Best practices for using a Trello board
10 min
Beginner
By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to:
- Work quickly with keyboard shortcuts
- Sort Trello lists
- Copy existing boards, lists, cards, and checklists
- Search for keywords in boards
- Use other views to explore your ideas
Use keyboard shortcuts to move quickly
Trello lets you speed things up by using keyboard shortcuts to move around and take action in a board. Press Shift and the ? key to see the full list of keyboard shortcuts.
👇 Click the boxes below to explore some of the keyboard shortcuts you can use.
Sort cards the way you want
You can place cards in any order in a list, or sort them by due date, created date, or card name. To sort a list, select More actions (represented by •••) on the list, select Sort by, then select a sort option.
👇 Here's how to sort a list.
Copy items to save time
You can copy any part of your Trello board and paste it into another board, or make a copy of the whole board. This saves time when you want to use similar structures to existing boards, lists, cards, and checklists.
👇 Click the tabs below to see how to copy each item.
To copy a board:
- In the upper-right corner of the board, select More actions (•••).
- Select Copy board.
- Name the board, select a workspace, and set the visibility.
- Choose if you want to copy cards and template cards.
- Click Create.
Search for what you need
To find exactly the information you need, you can use the search feature. At the top of each board is a search bar where you can use keywords to search for boards, lists, and cards. As you start typing, Trello shows search results from any Trello workspaces you have access to as well as other Atlassian products linked to your account like Confluence and Jira.
Use views to visualize your work
Each project is unique and viewing it from different angles can help you gain perspective on your work and highlight the information that is most useful to you in the moment. Beyond using the board itself, Trello views allow you to visualize and manage your work in different ways, such as viewing your work as a timeline, table, calendar, and more.
You can use the views switcher at the top of the board to select a view; selecting multiple views will open each one in a separate tab, allowing you to toggle between them with a single click.
👇Choose a view from the product switcher at the top of your board.
👇Click the tabs below to learn about the different views in Trello.
What is the Table view?
The Table view allows you to see cards from multiple Trello boards across your Workspace.
When would you use this view?
👉 Use this view when you want to coordinate tasks or ideas from multiple boards.
What can you do from this view?
- Filter table content by lists, labels, members, and due dates.
- Create and edit cards directly from the table view
Try it yourself
Open Trello and follow along.
👇 Click the tabs below and follow the instructions to practice what you’ve learned in this lesson.
Open a Trello board and create a list named To do.
Duplicate the list by clicking More actions (•••) and selecting Copy list.
Name the new list and select Create list.
Let's review!
Review these questions and see if you understood the key concepts in this lesson:
- How could keyboard shortcuts improve your efficiency working in Trello?
- Why would it be better to copy an existing checklist rather than just create a new one?
How was this lesson?
next lesson
Set your notifications in Trello
- Watch your most important items
- When does Trello notify you?
- Try it yourself
- Let's review!