My experience as a Trello consultant
Do you use Trello for your business? If so, I hope you're not making any of these seven mistakes.
Hello, everyone Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress and I have provided Trello consulting for the past five years and I have literally laid my eyes on thousands and thousands of different Trello boards.
So here in today's video I wanna show you the seven most common mistakes that I see my clients using and showing you solutions.
Using Trello Lists for Individual People
So you can fix each one. The first one has to do with using our lists and far too often, I come across teams and businesses that are using individuals for their own list.
Here in the first half of this board, you can see that we have a task list and in progress and complete, some standard things that many boards contain but if we move over to the right-hand side, we see things like Kristi's list, Brian's list and sometimes there's several, maybe a dozen of lists moving out here, all with individual names.
Now their intent is good in that they're trying to keep things organized that if Kristi is assigned something, we can move it over here but that sort of defeats the purpose of the workflows and the different stages in which Trello is so good at.
What we really should be doing is using this member assignment as you can see on these other cards so that we can assign members directly to specific cards regardless of which stage they are in.
The other thing you want to keep in mind is that if you or other members of your team need to see specifically what they are assigned we can come up here to show menu and we can go under search cards and filter things just for ourselves.
So for example if I just wanna see the cards that are assigned to me I can click my username and now I just see the six cards that I have been assigned to.
I can now work in this mode. This is more than just a view.
I can work and edit and move these cards around if I need to and whenever I want to, I can click X up here and go back and see all of my cards at once.
So I would strongly suggest that you avoid using individual lists for individual members of your team. Take advantage of Trello's use of a Kanban board and make use of the stages.
Poor Use of Trello Labels
The second mistake that I see far too often is not using labels effectively.
Now, here in this demonstration board you can see that I have several different labels.
One quick tip is that if you click directly on the label itself, it will expand and show you the name of that label that can often be very, very convenient so you don't have to remember the different colors and what they associate with but far too often I come across boards and teams that are not using labels at all or at least not very effectively.
Labels can be so helpful here within our Trello system and one of those reasons is that we can use again that filtering capability to narrow down and zero in on certain types of labels.
So I'll often ask my clients to see what would make the most sense for them to segment or break out their Trello cards on a given board. How would they like to see it maybe from a reporting standpoint or would other members of their team like to see that information?
If we go back here to search cards, you can see at the very top we can filter by either one or more labels.
Do I just wanna see my new projects? No problem, I can select that.
Keep in mind, you are not limited to just the first six or so colors that Trello provides you here.
If you need to, you could actually have several green labels which may represent the exact same geographical area but you can give each of those labels a different name.
So you can have as many labels as you need as long as they have distinctive names.
No Trello Backup Plan
Now, the third problem that I come across very often here when it comes to using Trello is the lack of a backup plan and although Trello is a trusted name and service things can go wrong.
Whether it's your fault, or if there is some downtime with Trello how about you add someone new to your team and they start mucking things up here within your Trello board and you wish that you could go back to the way it was set up a week ago or maybe just certain elements.
Well, one way that you could do so is come up here to show menu, select more and we could copy this board.
We could select copy and give it a name with a date perhaps so that we know when this board was copied but the problem with this strategy is that it's a manual process and either you or someone else on your team is gonna have to come in here and remember to copy this board every Friday and give it a name and then that's going to stack up in your organization and count towards your boards here within Trello as well and what if the mistake was made just two days ago.
You don't wanna go all the way back to last Friday. What if you wanna go to a particular point in time?
Well, a much better solution is to use a power-up called Backups by Rewind.
If you go to the power-ups menu here within Trello and just type in back or back ups, the very first selection will be back ups for Trello.
Now, backups for Trello is designed by Rewind which is the same organization which creates backups and on-demand recovery for products such as Shopify and Quick Books Online.
The great thing about Rewind is that it backs up every single aspect of your boards.
In fact, the list includes boards, lists, cards, checklists, custom fields, labels, and attachments.
So you can have the security of having someone either new on your team or maybe even you make an honest mistake and like to go back and revert to a prior iteration of that board, you can do so with Rewind and it will do it on a nightly basis.
So you don't have to remember to do something manually.
If you'd like to learn more about backups for Trello be sure to see the link in the description below.
Too Many Trello Notifications
Now, the fourth mistake that you may be making here within Trello as it pertains to your teams and your business is notification overload.
As you start to add members of your team, as you start to add due dates you're automatically going to start receiving email notifications and far too often people are receiving too many notifications at a given time.
The negative consequence is that some members of your team including yourself may start to ignore all of those email notifications.
So a better solution is to change the frequency of those notifications.
If you come up to the top right-hand corner and click your profile picture and then come down and select settings, you'll have the opportunity to change your notifications.
If you want to, you can allow desktop notifications but the one that we're gonna focus on here is this first one, change notification email frequency.
Now by default, Trello sets this to instantly meaning that whenever a change is made to a card that either you're assigned to or that you are watching, you're gonna receive an email notification.
But the one that I prefer and that I recommend to many of my clients is to change this to periodically and what that means is that it's going to send a summary of all of the changes that have taken place within the past hour.
If there's something that pertains to you, something that you're assigned to or that you have been watching, it's going to summarize all of those notifications in a single email.
Let me show you how that looks in my inbox.
So here within my inbox, I've received a notification telling me that I have three new notifications on this particular board and when I open up this email it tells me here's what I've missed.
Here are the three distinct and different changes.
Now you'll notice that each of them includes links to both the cards themselves but also the boards as well.
So I can come in here, review this email and say, okay none of this is really terribly important.
I don't need to reply or respond or maybe just one of them is but the important thing is, is that it's come in a single email, it's not clogging up my inbox and I can deal with it directly here.
Not Viewing Trello Across Multiple Boards
Now, fifth on our list of mistakes that I see far too often is not seeing the bigger picture.
Chances are that you're managing much more than just a single board and so are members of your team.
So how do you stay on top of all of the cards that are assigned to you and all of the things that are happening across multiple boards?
Well, the good news is that Trello has introduced some new views.
If you come up here to the top left-hand corner and we go all the way to the bottom, we're gonna select open work space table.
Now this is actually going to open up in a new tab.
What it's going to do is actually display our board in a different view.
So here you can see we've got a much more column and row vertical view of the same board that we were looking at here.
Cards, lists, labels and members and the great thing here is that we can actually change and edit these things on the fly.
If I need to add myself or someone else to this card I can do so, if I need to check this task off I can do so right from this screen but this still doesn't solve our problem about seeing things across multiple boards or does it?
Here in this long dropdown menu, we can select add boards and here I'm gonna select my Scott Demo Board.
So now if I scroll down to the bottom you can see I've brought in additional card information to this view but the great thing is, is that now I can start to filter and interact with this data across multiple boards.
Now I can always add more boards if I want but let me show you some of the capability here.
Let's say I want to just see the cards that are assigned to me.
Well, here you can see I'm assigned to two cards on this other board, in addition to the cards that I'm assigned to on this blue board.
Maybe I want to scratch that. Maybe I just want to see the things that are due or that are overdue, what are the things that we're behind on?
Well, we're behind on a few things in both of these boards.
You can get this view across two or as many boards as you would like in this space and if there's a particular view or filter that you like you can always bookmark this view so you don't have to come back and reset the settings.
A fantastic way to see the bigger picture across multiple boards.
Description Field Overload
Now, number six on our list can certainly cause you a major headache and that has to do with filling up the description field with so much information that it almost becomes useless.
Now don't get me wrong, the description area within a Trello card can be very valuable where we add links and as much data as we like but what if there's some things in here that are especially important, things that other members need to see right away or that perhaps we even want to be able to filter by for example, in this description you can see we've got things like, this will be a live broadcast, it will be a duration of 45 minutes and we need a half crew size.
We know would be a whole lot easier to manage this type of information is if you use custom fields.
So down below low here, in this example I've added three custom fields so that we can see is it a live broadcast or not?
It is, well then let's check this box.
What's the duration again, it's 45 minutes.
Well wouldn't that be helpful for others to be able to see rather than have to sift through these several paragraphs in the description and last but not least, we can select a custom dropdown menu and say, it's a half crew size, perfect.
It's a half crew size, now everyone will know and if I close this card, when it comes to custom fields you can even determine what is displayed on the front.
So now everyone can see that this is a live broadcast and the duration is 45 minutes.
In this particular example, I've chosen not to share the crew size that that's something that I don't need to see on the front of the card, but if I wanted to I could do so with custom fields.
Not Using Butler Automation
Last but definitely not least I've perhaps saved the best one and that has to do with not taking advantage of automation.
For the last few years, Butler has been baked into a Trello board and if you're not using automation well you're simply just wasting time.
How often do you have a process in your Trello board where you need to move a card or create a new card and then remember to do stuff such as set the due date for a particular time in advance or assign someone or yourself or add a particular label?
Well, Butler can do this all for you.
You just set it up one time and then that automation will happen the way that you want.
Let me show you a quick example.
Let's say I've got a new card here called new idea and when I bring new idea into the task list, when I bring anything into this task list right here, I want to add the new project label and I wanna set the due date to three days out from today.
Well, watch what happens, if I drag this over here I'm not doing anything else, I suddenly have that new project label and it is now due three days from today just like I said it would but maybe I wanna add something else.
Maybe I wanna make sure whoever makes this move is also assigned to this task as well.
Let me show you how to set that up.
If we come up here to Butler, I'm gonna go over and select my rules in this case and maybe I just want to filter it by the rules that are enabled on this board.
So here's this first one that we just saw in action but let's add something to it.
I'm gonna select the edit icon which is gonna open up my Butler interface here and in this case beyond adding the label and setting the due date to three working days in advance, I also want to add members.
So I want to join the card. Whoever moves it, I want to join the card.
I get to hit that green plus button. You can see it added to the bottom of the actions here and I'm going to hit save.
At this point, we can close the Butler menu.
Now it's not going to apply it to anything that has already there. It has to apply to new things going forward.
So let's say I'm gonna call this new idea two in this case and let's drag it over and let's see if this Butler recipe works.
I drag it over into the list, label, date and perfect. I'm assigned to it as well.
So make sure you check out Butler automations so that you can take full advantage of Trello.
Now, if you'd like to get even more out of Trello be sure to check out this playlist right here and if you're looking for more tips and tricks be sure to subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel.
Thank you so much for watching and remember being productive, does it not need to be difficult, in fact, it's very simple.
