We’ve been using Trello for more than a year at Guiding Tech. Trello forms an integral part of our backend editorial process. It’s a great tool on its own too. But when you start managing more than a couple of tasks, you start to get lost and frustrated. Below you’ll find tips and tricks that will help you stay on top of your tasks/cards on Trello and will save you a lot of time when creating new tasks and managing them.
1. Learn the Keyboard Shortcuts
Trello’s management system is pretty complex. Even after you’ve decided you’re going to make use of the powerful features, you’ll find out that clicking around and navigating menus takes a lot of time. Doing simple things like pressing the space bar to assign the card to yourself, pressing d to open the due date menu and l to add labels will go a long way. Check out the entire list of keyboard shortcuts here.
2. Add Yourself as a Member
This is the primary way to keep track of all the tasks that you’re associated with. Doesn’t matter if it’s an active task or a big 6-month project, just add yourself to the card so you don’t lose track of it. Adding yourself as a member leads us to the next step.
3. Using the Cards View
Click on your name in the top-right corner and then select cards. This will bring up all the cards you’ve assigned to yourself, across all the boards in one screen. Of course, this will only work if you’re prompt with assigning cards to yourself (which again, is only a space bar click away).
4. Using the iOS and Android App Widgets
The Android app comes with a couple of widgets – the biggest one shows all the tasks that you’ve assigned to yourself across any board. You’ll also find widgets for quickly creating a Trello card. On iOS, things are a bit different. There’s a Notification Center widget, but it doesn’t show any of the cards you’ve joined. Instead, you get shortcuts for creating a new cards based on text, picture, or clipboards. You also get a list of the three most recently used boards.
5. Add an Additional Layer of Interaction with Labels
Avid Trello users must be familiar with columns and how easy it is to add them. While they are great, too many columns might end up cluttering your whole task management. So for trivial stuff, try using labels. If columns are acting on a time-based system – to do, doing, done, labels can signify properties about the task or further breakdown in the process.
6. Integrate Trello with Your Sunrise Calendar
Sunrise Calendar is free and awesome. If you aren’t using it, you should give it a serious look. One of the best things about Sunrise is how easily it integrates with other productivity services like Trello and Wunderlist. One of the big problems I have is that Trello doesn’t have a global calendar. They seem to be limited to a board. I’m active in more than half a dozen boards and if I want to know about all the different tasks that are due today, there’s no simple way to do it in Trello. But it’s possible with Sunrise. Just go to the website, sign in with your Google account, connect to Trello and all the cards with due dates will show up in Sunrise after you’ve activated those particular Trello boards from the sidebar.
How Do You Use Trello?
What are your hot tips and tricks for using Trello? Share with us in the comments below. The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.
