What is Trello and Why Should I Care?
Trello is one of my daily go to tools and my companion for anything that needs to be organized. Trello makes organizing and planning with lists and tasks extremely simple and has a great visual flow. I use Trello to organize my “to do” lists as well as for my content calendar and planning.
What Is Trello?
Trello is a web based collaboration tool that organizes your projects into boards. Boards are like projects to topics and you can create as many as you like. For instance, I have created boards for things I need to do around the house, content creation, networking and learning and self-improvement. Within boards there are lists and cards that can add granular details to your boards. You can add comments, task lists, attach files and collaborate with others on shared boars. You can move items around to different boards by just clicking and dragging which makes it an ideal solution for projects.
How Does it Work?
As mentioned above, Trello is packed with a lot of options but there are 3 things that everything is made of that will never change. They are boards, lists and cards. These 3 things must be in place to use Trello. I will use the example of redesigning a website to show you how this works.
Boards
A board represents a project, in this case the title of the board would be ‘Website Redesign’. This is where we will store all of our information about the project.
Lists
Lists are the columns or silos of various stages or elements of a project. For our website redesign example, I will have lists for content, vendors, seo, graphics, as well as a list for completed items. This will provide the overview for the entire project.
Cards
The fundamental unit of a board is a card. These are the actual tasks of a project. On our content lists we may have a card for our ‘About Us’ page. For our seo list we may have a list for current website audit or keyword research.
Within cards you can add even more functionality including multiple checklists, add comments, vote on ideas, assign a due date, add attachments and use labels. Collaborators can subscribe to certain cards that are pertinent to their job function so they can get alerts about the latest changes. You can also mention specific members so that they can get a notification that you have added them to a card. There is no limit to the amount of cards you can add to a board
Currently, you can use Trello on these browsers:
- Chrome – Current stable release
- Safari – Version 6.0 or higher
- Firefox – Current stable release
- Internet Explorer – Version 10.0 or higher
- iOS – Version 7.0 or higher
- Android – Version 4.0 or higher with Google Play
- Kindle Fire HD – 2nd Generation or higher
Why Should I Use it?
This is the perfect tool for visual people and gives you a high level view of any project. The collaboration piece is ridiculously easy and there can be many chefs in the kitchen while still staying organized. You can add members from within your organization and even link it to your Google Apps domain. The availability of being able to use in on your desktop, tablet or phone makes it a huge plus as well. This way you always have your projects with you
What’s the catch?
According to their website, Trello is free forever. They may add pay-only features in the future, but they promise that ‘everything that’s free today will be free tomorrow and forever’.
However, if you use Trello and realize just how awesome it is, you can also learn more about Trello Gold, and Trello Business Class which are their paid options. If you are using this for your organization you can use it for free but you may want to invest in the business class option especially considering how affordable it is. in case you start using Trello for free and realize just how awesome it is and you decide to take it up a notch with a paid plan. I will cover these in a later post.
Other Resources
Trello also has a smartphone app for both Android and iOS devices. You can read more about Trello and get ideas for boards at their blog.
