Trello is a fantastic productivity app that’s popular for several reasons. It’s easy to use, highly visual, and aligns teams around tasks, projects, and long-term goals so that everybody knows and understands their tasks as well as those of their team.
Trello’s mobile functionality makes it easy for remote teams to connect, collaborate, and contribute. You can add as many team members as you need to each project and track everyone’s progress in real-time as things get done.
Probably best of all, the interface is visually attractive and user-friendly, removing barriers to adoption for just about anybody—in other words, you don’t have to be a tech genius to get a lot out of Trello, and that’s always a bonus. Plus, if you don’t require multiple Power-Ups (their terminology for third-party integrations and premium features), you can get quite a lot out of the free version.
However, as with all technology solutions, a tool is only useful when applied as intended. Gardening with a hammer isn’t especially productive. The wrong use case is a common culprit for many Trello issues.
What’s Your Use Case?
While there aren’t many ongoing issues or roadblocks with Trello, it’s not uncommon for organizations to jump on board before they fully understand the value proposition, and herein lies the root of many Trello issues.
In other words, the most commonly reported “issues” are not technical, per se, but more a case of misunderstanding the software’s purpose at the outset.
Trello’s greatest advantage is its simplicity. It’s perfect for project management, event planning, to-do lists, and organizing communication around tasks. Depending on the integrations you apply, you can integrate it with just about any existing workflow, but you need to resist the temptation to go completely overboard with it. If you play to Trello’s strengths—a real-time workflow visualization tool for teams—you’ll get more out of it than if you try to use it to replace everything else in your productivity stack.
Common Trello Issues
Trello is a visual Kanban tool that helps you mobilize teams around projects. You’ll organize tasks and milestones into three categories—“to do,” “in progress,” and “completed.” Think of Trello like an online whiteboard covered with stickie notes. It works because it’s easy to use and understand. So to get the most out of Trello, you need to keep that idea front and center, as that’s where most Trello issues stem from.
Here are three examples of the most common Trello issues:
Treating Trello as a Parking Lot for all Your Ideas
Trello’s functionality is in tracking progress on projects in motion. If you use it as your to-do list, you might as well be using pen and paper. If you want to derive maximum value from Trello, use it as it’s intended: for project management, tracking real-time workflows, and uniting your teams around a task.
We’re not pooh-poohing open brainstorming here. To keep things organized, try creating a separate board for ideas, so team members have a dedicated place to suggest new ideas and see what others have suggested. Your team’s “Idea Board” could have many lists, including inspiration, new ideas, questions that need answering, puzzles you have yet to solve – the possibilities (and cards!) are endless. Being mindful of the purpose of each board will help your team solve these Trello issues.
Overloading Your Cards
Putting too much information into one card might do the opposite of what you hope to accomplish. Use individual cards for each task to ensure the intent is clear and the result is attainable. For example, if you use a single card for a large detailed project or event, you’ll have no easy way of marking certain tasks within that project as done. If you break up projects into smaller deadlines and priorities, each card is actionable with a clear purpose.
Prioritizing Too Generally
It’s essential to prioritize projects and tasks, and Trello allows you to do this exceptionally well. But if you have several functional teams, not all of them will have the same priorities. If you categorize strictly based on priority, some teams won’t see what’s most important to them. In best practice, use the tagging functions to organize first by function and then by priority. Specific, actionable priorities go a long way towards solving that Trello issue.
Is Trello Down?
We trust third-party applications to deliver value and keep our businesses moving. If a productivity solution isn’t working as it should, it creates delays, frustration, and missed opportunities. If Trello goes down, your team’s productivity does too.
Trello data is also vulnerable to a variety of threats. With more collaboration amongst teammates, opportunities for errors also increase. From malware to simple misunderstandings, once data is deleted in Trello, it’s gone forever. If Trello data is corrupted or compromised in any way, you need to fix the problem fast—and Rewind Backups helps you do just that.
The truth is, half of all SaaS users have lost data in the cloud. Rewind Backups for Trello provides a continuous backup of your data, allowing you to restore it quickly, including all cards, lists, boards, actions, and attachments, plus all the third-party connections they rely on. It’s an assurance to you and your team that “nothing is broken forever”.
