How to Train Users or What Is Wrong with Trello?

[Nils Geylen]

Well, nothing's wrong with Trello but what strikes me since being a bit more active again lately, and what I also encounter a lot in our workflow, is this confusion users (often WS guests) seem to have over terminology (like "my board" and "my workspace") and the differences between personal and guest workspaces.

And to be honest, it took me a while too when I began using Trello.

I've talked about all the 'Home' views there are ("Boards, Workspace, Workspace Boards, Home") and have asked plenty questions about guests, members, admins.

It wasn't long ago when I was still struggling to explain the difference between a workspace guest (not a role) and a member (a lot of our users keep asking for membership access to our space, even though they have member access to the boards they need) and between board observers, members and board admins--the latter only recently fully dropping because I had forgotten all about it. That's no wonder, because it's hidden when you add someone (which by the way is not called Add but Share) and you have to go back to Share to change a member you just added to admin of a board.

You can probably tell by the frantic tone of the above, that it is a lot to parse; even though I work with it daily I still need to think when I'm asked to explain.

I just feel there's a lot of that confusion, and when I see yet another post here about "I can't find my board" I get flashbacks to the million emails I've already had from our board guests who just cannot seem to figure it out--you can't see it because I removed you, because we closed it, because it was never "your" board...

The question!

Is that me? Does no one else admin this stuff daily and not see this happen all the time? 

Sometimes I think these lockouts and MIA cases keep this place afloat, but I also wonder: is it not an indicator of maybe something amiss with how Trello is both understood and explained?

You know, I actually have a test account that I use to (not kidding!) role-play being a guest, and see what they see and yes, if you're not deeply familiar, it is a lot to take in.

Hey, not dissing here, and when we share a board to observers they're in awe of how simple it looks and how exhaustive it turns out to be. Just curious to hear stories you have, that might explain or urge the team to look into this. Who knows?

[Nils Geylen]

Funny, just reading an article about Zettelkasten and using Trello as an index card archive, and what does the expert say? "A board represents a workspace"...

:hornblare: Wrong.

I guess I liked Teams more because at least that represented the collaborative aspect of the space better.

I dunno, I can't even begin to recall how many of our guests think we've just onboarded them to our organisation and we own their account. 

Just to say. For something so simple, I'm just seeing a lot of mismatch. And investigating Confluence now, boy, does parity go out the window there. But that's for another forum.