Can I get a Trello recap?
Also make sure you're ready to say adios to the old description editor!
Happy Thursday! It’s another beautiful day in the Trello world. I guess? I dunno. Do we like these cheesy platitudes I start with, or should I just jump right in?
In This Edition
✅ Where do I keep my “done” cards?
📲 Add a card in Trello with one click on iPhone
🌇 Get ready to say goodbye to the Old Editor
🌮 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.
Is there a way to get a summarized report of all the cards you had on a board over the course of a year? I want an overview of all the projects we worked on this year without having to dig through archives manually.
~ Data DorkDear Data Dork (wow, I loved that alliteration),
So, as with every question I’ve received, there are several ways to answer it. So I’ll go through a few different options.
I tend to structure my boards so that there is some “Done” list somewhere that catches everything I’ve done in a period (like a year). It could be in my main working board (but rarely is— I love a clean “Done” list). It could be on another board entirely.
Regardless of where it is, you can use Automation to make it easy to get cards there when you want them. Whether it’s a button on a card that is whisked away when it’s completed or a calendar rule like “Every Saturday at 10pm, take all the cards in “Done” and move to “Task” in “Completed” board.” (I once got very carried away with this and wrote some rules that stored the original list name from my backlog board, so that when I moved to my Completed Board, it moved to a list with that name so I could group my completed tasks by category. You can see the gist of how I set that up, but just let me know if you need a TLDR.)
There are also 3rd party tools and power-ups that will help you analyze those done tasks if you’re interested in REALLY diving into the data, like the average time it took you to complete a task, what lists they spent the most time in, labels of tasks that were completed, etc. I’ve been exploring these lately: Screenful, Placker, and Blue Cat Reports. I plan to write more about them soon. Still wrapping my head around when to use what and the key differences between them.
Oh, and one more thing—although it won’t show you specific cards, the Annual Report Power-Up will give you a quick recap of everything that happened in your Trello board in the last year! Think Spotify Wrapped… but make it Trello.
Want to submit your question? Maybe it’ll be featured next week!
🙋 Britt’s Pick
If you’re an Apple user, have you used Apple Shortcuts yet? You can create some awesome automation, including rules with Trello. I use Shortcuts to quickly add something to my shopping list or my brain inbox.
I have a button on my phone’s home screen that looks like an app, but when I click it, a text input appears, and I add an item that turns into a new Trello card on the board I configured!
Admittedly, that’s about all I’ve done with it, but you can do all sorts of things. I’ve been digging Jeff Su’s newsletter lately, which led me to explore his YouTube channel, where he shares practical productivity and automation tips… like this.
What do you think? Are you automating anything with Apple Shortcuts that I should add to my list?
🗞 New(s) And Upcoming
🌇 Trello will be sunsetting the Old Editor soon, so you won’t be able to disable the new editor in your lab settings. No exact date, but make sure you’re prepared! If you’re having any issues with the New Editor (also known as the WYSIWYG editor), post in the Atlassian Community, as the Trello team has been more active there lately, answering questions about anything that isn’t working right!
Did you notice it was Trello week last week at PixieBrix? Check out all the Trello mods I made. You can activate them and start using them to set relative due dates in Trello, see confetti when you check off items in your checklist and add a card to Trello from any webpage.
🛟 How To and FAQs
💡 Use Case Idea
As part of my new role at PixieBrix, I will be helping with some technical writing— meaning I’ll be cleaning up and contributing to our docs there! I’m super excited about it, but there’s a lot to do and only so much time in the week. I’ve gotten in a pretty good cadence of dropping things into my Brain Inbox but then sorting things out into different boards based on my multiple areas of work. Of course, I have one dedicated to product documentation with lists going from …
Ideas (Here’s a topic we should create or update docs for)
Prioritized (Let’s put out energy here next)
In Progress (I’m writing!!)
In Review (Review with engineers to make sure everything I said is technically true)
Ready to Publish (Everyone is happy with it!)
Published (Moved to the correct folder in Notion so that it’s hosted on our public-facing docs)
Simple Kanban board, but with specific stages dedicated to content. I could put this in my standard sprint board with To Do, Doing, and Done. But I’ve started using multiple boards lately because I’m working with many different folks, so having everything on a single board didn’t make as much sense.
Stay tuned for future episodes where I explain how I’m combining all the boards…. still working out my ideal workflows there, and you know I’ll share.
That’s all for this week! Don’t forget to submit your questions for Dear Taco; I’ll feature it soon!