Boost Your Efficiency with Trello's Freshest Features
Heya friends! Happy Thursday! I’ve still got the foster kitties for everyone wondering 😂 They’re getting so big! My partner and I started an instagram if you need more adorable kitten content in your life: @levislitter
In This Edition
✅ Setting up approvals in Trello
🔍 New filter options just dropped!
📅 Due date automation
🧠 Using Trello to help me calm my anxious thoughts
🌮 Dear Taco
This is a section where readers can submit their Trello questions, and each week I’ll pick one and answer it! It’s like “Dear Abby” but make it trello. Have a question you want to submit? Share it here.
I work on a graphic design team and we are going to be having a new designer join us soon, which will complicate everything, so I won't to set up some sort of approvals system. Any recommendations for the best way to set up a trello board of asks that includes approvals?Dear reader,
This was perfect timing for this question because I literally just wrote about Approvals for Trello for a chapter of my book this week!
It’s a Power-Up that does exactly what you describe. With the free version, you can add (a) required approver(s) to each card you need, and visualize the approval status from inside the card or on the card front (while you’re looking at all your cards in the board!)
There’s also a handy view that each Approver can use to see what’s waiting on them. Just click the Approvals button in the top toolbar of any board you have added the Power-Up on!
The pro version of this Power-Up unlocks more features, like the ability to add more types of approvals (so you could have a product reviewer, and a design reviewer, and a copy reviewer, etc), as well as create groups (so if you have 10 copywriters, only one of them has to review it!)
If this isn’t quite what you’re looking for or you want something a little more custom, you could either use Labels or Custom Fields to indicate when a review is required and when it’s been approved. This is probably the route I’d go if I were looking for more automations, such as an email when something needs approval, or moving a card to another list when it’s been approved.
The reason being that you can create automation rules that watch for events like “when the red Needs Approval label is added to a card” or “when a custom field Approved is checked”… then you can add actions like moving the card or sending emails or assigning members. Specifically, the labels are helpful if you’re working across multiple boards because then you can use Trello’s Workspace Table View to make a view that shows cards from all your boards that have the “Needs Approval” or “Approved” label and quickly see what needs review!
If anyone reading this is interested in that latter option, reply back or comment below and I’ll make a video showing how to set this up and customize it!
Want to submit your question? Maybe it’ll be featured next week!
🗞 New(s) And Upcoming
🔍 New filter options 🔍
Head to your Trello boards and click that filter button for a pleasant surprise!
You can now add a filter based on activity to see your most recently active cards, or cards that have been forgotten about.
As part of these changes, it seems like the Card Aging Power-Up will be deprecated. So just keep that in mind!
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🛟 How To and FAQs
Staff Picks : Trello Automation edition (some cool automation ideas in here!)
Due Date Automation - can you change a card’s name to include it’s due date? (spoiler, yes you can)
💡 Use Case Idea
I’ve jumped back into therapy recently (woohoo!) and gotten back into a habit of thought tracking. While at first I didn’t really want to use a digital tool, I just realized my anxiety doesn’t control when it goes off and doesn’t wait nicely for me to be sitting at home by a notepad or journal to jot everything down.
And even when it does, I’m trying to train my brain to ask a series of questions when i get a thought!
So of course, I created a card in Trello with all the questions in the description, so now whenever I have a thought i want to analyze and question, I have everything i need right in my hand to do it. I just copy a card and go through the description!
I even screenshare with my therapist each week and we go through things! It’s been a great way to avoid being like “hmm i dunno what to talk about this week”.
I’ve tried this before using Forms by Blue Cat to create a sort of “app” that did this on my phone. I created a form with all the questions and things to log when I had anxious thoughts, and then I saved that URL as an button on my iPhone’s Home Screen. Then whenever i had an anxious thought, I click the button, logged my thoughts, and carried on!
Special shoutout to my premium sponsors!
Thanks to:
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That’s all for this week!
Only one more chapter of my book to draft! (And… so much more to edit 😂)