Cannot Add Cards in Trello Macro

Question

I used the Trello macro to embed a board in one of our Confluence pages, and this article here says I should be able to do anything in this embedded Trello board that I can do on the Trello site. However, I am unable to add cards.

Also, how do I limit who can change/edit cards? I would like only the board admin to be able to do that, even though anyone should be able to add one or change their own.

Charisma Riley_exj4sv · Answer

Another question, though: Can I make a board private and still bring it into Confluence? These are private discussions we want to have on these cards about business development.

When I make the board "private" or "team-visible", not even I can load the board in Confluence and see it. I get an error message that it must be a private board and cannot be displayed. This is a problem because it means that even if everyone who is going to be interacting with the board has a Trello account, Confluence will not recognize that they are allowed to view it or interact with it.

Then, if I add a specific card via a link or the Trello Card Macro, the result is also odd. It embed the card beautifully, but then it takes me to the Trello site to work with it. This wouldn't be so bad, except that it has forgotten in that new browser window that I am already logged in in another tab and claims to have no idea who I am. I know this because there is no ability to interact with the card via this method; it can only be viewed.

So, my general understanding so far is this: basically, unless a group or individual wants everyone and their mother to be able to see all of their tasks and entire workflow, including Google search per this Atlassian help article, they have no way of working in Confluence with their boards and cards. Alternatively, there is also no true way to do so, even if the board is public.

All of this concerns me because: a) I would think that products by the same developer would work together at a user-recognition level, especially when the company is claiming integration and full interaction is possible, and b) because who in their right mind wants everyone knowing their work-based activities? And is COnfluence used by private citizens in their own homes? Unlikely. So basically there is no way to get these products to actually be safe or interactive with Confluence Cloud.

Interesting. I suppose that answers my questions, then. I will be looking for an alternative solution. Thank you for your help.

UPDATE: After more fooling around with the two apps together, I now see that users can "log in" to the board when they see the grey screen saying it's not available. The login link is shown. When I logged in this way, I had full functionality of the board, including adding/removing cards, etc. Because of this, Trello in Confluence may actually continue to be an option for us.

Charisma Riley_exj4sv · Answer

Hi, @Mike, I am the creator and owner of the board I am trying to pull into Confluence. I can do everything I would expect to be able to through Trello; I am *not*, however, able to create cards, edit cards, etc. via import from the Trello macro.

UPDATE: Because the board was public, I was able to import it, but could not interact with it because Trello did not know who I was--even though I was logged into Confluence. However, when I made the board private and viewed the board in the page, I got the message that i needed to login into Trello from the link provided in the embedded area. Once logged in, I could work with the cards as I normally would. Basically, I would need each employee who is authorized to contribute to that board via Confluence be able to log in through these Confluence portals and then they could work with the information inside. Is that correct?

Mike_kuzrt1 · Answer

Hi Charisma,

Are you a member of that particular board? Put another way, if you visit that same board on trello.com (not through Confluence), are you able to add cards there? You need to be a member of the board in order to add or edit cards, so you can either be added to the board or join it yourself: https://help.trello.com/article/717-adding-people-to-a-board

As for restricting editing cards, there's not a dedicated way of doing that—any member of the board can add or edit any card. So, like your scenario above, you can restrict who can do those actions by ensuring that only people you want to be able to edit are members of the board, and you can then turn off the option to allow team members to join the boards themselves: https://help.trello.com/article/791-changing-permissions-on-a-board

This would prevent anyone not a member of the board from editing the board at all, unfortunately. There's not a way to prevent someone from editing other cards, while still being able to add or edit their own.