My biggest beef with Trello is lack of multiple account support. For example if you use it in your home life (as their blog greatly encourages), and also want it for work (as their business model greatly encourages) then you'll want distinct accounts. Without distinct accounts, you get a mixing of the data, permissions, where it is accessed from, notifications, email sent by them, makes board admin harder etc.
While you can try some hacky alternatives in a browser, they are a pain, confusing and a poor workaround. On mobile you are completely screwed, unless you want to log out and log back in each time you want to switch accounts. (You do have a long cryptic passphrase which makes this even worse?)
Google has shown for years how to get multiple accounts right. Why does no one seem to learn? (Yes, Dropbox I am looking at you too.)
> Google has shown for years how to get multiple accounts right.
I really hope that was a joke on your part. If there is one thing that was irritating it was how google would mix up and connect various accounts at random for no particular reason.
Chrome profiles are the right tool for this. Just have a separate profile for work and for home. This has the added benefit of making it easy to stay logged out of time-wasting sites while at work.
While people chastise Google's multiple account issues, I would say at least Google has such a thing up to some minimally viable level of quality.
I'd also add to the list of grievances that Trello has yet to have a multi-select / multi-edit feature, something I see has been asked for over 3 years ago.
Google doesn't get multiple accounts exactly right across app boundaries. For example, the links to view a Google Groups discussion is completely broken when you're in gmail on a non-primary account (it attempts to load the link with your primary account, which won't have access, and switching to your secondary account drops the link to the group).
I love Trello and use it all the time, but since we're beefing about it, I've got two main issues to share:
1. The search is awful. I won't really elaborate on this except to say it's often really hard to find stuff and if they did some UX research on this I think it could be much improved.
2. I intentionally avoid opening the notifications pane except in certain moments because opening it clears the "read" status of the notifications therein. This is an issue, because I haven't necessarily read or dealt with the notification. Therefore, I only open the notifications pane when I'm in a spot where I can feasibly deal with or record every single important notification that it's going to show me, otherwise, there's the risk that the notification will go unread (in the true, real-life sense) and thus be missed entirely.
All that said, bravo Trello, you're a great product.
Chrome's multiple profile support can be a big help here if you're that determined to separate things. Set up a profile for personal stuff, and one for work stuff, and then you can have both accounts logged in at once.
I find the Google account switcher - whilst not perfect (not being able to change the "Default" account is annoying), better than many other web services.
However, one thing I've found helpful - Chrome's inbuilt account switcher.
You can access this by clicking on the button in the top-right - basically, you can be signed into multiple Google accounts, one per Chrome window - and they will each have their own cookies, tabs etc.
Can't you easily accomplish this using their teams feature? I just set up a team and add the appropriate users with the right permissions for the team's boards.
What? That is so backwards from my experience that I'm tempted to think it's a troll, or I'm completely missing what you're trying to say.
I have two Trello accounts and have never had a problem switching between them. I have one for work and another for personal stuff, just like you suggest, and it works fantastic. If I'm logged in to one and want to check the other I just log out, enter the credentials for the other account and it works exactly like I would expect. There's no mixing at all, they're completely distinct, which is exactly how I want it, and exactly how it should be, IMO.
Google, on the other hand, is an absolute mess. At this point I've resigned myself to the fact that my work Gmail/Google+/Google/YouTube account and my personal Gmail are inextricably linked together and there's no way I can unlink them. It's such a disaster that it was a big factor in my decision to start moving my personal accounts away from Google.
Trello: if you'd let me buy you once, install you locally, and save my data locally and in an open format, like Day One, I'd be a lifer. Fantastic program otherwise, though I remain an Org man.
I had a similar concern with Trello. There are a few decent open source self-hosted alternatives. In the end I settled on Kanboard. It has a lot more features than Trello and a decent (although recently launched) plugin ecosystem.
Business Class-only is a bit frustrating (if it needs to be paid, can it be on Trello Gold too?), but this is really exciting. Would love to see if people start to develop tools for productivity (like Pomodoro and that sort of thing) with it.
I think Trello is going to win the task management wars. It's better designed for mobile (card interfaces), simple to start with additional functionality bundled in, its interface is general purpose rather than specific to developers, and it's building a robust platform. I think this company has executed it very well. Bravo.
One thing that surprises me is that Trello's cards don't behave like cards, whether on iOS or Android. They simply look like cards. You don't swipe them to do anything. You don't multi-select the cards.
They're just card-looking buttons that open up a modal dialogue, and they've been this way since the beginning. I find it rather slow or bulky compared to Google's concept of cards.
It also has a head start over the competitors. This might sound like not a big deal, but it has already some very vocal supporters in the blogosphere who've been recommending it for ages.
The only way it can fuck up is if it goes the Evernote way
I've always wanted to like Trello, but i'm never sure quite how or what to use it for. It doesn't work well for me for project management, since you can't create tasks with due dates or assignees. I'm not sure how folks get around that.
It's not a project management tool anymore than it is a bug tracker or a crm or an applicant tracking system. People use Trello for all of those things but at its core, it is just a list of lists.
The power comes from understanding how that metaphor can help provide structure to some process that you have. (Trello comes from "trellis" - a structure to help plants grow).
Check out trello.com/inspiration for some examples. It's a bit like explaining to someone what a spreadsheet is before they have seen one and why they would use one. Once you grok it, it's very powerful.
The way I do it, if a checklist gets heavy enough that I need to start assigning ownership for each item with a due date, that means the checklist needs to be broken out into cards. There's a one click feature for this so it's very quick to accomplish.
I think of Trello these days like an orchard of ideas. I plant a few idea seeds by rapidly sketching out cards, and some will grow checklists as I copy paste bullets from notes etc. As the checklist items grow in complexity, they fall off the tree and are planted, and so on..
If you're a PMP used to Gantt charts and such, I'm sure that system sounds like some hippy dippy BS, but it works very well on a small scale with a small, mixed-discipline team.
It's more of a to-do list on steroids than a project management tool. I also tried to fit it in my workflow, because I like what they are doing, but ultimately decided it wasn't for me. I think it's okay if it doesn't work for you, not every tool is for everyone. Asana for example takes a different approach to the "to-do list on steroids" idea that may work better for some, but neither approach is better or worse than the other in my opinion, when it comes to services like these what works and what doesn't is a very subjective thing.
Why do power-ups inconsistently change the markdown for Github links?
When you don't have power-ups enabled, it will shorten all Github links and add a nicer format to certain types but when you do have the power-ups, it no longer shortens Github links at all but adds the octocat to the beginning.
While having power-ups can be nice, the added inconsistency is a bit off-putting. It would be great to shorten and format all of the links in the same fashion across all boards regardless of whether or not you have power-ups enabled on that particular board.
What is nice about the Trello is that, they have never for once confined themselves to developer community. From the beginning Trello was given as tool to organize yourself, and it still appeals to my wife as it does appeal to me.
The new Power-Ups platform would definitely add more dimensions to trello.
rogerbinns|10 years ago
While you can try some hacky alternatives in a browser, they are a pain, confusing and a poor workaround. On mobile you are completely screwed, unless you want to log out and log back in each time you want to switch accounts. (You do have a long cryptic passphrase which makes this even worse?)
Google has shown for years how to get multiple accounts right. Why does no one seem to learn? (Yes, Dropbox I am looking at you too.)
jacquesm|10 years ago
I really hope that was a joke on your part. If there is one thing that was irritating it was how google would mix up and connect various accounts at random for no particular reason.
moultano|10 years ago
threatofrain|10 years ago
I'd also add to the list of grievances that Trello has yet to have a multi-select / multi-edit feature, something I see has been asked for over 3 years ago.
ThrustVectoring|10 years ago
adriand|10 years ago
1. The search is awful. I won't really elaborate on this except to say it's often really hard to find stuff and if they did some UX research on this I think it could be much improved.
2. I intentionally avoid opening the notifications pane except in certain moments because opening it clears the "read" status of the notifications therein. This is an issue, because I haven't necessarily read or dealt with the notification. Therefore, I only open the notifications pane when I'm in a spot where I can feasibly deal with or record every single important notification that it's going to show me, otherwise, there's the risk that the notification will go unread (in the true, real-life sense) and thus be missed entirely.
All that said, bravo Trello, you're a great product.
jon-wood|10 years ago
victorhooi|10 years ago
However, one thing I've found helpful - Chrome's inbuilt account switcher.
You can access this by clicking on the button in the top-right - basically, you can be signed into multiple Google accounts, one per Chrome window - and they will each have their own cookies, tabs etc.
So it's a good way of keeping things segregated.
isaiahg|10 years ago
realusername|10 years ago
jamesfzhang|10 years ago
jimmaswell|10 years ago
victorp13|10 years ago
There are a great number of workarounds for your 'problem'.
jlarocco|10 years ago
I have two Trello accounts and have never had a problem switching between them. I have one for work and another for personal stuff, just like you suggest, and it works fantastic. If I'm logged in to one and want to check the other I just log out, enter the credentials for the other account and it works exactly like I would expect. There's no mixing at all, they're completely distinct, which is exactly how I want it, and exactly how it should be, IMO.
Google, on the other hand, is an absolute mess. At this point I've resigned myself to the fact that my work Gmail/Google+/Google/YouTube account and my personal Gmail are inextricably linked together and there's no way I can unlink them. It's such a disaster that it was a big factor in my decision to start moving my personal accounts away from Google.
mhp|10 years ago
But I think the more interesting link for the HN crowd is this one:
How to build a Trello powerup: https://developers.trello.com/power-ups/samples
Sample github repo: https://github.com/trello/power-up-template
sideproject|10 years ago
http://blog.fogcreek.com/the-trello-tech-stack/
but that post is about 3 years old, so I wonder how they changed over the years....
jay_kyburz|10 years ago
gglitch|10 years ago
phillc73|10 years ago
http://kanboard.net
smt88|10 years ago
bluedino|10 years ago
http://stackexchange.com/about/team
bshimmin|10 years ago
timrpeterson|10 years ago
markbao|10 years ago
Angostura|10 years ago
zamland|10 years ago
threatofrain|10 years ago
They're just card-looking buttons that open up a modal dialogue, and they've been this way since the beginning. I find it rather slow or bulky compared to Google's concept of cards.
puranjay|10 years ago
The only way it can fuck up is if it goes the Evernote way
dabernathy89|10 years ago
edit: I was thinking of checklists, not cards.
mhp|10 years ago
It's not a project management tool anymore than it is a bug tracker or a crm or an applicant tracking system. People use Trello for all of those things but at its core, it is just a list of lists.
The power comes from understanding how that metaphor can help provide structure to some process that you have. (Trello comes from "trellis" - a structure to help plants grow).
Check out trello.com/inspiration for some examples. It's a bit like explaining to someone what a spreadsheet is before they have seen one and why they would use one. Once you grok it, it's very powerful.
rwhitman|10 years ago
I think of Trello these days like an orchard of ideas. I plant a few idea seeds by rapidly sketching out cards, and some will grow checklists as I copy paste bullets from notes etc. As the checklist items grow in complexity, they fall off the tree and are planted, and so on..
If you're a PMP used to Gantt charts and such, I'm sure that system sounds like some hippy dippy BS, but it works very well on a small scale with a small, mixed-discipline team.
hk__2|10 years ago
You can do both.
Mahn|10 years ago
RhodesianHunter|10 years ago
lmcnish14|10 years ago
When you don't have power-ups enabled, it will shorten all Github links and add a nicer format to certain types but when you do have the power-ups, it no longer shortens Github links at all but adds the octocat to the beginning.
While having power-ups can be nice, the added inconsistency is a bit off-putting. It would be great to shorten and format all of the links in the same fashion across all boards regardless of whether or not you have power-ups enabled on that particular board.
benchmark6|10 years ago
flardinois|10 years ago
philfrasty|10 years ago
edgyswingset|10 years ago
leuma|10 years ago
The new Power-Ups platform would definitely add more dimensions to trello.
im1983|10 years ago
yazriel|10 years ago
It is so under powered. They been at it for years and still no decent SEARCH, no proper sub-tasks or dependencies, etc.
To me, it feels like there is no real active development on this.
mkuhn|10 years ago