards are known as “enhanced notes” because you can add a lot of rich information to the back of these cards.
To do this, just click on your card and then you can do this in the section marked “Add a More Detailed Description”. With the buttons on the right side, you can add the expiration date and other sticky items to the card. These attachments can be anything like photos, video files, and links.
Membership card and subscribe
You can add your team members to your card and also subscribe to a card. What is the difference between these two? In the first case, members are linked to the desired card, because that’s what they have to do. Subscribing to a card only means that you will be aware of the updates and changes applied to the card. This is very useful when you want to filter cards based on the people who have been added to them.
Checklist for Trello cards
You can also create checklists for the card’s secondary tasks, which can be ticked off when they’re done. If you later decide you don’t need these checklists, it’s easy to delete them as well.
Label cards
Using the Labels button, you can change the color of the cards and put tags on them.
This can be very useful for you; For example, labeling cards that are related to marketing, cards that define software problems, and cards that are related to a specific client.
Comment on the cards.
You can also add feedback and comments for the cards and just click on Add Comment.
In each separate comment, you can add different stickers and emojis, and direct the comments to a specific member. Add links to other cards.
Activity history
Below the comments is the Activity section of each card, which shows a list of all the changes that have been applied to the card so far. This way you can find out what happened when and by whom.
How to transfer or copy a Trello card
With the Move button under Actions, you can send a card to another list or board. Copy also allows you to place another copy of the card elsewhere.
How to delete or archive a Trello card
There is no button to directly delete your trolley cards. But you can archive the card, which removes the card from the board. If you click on the More button in the menu and then select Archived Items, you can remove the card from this section. If you find you need the card on your board, go back to the same location as before and click Send to Board to retrieve it.
Other additional options for Trello cards
If you click on Share and More in the bottom right corner of the back of the card, you will get a few additional options, including allowing you to print the card, get a link to the card, and add a comment to the card by email. It is specified from an address.
The functionality of lists in Trello
To look at the lists from the board’s point of view, click on the “…” button on the top right. This section has a few options worth looking at, including archiving all cards in this list and archiving this list, which removes the list entirely from the Trello board.
You can also subscribe to all the cards in the desired list in this menu to always be updated about them. Now that we have the cards in the list, you can test them, for example, drag and drop them anywhere in the board’s section.
Trello board application guide
Each Trello board has a menu that gives you high-level tools about what’s going on. You can find this menu at the top right of the Trello board.
Add users to the Trello board.
If you use Trello to track workflow, you may want to add other people as well. You can click on the Invite button, it doesn’t matter if this person has a Trello account using an email or username, or if Trello itself sends an email to the desired person and asks him to use this platform.
If you want to add a group of people, click on Invite people by giving them a special link, and then you can share the link with all of them instead of adding them separately.
Removing users from the Trello board
To remove members from the Trello board, click on their avatar at the top of the menu and then select Remove from the board.
By default, all members can add or remove other members from the Trello board. Also, if you want to leave a board, you can delete it yourself.
Manage user rights
To change users’ ability to remove or add other users, click More, then Settings, and then select Add/Remove Permissions. You can set this option as Admin Only. From the More page, you can also determine how the labels appear, and you can also find your archived items from this section.
Trello backgrounds and stickers
Change Background allows you to change the background! While stickers allow you to drag and drop photos onto cards.
If you decide to remove the stickers, hover over the card and click on the pencil icon, then click on the sticker to remove it.
With the Trello Gold version, you can add various gifs to the card.
Trello board filtering
The next menu option is to filter cards, which allows you to see the board only for cards with specific labels or those with specific members. This is useful when you are working on a Scrum Board with different team members and want to filter your tasks.
Clicking the Q button on the keyboard will allow you to see the cards that have been dealt to you. You can also filter cards by expiration date to identify the tasks that need to be done the most. To work more precisely and specifically, you can apply several different filters at the same time.
Search Trello boards
The search bar makes it very easy to find anything you need on the boards.
This section also has various search operators. For example:
Searching for @me will show cards that have been assigned to you.
Searching for due: week will show you all cards due next week.
Searching for labels: green will show all cards that have a green label on them.
You can also use multiple operators at the same time, for example, search for cards with a green label that have been issued to you and their expiration date is next week.
Change History
At the bottom of the menu is the Activity section, which shows a list of all the changes that have been applied to all the cards on the board.
Close a Trello board.
You can also close a Trello board altogether, but keep in mind that this will also close the board for others. If you’ve accidentally closed your board, don’t worry, you can restore your board by clicking See Closed Boards and then clicking Re-Open.
Introducing Trello Power-ups
Power-ups allow Trello to integrate with other applications to add new features and functionality. You can use a Power-Up on a free account. If you want to use more numbers, you need to purchase the Business Class plan. In this introduction, we will have a brief look at some of the good Trello Power-Ups. You can see them in the Power-Ups tab at the top right of the board.
Trello Calendar
This is one of the most useful Trello Power Ups. This feature allows you to access cards from a calendar view organized by their expiration date.
It shows us the timing of the tasks in a visual form along with a visual representation of the events that await us in the future.
Custom Field Power-Up
This Power-Up gives you the ability to add new and editable fields to the back and front of cards. Although it may not seem like a very exciting topic at first, but using this feature you can:
- Mark the cards when complete
- Add start and end dates to the card
- Add drop-down lists
- Add contact information in the card fields
- Many other things
If you have a Business Class or Enterprise account, you can include the information taken from the desired fields when exporting the CSVs of the boards and in this way have a complete view of all the events that are happening.
Integration with Jira
In many different departments, Jira and Trello are used simultaneously. So this Power Up that connects the two can be very powerful.
This feature allows you to create issues in Jira from Trello and attach Jira issues to cards. If you need to send various tasks and queries to your engineering team through Jira, this feature makes it easy for you. Other notable Power-Ups in Trello can be those mentioned in the list below.
Integration with Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive to attach files to cards
Card Aging Power Up, which causes cards to fade if not updated
Other integrations with Slack, Salesforce, Evernote, and GitHub, among other applications
Advanced tricks and tips for using Trello
To make multiple cards together, write the titles as different cells in a spreadsheet and then paste them into a card title. Each item separated by a line becomes a new card.
A useful tip to know is that you can create a card via email. To do this, go to the menu on the right and select More, then click on Email to Board Settings. Now you can create a card by sending a message to this address.
Do you want to create a list between two previous lists? Just double-click there.
For frequent checklists, you can create multiple checklist items on a card at the same time by simply copying a line-separated list into the desired field.
To paste a web space link to a card, put the link in the paste field. Or you can drag and drop a link from the board page into the desired card.
YouTube videos can also be placed on a card by placing their link in the comments section.
Keyboard shortcuts
Pressing the Q button on the keyboard allows you to see the cards that have been dealt to you.
We already mentioned that you can add yourself to a card from the boards section, and this is possible just by placing the mouse pointer on the desired point and pressing the space button. If you want to add more members, just press M.
When you move the mouse pointer over a card, pressing L will bring up the labels section so you can label cards from the boards section.
Hovering over the cards and pressing E will take you to the quick edit section.
Hovering over the cards and pressing D will show you the card’s expiration date.
You can also use the directions on the keyboard to move through the board section; also use > and < to move cards between different lists, Enter to open a card, and / to start a search.
You can also copy, cut, and paste the cards like on your computer using the combination keys Ctrl+C, Ctrl+x, and Ctrl+V.