🥂 New year, new Trello trips!
Plus new newsletters sections!
Happy New Year! (I think we are legally obligated to say that in every greeting until the 7th of January?)
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been relaxing, reviewing 2023, and planning for some awesomeness in 2024. I won’t bore you with everything I’ve got planned, but I will give you a heads-up that this newsletter is getting some improvements!
Here’s what you’ll find each week
Not much is changing, just some re-organization and some new sections! Note that not every week’s edition will have all of these elements, and some of these will be only available to my premium subscribers!
🌮 Dear Taco (answer to a reader-submitted question)
🗞️ News, updates, and links (things you need to know to stay on top of Trello)
🛎️ Trello Tip of the Week (bite-sized tip to improve your day-to-day Trello-ing)
💡 Use Case Idea (something you can use Trello for!)
💪 Featured Power-Up (a Power-Up to automate or improve your boards)
📢 Shoutouts (shoutouts to premium subscribers with links and info to share!)
⚡ [PREMIUM] Automation Tip of the Week (an automation you might want and a walk through of how to set it up!)
💯 [PREMIUM] Rate my Trello setup (submit your Trello board and I’ll rate it and tell you anything I might change or improve!)
🌮 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.
You’ve got so many tricks for Trello, wonder if you have one for this issue. I like connecting Trello due dates to my Google Calendar, but don’t like it setting an actual time of day. Is there any way to have a date only in the Due Date for a Trello card without a time of day?
~ Calendar ConundrumDear Calendar Conundrum,
You’re not the first (or the last) to wish there was a way to interact with due dates outside of their specific time. I didn’t know an answer for this off the top of I’ve my head, but I’ve explored a couple options.
From what I can tell, it looks like this might be possible with Unito, but you’d need to set the start date as well and not just the due date. But if you are doing that, then I think Unito would automatically make each card an all day event for you! (Read more about their Google Calendar integration.)
If you use the Planyway Power-Up, you can sync your Trello cards to Google Calendar. You’ll have to be on the Business Plan, which is $6 a month (discounted to $4/mo if you get it for a year). But when you do that, you’ll be able to click the Planyway button on your board and view cards in a calendar view, then click them and choose the “Remove time” button below the date to clear the due time.
And you’ll see your Google Calendar immediately update to show the card as a whole day thing, rather than applied to a specific time.
I assume that’s probably not the fix you were looking for, as you’ve still got to go in and remove the time for each card.
The only other thing that I can think of creating something with Zapier that when a new card is added in Trello, Zapier creates a Google Calendar all day event with that date. Like this:
You might also want to consider using Trello Views to view your cards plotted on in a calendar view. Of course this won’t include your items from Google Calendar, so it just depends what you’re looking for.
Want to submit your question? Maybe it’ll be featured next week!
🗞 New(s) and Links
This section is getting a bit of a revamp! It will include links I’ve found across the web about Trello how-to, plus any new updates or announcements that I’ve collected!
Trello Blog is Moving
Starting off the year with some big news! Break out the Uhaul cause the Trello blog is moving!
I know a lot of folks might be concerned about this kind of move and think it means no more Trello content. While I can’t guarantee the future, I do think this is probably a continuation of the direction I’ve seen Trello and Atlassian going the last couple years… highlighting the power of the products together rather than as a standalone product.
You’ve probably seen a lot of posts about Trello + Confluence, or Trello and Jira Work Management. And this is intentional on the Atlassian part as they want you to use multiple tools, and I can only assume they’re still trying to figure out where Trello fits into everything.
My advice? Don’t panic about the lack of Trello content on the blog. If you’ve noticed, it’s been a little sparse lately with new Trello specific content anyways, and perhaps it’s even a reason you’ve found yourself in this corner of the internet where I spend time every week trying to find the newest and best in Trello and sharing it with you all.
If you or someone you know is looking for more Trello content in their life, subscribe to this newsletter and my YouTube channel and get prepared for more Trello content than you may be able to handle 😂
🛎️ Trello Tip of the Week
This is a new section! I’m going to share a super simple and quick Trello tip. It might be a keyboard shortcut, it might be a hidden feature, or it might just be an idea. But it will help you with your day-to-day Trello activities!
Here’s this week’s to kick things off:
When you have a card open, press the left or right arrow keys on your keyboard to go to the previous or next card.
💡 Use Case Idea
Collections!
A friend from the Trello community I met (online) many, many years ago used Trello to keep track of her fountain pen collection. If you’re collecting something, you might want to keep track of it in Trello!
No matter what you collect, keeping it organized in your Trello board can help you digitally find what you need without having to always have your physical collection with you.
I’m still working on getting my partner to move from her spreadsheets to Trello for keeping track of her record collection :)
As for me, I like collecting products. That sounds weird, but this is my board where I collect different products that I want to play with, try out and store any notes about them in case people are like “hey do you know a product that reads my brain?”
Special shoutout to my premium sponsors!
Thanks to:
Mike Day -
🎉 New Website 🎉Trello Consulting done differently
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Email in Trello
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The following content is only available for Premium Subscribers, but for this first week I’m gonna share it with everyone so you can get a taste of what’s coming in this section.
Want to make sure you see this content after this week? Go to your substack settings and upgrade to a monthly or annual subscription!
⚡ Automation Tip of the Week
I’m trying to improve my skills with syncing cards and checklist items, and I think I might have found a way with my annual planning board.
I’ve got a couple of cards that represent each of my main goals for the year. Inside those cards, I’ve got a checklist (with the theme of the goal), and I’ve created this automation rule that when I add an item to that checklist, it will create a new card in the same list with the name of that checklist item, and link those together.
Why would I want to link them together? Because you can perform even more automation with that!! You’ll have to come back next week to see how I use that to check off an item in the list when the card is moved to “Done”. 😬
💯 Rate my Trello setup
I’m introducing a new special section for my premium subscribers!!
I know a lot of folks don’t necessarily want a whole hour of consulting with me, they’d just love an extra set of eyes on the boards they use every day to see if there’s anything a Trello power user would do differently.
So starting today, I’m giving you the opportunity to submit your Trello boards so I can rate them and share what I’d do differently and how I might further optimize your boards.
I’ll feature one a week (assuming we get enough folks share their boards!), and you can submit as many boards as you like!
All you’ll need to do is tell me a bit about your board’s purpose, and either share a public link or screenshots of your board, and I’ll share my review and hopefully inspire you and others for more ways to improve your Trello boards.
That’s all for this week folks! Let me know what you think of the new-ish format and these additional sections!
Funny thnig about the Trello blog being moved into Worklife. It seems that the Trello LinkedIn account has gone gangbusters this past week. So many posts out of nowhere. Maybe trying to compensate?