How can I limit board members to internal staff only?

Question

We are having a problem in our organization that employees are adding the wrong people to boards.  They will type, "jane smith" and pick the first jane smith available even though I've told them to use the full email multiple times.  We tried to put our pictures in our profiles, but they are so small it's hard to differentiate who is who in them so we switched back to initials.  Is there a setting to limit who we can add to a trello board?

Thanks!

Ann Sobczak · Answer

Totally missed this.  Thanks!  Sending it to my IT guy to see if this is a viable solution.

Iain Dooley · Answer

@Ann Sobczak well, a couple of things:

1) I created a free, open source library for quickly and easily automating Trello with Google Apps Script called Trellinator. Trellinator runs as a "bot" user, so if everyone has their own board, instead of them being the admin you could make Trellinator the only admin on the board then create a directory board just like you want. What I'm thinking is that you would have a Directory board where every person's individual board is represented by a card, linked to that board. In order to invite a member to your board, you go to that directory board and add a member to your board's card. The directory board is then restricted in admin rights so only admins can invite people to that board.

The following Trellinator command would make that happen:

https://gist.github.com/iaindooley/ee173ef91d4f761ae307859c072ac2c8

Obviously you could also automate the bit that links a member board to a card when a new card is created and even use this directory board to create and manage members' boards automatically. You can see more about Trellinator here:

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Marketplace-Apps-articles/Introducing-Trellinator-Automate-Trello-with-Google-Apps-Script/ba-p/925271

2) If you want to get a really good picture of everyone's workload, and you're using G-Suite, you might like this plugin I wrote which allows you to use Trello as a Gmail client and puts a linked copy of any card you're added to into the same spot:

https://trello.com/integrations/#/benkoboard

The objective is to create a single place where absolutely everything each person is accountable for resides. Benko Board is written in Trellinator, so even though you can use them independently, they play nicely together.

Ann Sobczak · Answer

Thanks, unfortunately, this won't work as management has asked each employee to create a board of their current workload and as the employees add team members, they are not doing a great job of grabbing the right person.  I'd love a way to make a directory of allowed users.

I appreciate the time you took to answer my question.