10 Trello Tips Guaranteed to Make You More Productive

Trello is a kanban-style app that helps you organize and track work, ideas, and all kinds of information or tasks, either by yourself or within a group. This app has one of the most user-friendly experiences you'll find when it comes to getting started. It's so easy to get started, in fact, that you might never stretch your wings and learn more about what this collaboration app can do.

These 10 Trello tips are designed to help you learn more, and through that, perhaps find other uses for kanban boards.

1. Automate Rote Tasks With Butler

Do you always archive a Trello card after moving it to a "Done" list? Does putting a new card on your board necessarily mean it should start with the "in progress" label? When your boards and cards have predictable actions that always follow some other action, you can use a feature called Butler to automate them.

Here's another example: When I create a new card in the "To Do" list, add the "Steps" checklist. Some other actions that Butler can take are changing the due date, adding an assignee, and moving or archiving a card.

Butler is one of the newest features in Trello. It's not considered a power-up, and it's available to all account types, including Trello Free.

2. Install the Desktop App for Added Features

Veteran Trello users may have started out with the web app and always stuck to it, seeing as it works reliably well. Trello does offer a desktop app for macOS and Windows, however, and there are a few advantages to installing them.

For one, the desktop apps give you slightly enhanced notifications, like app icon notifications in macOS, which you don't get if you use Trello in a browser. Second, you can make custom keyboard shortcuts for getting to the app and launching a quick-add dialog box. You'll find more default keyboard shortcuts for Trello on desktop, too. Finally, Mac users get even more shortcuts via the Touch Bar, in case you're not a fan of keyboard shortcuts.

3. Save Time and Streamline With Templates

Trello has templates, some of which are provided by Trello and some of which are created by other Trello members. One reason to explore them and consider using them is if you feel like you've never understood Trello's full potential. Templates tell and show you how other people use the app.

Another reason to use templates is to save time and streamline your processes. For example, let's say your team has started setting and tracking OKRs. You can use an OKR template every time you set new OKRs; or you can have different departments or team members all use the same template to set and track their OKRs. This way, each person or team doesn't have to make up their own way to track OKRs, and you'll have much more uniformity among the results. Uniformity helps everyone quickly read and make sense of one another's OKRs, so the information is not only transparent to all but also easily understood.

4. Connect Cards and Boards to Other Cards

When you attach a file to Trello, one of the options is to attach another card or board that you have in Trello. In other words, if you're editing Card A, and Card B is related, you can attach it and then see a preview of Card B inside Card A. When you click the preview of Card B, it opens Card B.

To attach a card, click the button for attachments. Choose Trello as the source. When the list of all available cards and boards appears, simply choose the one you want.

Here's a scenario where it might come in handy. Imagine you're a writer and you use a Trello board to track the article ideas you have, which ones you've pitched, and which ones you're currently writing. If you have two related articles that should publish at the same time because they reference each other, it would make sense to connect those cards. That way, you can easily keep an eye on the progress of one while working on the other. More importantly, it won't slip your mind that you should submit the two articles simultaneously. Read some more examples of when it makes sense to use this trick on Trello's blog post on linked cardsand boards.

5. Add Cover Images

If you haven't used Trello in a while, the ability to set a cover image is a much-improved experience. In the past, Trello would automatically use the first image you uploaded to the card as its cover image, or the medium sized picture you see for the card in the board view. It was a pain if you attached an image file that you didn't want to show as a cover, or if you wanted a cover image for the board view but didn't have something ready to attach.

Both those issues are solved now because cover images are treated separately from attachments. You can upload a custom cover without it affecting other images you attach. Additionally, Trello has added a search field where you can look for license-free images to add as your cover so you don't have to do the legwork yourself. Now you can type a few words into a search box, see some previews of possible matches, and then choose an image to use as your cover.

6. Press Q to See Only Your Cards

Some team boards get bogged down with cards. Here's a tip that helps you focus on the cards that matter to you. Press Q. Press it once, and Trello applies a filter to show only cards that have you as a member. You still get a count for the total number of cards that are in each list, but only your cards appear as cards. Press Q once more, and the view returns to normal.

7. Drag and Drop URLs

Instead of copying and pasting a URL from one tab into a Trello card, you can drag and drop it there. Highlight the URL you want to add. Drag it into the tab with your open Trello board or into the desktop app. Slide the cursor to the card where you want to add the URL and let go. (You have to wait a beat between each step before the icons appear to indicate it's all going smoothly.)

8. Turn Emails Into Trello Cards

The next time you open an email and realize all the information in it would serve you better as a Trello card, consider forwarding the message to the Trello board of your choice. The app automatically turns it into a new card.

Trello has generated a unique email address for every board. Find the address by opening the board, opening the menu on the right, then choosing More > Email-to-Board Settings. You can copy the email address, generate a new address, and select the list where you want the new cards to appear. You can also decide whether new cards should appear at the top or bottom of the list.

To get the most out of the card, know these five details:

• The subject line becomes the card's title.
• The body becomes the description.
• Attachments from the email become attachments in the card, as long as they are not larger than 10MB (paying subscribers have a larger limit for all other attachments, 250MB)
• To add labels, add to the subject line # followed by the exact label name, e.g., #critical
• To add members, type in the subject line @ followed by the username of the person you want to add, e.g., @janedoe; or put the member's email address into the To or CC field before you forward the message.

9. Choose a Great Background Image for Each Board

Most Trello users probably already know that they can customize the background image or color for their boards. You can upload your own image, choose a solid color, or search license-free images from Unsplashusing a built-in tool.

The main reason to make your board backgrounds distinct has more to do with productivity than visual appeal. The more you and your teammates use boards, the more you'll associate the background image will each board, whether consciously or subconsciously. If the backdrops are distinct, everyone will be able to identify and differentiate the boards instantly upon seeing them, and that means less confusion and getting to work quickly.

10. Copy and Paste from Spreadsheets

Trello knows that when you copy and paste a list of items from a spreadsheet, there's a chance you want to turn each cell into its own card. There's also a chance you want a list to appear in one card. So, the app asks what you want to do after you press enter. This way, you can quickly transfer blocks of cells from a spreadsheet to Trello knowing that the result will be what you want without a lot of muss and fuss.