How to use trello to make managing projects a breeze
3 ways to manage multiple Trello boards without the chaos
Trello is without a doubt one of the best project management apps you can use to track several moving pieces of a project. It’s easy to use and flexible enough for you to visualize your workload however you want using Kanban boards, lists, and cards. Whether you’re a freelancer or an employee, keeping track of one Trello board is a breeze. Managing two or more is another story.
The Kanban methodology that Trello was built on is indeed an effective approach for anyone overseeing one project at a time. When you find yourself running several Trello projects simultaneously, that’s where things start to get a little tricky.
If you run an agency that’s starting to scale, for example, you’ll need to have the bandwidth to take on more projects and in turn, hire more people on your team. Without an efficient way of connecting the dots, it’s hard to see the big picture of what you need to accomplish.
Although Trello’s cross-board functionality leaves much to be desired, it doesn’t mean there aren’t any options you can turn to. In this article, we’re going to explore how to manage multiple projects in Trello so that you can set your workflow up for maximum productivity.
When you’re just starting out, you might want to have one board where you capture all your to-do items and another board where you keep track of everything you’re actively working on.
The first board is where you do much of your brainstorming. List all your ideas without thinking about due dates, labels, and other details so that you can take action on them at a later time. You can choose to keep them all in one list or create multiple lists for different categories.
When it’s time to work on a task, simply move it to the second board and add important details. While viewing your In Progress board, you can stay focused on what’s urgent and important without having to think about all the other tasks that don’t require your immediate attention.
One common use case for Trello boards is planning your weekly meals. You can have one board where you capture any interesting recipes you find.
At the start of each week, just move each card to a Weekly Meal Plan board where you can easily view what you need to prepare ahead of time.
Seasoned travelers of the 20th century know the deal.
The familiar feeling of “FOMO” setting in as a new, trendy travel destination makes its way onto your Instagram feed. After some online searches and, somehow, a few long hours, you become lost in a digital black hole consisting of itineraries, flights deals, car rentals, and hotels.
After banging your head on the keyboard enough times to induce a logistical headache, your need for a vacation has multiplied by the same number of tulips that exist in Holland (FYI — it’s an estimated 5 million).
Then, in comes Skyscanner ✈️🙌 — an app favored by jetsetters across the globe. This Scotland-based, deal-finding, travel app does all the heavy lifting of flight tracking, so travelers can indulge in a concept that for many, seems the most foreign of all — relaxation. 😱
Where To Next? A Travel Inspired Template
Your Pinterest board says Greece. Your mother-in-law says Iceland. Your wallet says hey, let’s not rush into this. With Skyscanner’s Where To Next? Travel Inspiration Trello Board, you can collaborate on vacation planning while your wallet remains intact 💸
With this Trello board, you can easily explore and organize tropical beach options, foodie-lover cities, and bring your friends and family along with you for the ride.
The board offers a space to collaborate with your group on both the broader elements of trip planning, such as where you should go, as well as the more practical pieces such as dates, costs, and the specifics of your pre-trip checklist.
Power-Up In Order To Mentally Power-Off
Horizon-broadening Trello users can enjoy the best of both worlds — an app that lets you find the best deals on flights, hotels, and car rentals, and an organized space to plan it all.
What could be better? An integration of the two, you say? That’s why Skyscanner is available as a Power-Up and enabled on this template board.
As you plan your sun-soaked vacation on Trello, Skyscanner will pull in pricing tips based on your unique sets of criteria — directly to your board!
Simply enter your desired destination, and other information such as budget and preferred airports, and voila! (French riviera, anyone?) Your Trello cards are now oozing with adventure, fun — and amazingly, no headaches.
To enable the Travel Planner By Skyscanner Power-Up on your board:
✅ Click ‘Power-Ups’ in the board menu
✅ Search for Skyscanner
Then, on whichever cards are dedicated to managing flights, click the Skyscanner Power-Up button on the card and enter your criteria. You’ll see an always up-to-date widget appear on the card to help you make the smartest possible flight-purchasing decisions.
Multi-Destination Planning Tool
Even the most experienced travelers can run into a few crossroads when planning trips with multiple destinations. There are border crossings, currency calculations, and not to mention the confusing restaurant menus — which resulted in that time in 2015 when you unknowingly ate fried crickets. surprisingly delicious! 🙈
With Skyscanner’s Multi-Destination Planning Board, you can break your itinerary up into easy-to-manage lists, organized by location.
With the Accommodations list, you can store the addresses, contact information, and any other details of your hotel (or Airbnb!) bookings. There’s even a packing list and a list dedicated to those perfectly Instagrammable sites that your friends can’t miss out on.
Next Stop: Anywhere
From zipping up your suitcase to the wheels touching down, your travel anxieties and logistics can be handled by Skyscanner with its magical time and money-saving ways. 🌎
After you’ve made one of these templates your own.
Take a look at the hundreds of other ready-to-use boards in our Trello community template gallery.
Good or bad, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Find us on Twitter ( @trello )!
Seasoned travelers of the 20th century know the deal.
The familiar feeling of “FOMO” setting in as a new, trendy travel destination makes its way onto your Instagram feed. After some online searches and, somehow, a few long hours, you become lost in a digital black hole consisting of itineraries, flights deals, car rentals, and hotels.
After banging your head on the keyboard enough times to induce a logistical headache, your need for a vacation has multiplied by the same number of tulips that exist in Holland (FYI — it’s an estimated 5 million).
Then, in comes Skyscanner ✈️🙌 — an app favored by jetsetters across the globe. This Scotland-based, deal-finding, travel app does all the heavy lifting of flight tracking, so travelers can indulge in a concept that for many, seems the most foreign of all — relaxation. 😱
Where To Next? A Travel Inspired Template
Your Pinterest board says Greece. Your mother-in-law says Iceland. Your wallet says hey, let’s not rush into this. With Skyscanner’s Where To Next? Travel Inspiration Trello Board, you can collaborate on vacation planning while your wallet remains intact 💸
With this Trello board, you can easily explore and organize tropical beach options, foodie-lover cities, and bring your friends and family along with you for the ride.
The board offers a space to collaborate with your group on both the broader elements of trip planning, such as where you should go, as well as the more practical pieces such as dates, costs, and the specifics of your pre-trip checklist.
Power-Up In Order To Mentally Power-Off
Horizon-broadening Trello users can enjoy the best of both worlds — an app that lets you find the best deals on flights, hotels, and car rentals, and an organized space to plan it all.
What could be better? An integration of the two, you say? That’s why Skyscanner is available as a Power-Up and enabled on this template board.
As you plan your sun-soaked vacation on Trello, Skyscanner will pull in pricing tips based on your unique sets of criteria — directly to your board!
Simply enter your desired destination, and other information such as budget and preferred airports, and voila! (French riviera, anyone?) Your Trello cards are now oozing with adventure, fun — and amazingly, no headaches.
To enable the Travel Planner By Skyscanner Power-Up on your board:
✅ Click ‘Power-Ups’ in the board menu
✅ Search for Skyscanner
Then, on whichever cards are dedicated to managing flights, click the Skyscanner Power-Up button on the card and enter your criteria. You’ll see an always up-to-date widget appear on the card to help you make the smartest possible flight-purchasing decisions.
Multi-Destination Planning Tool
Even the most experienced travelers can run into a few crossroads when planning trips with multiple destinations. There are border crossings, currency calculations, and not to mention the confusing restaurant menus — which resulted in that time in 2015 when you unknowingly ate fried crickets. surprisingly delicious! 🙈
With Skyscanner’s Multi-Destination Planning Board, you can break your itinerary up into easy-to-manage lists, organized by location.
With the Accommodations list, you can store the addresses, contact information, and any other details of your hotel (or Airbnb!) bookings. There’s even a packing list and a list dedicated to those perfectly Instagrammable sites that your friends can’t miss out on.
Next Stop: Anywhere
From zipping up your suitcase to the wheels touching down, your travel anxieties and logistics can be handled by Skyscanner with its magical time and money-saving ways. 🌎
After you’ve made one of these templates your own.
Take a look at the hundreds of other ready-to-use boards in our Trello community template gallery.
Good or bad, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Find us on Twitter ( @trello )!
As a freelance web designer who’s been developing websites for over 7 years, it can be very easy to lose track of time and become unorganized if I don’t utilized some sort of tool to keep me on my toes. I pride myself on the fact that I provide my clients a level of customer service that they can’t easily find everywhere. So it’s essential for me to make certain I am managing my time so that I can reasonably get big client projects completed and breeze thru smaller client tasks that i’ve been assigned. I’m a very visual person, so it’s imperative I have an interface to manage clients that allows me flexibility and useful tools. In this article, I’m going to show you how I instantly saved hours of my own time by utilizing the Trello project management system.
In the past, I’ve used tools such as Gmail’s To-Do list via Canvas (Google), my built in iMac’s Reminders App and Google Keep. But all of these had a ton of limitations and because of that, I would sometimes be reluctant to use it and revert back to…dum dum dum….my memory 😕
When i tried and failed to use gmail to-do as a project management solution.
Recently I came up with an easier solution to keep track and manage my everyday tasks for clients. I designed a system that worked perfectly for my small business, a freelance web designer & developer. No matter what business you are in, I’m certain you will find my system useful for your own company and can use the same theories I use myself, customized for your own use! The following video will visually explain all the awesome features I can utilize with Trello. Trello is an online project management system that is available to use for free! With Trello, some of my favorite features are it’s drag and drop system, to-do lists, ability to add other contractors/employee’s to a project and color label cards.
One of the big things I don’t mention in this video is that Trello has an app you can download from the Google Play or the Apps Marketplace, making it easy for you to check client projects on the go.
Trello wrote a couple very useful blog posts that show you how you can extend your project management with Trello in over 15+ ways with Chrome Extensions. Here is another huge list of resources provided by the trello team. The uses for trello are vast and flexible to any business or project you might be managing. If your business is put together by contractor’s/employees that happen to all work remotely, Time Doctor has put together a really nice tutorial show you how to use trello to manage your remote teams.
For bigger client projects such as new websites and website redesign, I like to use Basecamp. Basecamp is a project portal that allows my clients to be able to upload all website content, photos, documents and instructions/requirements. We can hold discussions here and everything is documented and timestamped. There are to-do lists we can add too. Everyone knows what they should be doing or what the current status is of the project. Clients have their own access to their portal and managers have full access to hide documents from clients (for example: note taking that might be confusing to clients and is unnecessary to display to them). Here is a video I show my clients so they can understand how we will be utilizing basecamp to manage their projects.
Now mind you, this is just how I manage my day to day tasks and make sure that client communication is at it’s most optimal pace. I also utilize awesome tools such as Fusion Invoice for Client Invoicing which I’ve been a loyal and happy customer for over 7 years. As far as support & emails, I like to use Help Scout.
I hope that by visually showing you how I manage my own clients, you are able to save yourself hours of time on your own projects. Please leave a comment. I’d be happy to hear about solutions you find useful for yourself and if I was able to help you in anyway by showing you this custom management solution I’ve designed.
There are an enormous number of tools out there to help your daily project management, but of all of them, Trello has been my best choice for a successful Agile task tracking. Free, adaptive and offers real-time collaboration, Trello is a no-brainer choice when in comes to select a Tool to manage a new project.
Trello, however, having no boundaries regarding as HOW you integrated it in your daily workflow, can also easily become a complete mayhem.
After a long period of trial and error I found a few best practices to apply when starting a new project with Trello and Scrum.
If you are already comfortable with Scrum you can skip this part and go directly to the Best-Practices and tips.
I’ve always been fascinated by productivity and project management. Ironically, I spend way too much time researching the best methodologies to achieve the best results on the projects I’m currently working on. A few years ago I understood that there will never be the perfect way to plan efficiently. Planning for me is guessing. The best practice 99% of the times is just getting to work. But since there is no harm in guessing, we might as well “guess” with a method.
The key factor for successful project management is Agility. Agility is defined as the power of moving and adapting easily, with the ability to quickly think and draw conclusions.
The Agile Manifesto
Agile software development is a group of software development methods based on iterative and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams. It promotes adaptive planning, evolutionary development and delivery, a time-boxed iterative approach, and encourages rapid and flexible response to change. It is a conceptual framework that promotes foreseen tight interactions throughout the development cycle.
The Agile Manifesto was written by a group of 17 software developers in the interest of making development better and more effective. It states: We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation. Responding to change over following a plan.
What is Scrum?
Scrum is an iterative and incremental Agile software development framework for managing software projects and product or application development. Its focus is on “a flexible, holistic product development strategy where a development team works as a unit to reach a common goal” as opposed to a “traditional, sequential approach”. Scrum enables the creation of self-organizing teams by encouraging co-location of all team members, and verbal communication among all team members and disciplines in the project. A key principle of Scrum is its recognition that during a project the customers can change their minds about what they want and need (often called requirements churn), and that unpredicted challenges cannot be easily addressed in a traditional predictive or planned manner. As such, Scrum adopts an empirical approach—accepting that the problem cannot be fully understood or defined, focusing instead on maximizing the team’s ability to deliver quickly and respond to emerging requirements.
To have an overview of the Agile (with the Scrum framework) development process and its key benefits you can download for FREE a Quick-Start Guide provided by Civic Actions or gather further information visiting the Scrum Alliance website ().
What is Trello?
Trello is a collaboration tool that organizes your projects into boards. In one glance, Trello tells you what’s being worked on, who’s working on what, and where something is in a process. For further detail you can visit Trello’s Getting Started Guide.
When starting a new project on Trello I use the following template to integrate efficiently Scrum:
Reference/Resources: We all have those files that need to be fetched often. An Invoice template, a scanned document, etc. Important resources added to this list will be accessible with a click.
Sprint Backlog: list of tasks that must be completed during the Scrum sprint.
Blocked: An external impediment is where a dependency exists outside of the team, and the team are unable to progress an item until work outside of their control is done.
In progress: Add in this list what is currently being done.
QA: The Scrum Master will assign this list to all completed MVP’s. Ready to be tested for quality assurance.
Bug Report: During QA bugs might rise. Use this list to track down all the problems before moving the MVP’s to done.
Done: All MVP’s that pass QA can be archived here.
Creating a course for your business?
Then you’re managing a major project with lots of moving parts.
I have a piece of advice that will save your sanity and make your project go MUCH smoother — and then I have a software recommendation that goes with the advice.
So first: The best way to set yourself up for success (in ANY project) is to DECIDE WHAT TO TRACK on your to-do list. This may seem obvious, but I see this mistake happening frequently.
Let’s say we have a 6 week course, with 6 main modules or lessons. What you DON’T want to do is create a list like this:
And that’s because it’s utterly of no help. The unit that we’re tracking is too big.
Think of what goes into creating a single lesson module: research, an outline, a 1st draft, a final draft, finding images, and so on. You need to keep track of things at a lower level – a finer granularity – in order for it to be helpful to you.
Why?
– As business owners, we tend to have small pockets of time to work on our projects, and although we DREAM of having large chunks of time to devote to a task to bring it from start to finish in a single session – that probably doesn’t happen all too often.
So we need to have a method to mark our progress point, so when we return to it, we can pick up right where we left off, and we don’t have the spend the time reacquainting ourselves with what’s done and what’s left to do.
– We batch things. Batching is the time- and sanity-saver of small business owners. Doing a bunch of like-tasks together, all at once. Some days you’re into writing, somedays – when the words refuse to come out your fingertips – you’d rather organize, edit, research, or go troll the interwebs for images. It all needs to get done, so why not have your task choices sync up with what’s working for you that day. When you break projects into these smaller tasks, batching work together can be obvious and easy.
Given that, here’s a better list:
Ok, now we’re tracking tasks at a level that makes sense. Great.
However! I don’t know about you, but that looking at that list makes me die a little inside (especially since this is even just a small portion of the six-module list!) Sure it’s organized and specific. But, we can make this even more user-friendly.
Enter Trello.
Trello (trello.com) organizes itself differently and that difference is amazing. I recorded a quick video to explain how Trello’s features can make managing a project – with lots of moving parts – a total breeze.
(Can’t view the video? Click to watch it here on YouTube.)
Let me know what you think in the comments below. Do you use Trello? Do you have a tip to share? Leave it below.
For my advice & recommendations for managing all the content creation for your course, click here for my article on using Evernote.
Thanks for this! You’re the 2nd one this week to mention Trello but I hadn’t looked into it yet to see what it’s all about. Question: my biz partner and I currently use Google Drive for collaboration and shared content creation. Would Trello be a means of complimenting this, or would we use this instead of The Drive? Is it more about keeping track of projects (and in our case, who’s doing what), or can it also be used for creating the actual content? Thanks Karen!
I’d use both of them together: Trello manages the tasks & the projects, and Drive is where you actually HAVE the content, edit, collaborate on drafts, etc. Trello wouldn’t replace the work you do on Drive. Trello can track comments, and can even count “votes” from a team, but it’s not the place to create & revise content.
Trello lets you attach files from Drive right to the back of the task-card (and keeps a history of those attachments in chrono order). That gives you an automatic revision history – which is really handy!
Trello’s free, so you can take it for a spin and see if it’s for you.
Great question – thanks for asking, & good luck!
Thanks for clarifying all of that. Makes sense! Will give it a whirl 🙂
Karen – thanks for this! I’ve been looking for something like this and you are the first person to mention it 🙂 You’ve made my night!
Well! How about that?! I think there will need to be more Trello posts in my future! 🙂
This is great. I’ve never used Trello, instead being confined to MS Project. While that can still be useful for mulit disciplinary teams for extensive tracking, I really appreciate the creativity that Trello can inspire. Thanks Karen!
Ah..another possible Project convert. Less = more (more or less). C’mon in, the post-Microsoft water is warm! 🙂
This is really helpful. I’m already using Trello, but I had it divided in to writing, videos, worksheets, with checklists on the back of each card with the different parts to accomplish. Your way is much better to actually see things progress and how the different aspects are weighted. I’m off to reorganize now! Thanks!
Yay! Glad to hear it!
Great article. I’ve been going back-and-forth with Asana and Trello. But I can’t seem to get away from Kanban methodology, as it’s a visual magnet to me for personal productivity. ‘Love the video too, btw.
Finally! Some one who can make sense out of Trello. I’ve been struggling with a structure that works for course creation. This is stunningly simple and deep. Thank you Karen!
One of the biggest pain points for those planning events is managing all of your event to-dos in one place. In the old days, Type-A event planners would resort to an Excel spreadsheet, or a wall filled with Post-it Notes ordered chronologically.
The problem with using Excel or other methods of managing your to-do list to plan a professional event is that these tools don’t give event organizers the needed visibility to get things done while keeping the big picture in mind. These tools also don’t support in-platform communication, meaning that organizers waste time sending email or arranging logistics meetings instead of getting real work done.
At Bizzabo we’ve worked with over 6,000 clients who use our event management software to plan events. A common theme among those who are extremely successful is that they are willing to incorporate new powerful tools into their event planning toolbox to get things done more efficiently.
Trello is one of those tools that organizers should add; here’s how to setup an effective event planning board on Trello.
Step 1: Break Down Your Event In Phases
Planning a successful professional event is no small task. Typically it involves a number of different parties working together to get things done. By breaking down your event into phases, you’ll have a better understanding of what your busy periods will be so that you can plan your time and your staff’s time accordingly.
To do this, we created three event phases (pre, during, and post event) and used separate Trello lists to visualize each phase. We also created an accompanying “completed” list for each phase to get a better sense of productivity during a given time period.
Step 2: Invite Trello Team Members And Add Tasks
Rather than setting up a meeting to brainstorm all of the to-dos related to planning your event, you can simply invite team members to your Trello board and encourage them to add cards to the appropriate lists you’ve created.
Be sure to ask your team members to label and assign a due date to each card so that you can better understand what needs to be done with a simple glance at the Trello board.
In the board pictured above, the three labels we’re using are “Marketing,” “Staffing/Management,” and “Event Logistics.” For things like activating a PPC ad campaign we use the “Marketing” label, or things like recruiting event volunteers we use “Staffing/Management,” and for things like handing out swag pages to keynote speakers we use the “Event Logistics” label.
Once your team has added all of their tasks to the board, it’s time to take a step back and see if you can condense cards into mini-projects.
In the image below, you can see that we created a checklist for the card related to recruiting event volunteers. That’s because other members of our team added specific action items related to volunteer recruiting – to make things easier we just created a single card with a multi-step checklist inside of it to track our progress.
When you’re adding cards, it’s also a good idea to attach visuals to cards where appropriate. If event organizers want to remember to follow up with a specific event venue without forgetting what the venue looked like, they can simply attach an image of the venue to the card:
Step 3: Commit To Using Trello Throughout Your Event
Regardless of how wonderful a tool is, it will only be as effective as the extent it’s used. Be sure to commit to giving Trello a try for the entire lifecycle of one event to be able to really see if it’s a good solution for you and your team.
One way that Trello can help everyone to be more efficient is with the in card commenting feature. Rather than sending emails to other staff members about action items, organizers can simply message one another within a given card. That way if questions arise about what the status of a project is, anyone can simply open the card to see the conversation that happened.
The best event planners aren’t afraid to try new pieces of technology to get more done in less time. Trello is exactly the kind of tool that organizers should consider trying to do just that.
To get started, simply add your team to a new Trello board, segment your events into phases, add the needed tasks to Trello and commit to using the tool.
In most cases, Trello will reduce the time you and your team spend worrying about what needs to get done, so that everyone can focus on dragging cards into your “completed” list instead.
Good or bad, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Find us on Twitter ( @trello )!
Few things are as much of a pain as having to keep track of your projects. While most big companies or large projects use things like Microsoft Project there are easier (and less expensive) ways to manage work projects that are on the smaller side.
One of the best free online solutions you’ll find is Trello. It’s one of the most intuitive project management solutions out there. Trello is cloud-based and allows you to manage work projects without having to download anything.
This is especially useful since it turns out that 93% of people surveyed say that working remotely makes them more productive. In this article, I’m going to go over the basics of Trello and mention a few of the useful features too.
Table of Contents
Getting Started With Trello
The first thing that you have to do is register a Trello account. That’s pretty easy, just head over to Trello.com and sign up. Once you’ve completed the registration, just log in and we can start with the first step in every Trello project.
Getting Board
At the first screen you see after logging in, you want to create a new “board”, which is the basic organing principle of Trello. Each project or each major component of a larger project will have its own board. So go ahead and click “create new board”.
Now you can name your board and decide whether it will be private or not. For now, it’s probably better just to name it and leave everything else as is.
The Nice List
Admittedly, there’s not much to look at on your board at first. To the right, you’ll see a column labeled “menu”. Ignore that for now. We care about the left of the board where it says “Add a list”.
If you click on this you get to give a name to the first list of your board. Before you do that, let me explain what the point of a list is.
Most projects have phases or steps. For example, if you are a writer and create articles for a publication, the article may go through several stages of development. Generally, each list represents a specific phase.
Stage Theory
For our purposes, we’ll just name these lists “step 1”, “step 2” and so on.
Just imagine that each list is an important phase in your project. What use are empty lists?
One important feature of a list can be accessed by clicking the three little dots at the top right of a list. Here you can click on “subscribe” to get notified about everything that happens on that list.
Let’s go over the meat of Trello: cards.
Pick a Card
The card is the component of a Trello board where the most action happens. To create a new card, just click “add a card” in the relevant list. Type the name of the card and click “add”.
When you manage a work project there’s usually a few people involved and cards are where you’ll be able to add additional members. There’s much more than that to cards, however.
Card Features
Each card represents a task that has to go through the various phases of your project. To make sure that everyone on your team knows what that task is, you can put a detailed description right at the top of the card when you have it open.
Each card also has a full and independent comment system where team members can discuss it.Each comment can have its own attachment, you can mention team members by name and even link other cards.
You’ll also notice that there’s an activity log for each card so that you can always know who did what on that card. It’s all automatically saved.
Advanced Card-Fu
There’s even more you can do with your Trello card. For one thing, you can subscribe to it exactly the same way you do to a list. Every time someone comments or otherwise modifies the card you’ll be notified.
Other really useful things include adding a checklist to the job card or a due date. This helps team members and you keep track of the status of each task.
You can also attach files and links to Google Docs by clicking the “attachment” button. Possibly the most important feature is the ability to add other people to a card so that they know what cards they are responsible for. Just click “members” to do this.
What’s on the Menu?
Another feature that really helps to manage work projects is the main activity log. You’ll find it to the right of all your lists on the board. You can hide it by clicking the little “x” at the top right of the menu.
This is also the place where you can add members to that board and change the background color.
Manage Work Projects On the Go
One of the things that are really great about Trello is that the experience of using the website is pretty much the same as using it on a smartphone or tablet.
Using it on an iPad feels very intuitive and makes keeping tabs on a project while on the go an absolute breeze. Almost everything said here about the main web version also applies to the mobile version.
Free for All
While Trello does have a paid tier, all the important functions that are actually related to productivity are free for everyone to use. You can do more cosmetic changes with the paid version of Trello, but at no time will you feel limited by sticking with the free service.
Manage Work Projects Like a Pro
Trello can have a transformative effect on how productive you and your team are. Working with people who may be scattered all over the world goes from a huge hassle to being easy as pie.
With Trello boards, eveyone in the team can collaborate and assign projects to other members without letting them forget anything about their task(s) as it also sends email updates when someone adds a note in the project thread. Depending on how big your team is (and how many ideas you have), you may (or may not) need different boards to log every idea.
The tablet and smartphone support are really great too, it makes you wonder if you even need a laptop.Don’t forget that you can also link to Google Docs such as Forms from Trello, to make a really powerful combo.
If you like to manage work projects you probably want to know how to add a second screen to your PC with a tablet. Even gamers can get more organized now!
Organizing your workday can be very tricky. Whether you belong to a big or small enterprise, getting through the gamut of workday tasks will always have its challenges.
With the popularity of remote work gaining a strong foothold in today’s “new normal,” managing your workload while making sure that everyone stays connected and on top of things has become twice as hard.
It can be a bear trying to get everyone on the same page. Too many tasks, meetings and collaboration, new information coming in daily, new employees joining, old ones leaving, trying to preserve and update knowledge within the company — how do you not get lost in the chaos?
Luckily, there are tools out there geared towards organizing your work and helping you run your workday more efficiently. There are hundreds of them floating around the interwebs and you can get lost in the chaotic list of organizational tools, ironically enough. So how do you choose the right one for you?
Choosing the right tool
First, you will need to take stock of what you have and what you need . What kind of service are you looking for? Are the tools you found equipped with the features you need in your organization? Compile a list of possible apps that might be useful for you.
Second, once you’ve compiled a list of possible organizational tools that you might use, consider their ability to address all the things that you need them to do for you. If you can find just one tool to do all the organizational tasks you need to be done, then why get two or three separate tools to do what one platform can do?
Third, read up on the reviews. You’ll need to hear what actual clients have to say about the tools you are considering. Feedback is a key component to an informed decision ; and once you’ve picked the tool/s you need, return the favor and write an honest and constructive review.
Fourth, test them out. You really won’t know if the tool will work the way you envisioned it if you don’t try it out. Go through your picklist and take the tools for a test drive. Put them through the tasks you need them to run and see how well they hold up or how fast and efficiently they can accomplish those tasks for you.
So now that you have the initial steps in choosing the perfect organizational tool for you, let’s delve into our list of tools (our absolute top favorites!) that we think might just be what you need.
The Best Organizational Tools for Work
Trello
Let’s start our list with Trello . This is a project management and organizational tool that uses task cards and project boards. This tool allows you to write down your daily tasks into virtual cards, assign due dates, and add attachments. You can invite your team and assign tasks to them, as well.
Their project boards allow you to put your visualizations into an organized platform where you can monitor your project’s progress. You can collaborate with your team regardless of where each of you is based. It is very easy to use, and best of all, Trello syncs across all your devices.
Slab
As their headline says, Slab is a “knowledge base that democratizes knowledge.” It’s a nifty tool that lets you create, store, and organize your data. It also integrates well with your existing tools, so there would be no need to replace your stack and relay new instructions to team members.
Its Unified Search feature allows you to pull any needed data from any of your existing tools. Sweet, right? This shaves off time trying to remember which tool has what data. Another useful feature is Slab Topics, which not only organizes data into folders and tags, but also provides relevant context for easier browsing, learning, and transferring of knowledge within the company.
It also offers dozens of templates from industry leaders to get you inspired and give you ideas一so whether it’s onboarding new employees, documenting weekly team meetings, or creating user manuals, Slab has an extensive library of templates designed for your organizational needs.
And a bonus: it’s easy enough to use that creating and organizing can be done even by the least savvy members in your organization.
ProjectManager . com
If you manage large and diverse teams, you might want to consider ProjectManager.com . This award-winning tool has over a thousand integrations including Microsoft Office, Salesforce, Dropbox, Slack, and Google Apps.
It has Gantt charts , kanban boards, and task lists. They have project management software, planning tools, and project dashboards among other things.
You can collaborate and plan projects with your team quickly and easily. It works on both PC and Mac and doesn’t need any downloads or complex installations.
Box
Box is one of the most secure cloud storage services available today. You can choose with whom you want to share your files. You can store all your confidential business information into the Box Drive and rest easy that it will remain secure.
It is also integrated into Mac Finder and Windows Explorer so you can use it in both Windows PC and Mac. You can edit any file, even CAD, in your browser and it will automatically be saved to Box.
The app itself takes up little disk space. It allows sharing large files without having to download anything. You can just share the link to your files with your team. It doesn’t bog down your systems with large downloads, and it allows for easy and real-time collaboration within your team.
Microsoft OneNote
If your company has a subscription to Office 365, you most likely have access to Microsoft OneNote , a great and secure collaboration tool that organizations can utilize in project management, process improvement, and daily operations.
OneNote is ideal for managing projects with members in multiple locations as the tool allows real-time correspondence and feedback.
A feature called SharePoint allows teams to create their own “wiki” and organize and store large amounts of information in one place, making streamlining ideas and resources easier for everyone.
Conclusion
No matter how busy you get or how chaotic your workdays seem to become, there is always a tool, or several, out there that can help you keep your tasks and schedules organized.
These things are there to make your work a lot easier, your collaborations more fun, and your team engaged no matter where each of you is based. All you need to do is find the right tools that will work for you.
