Prevent people from 🤬ing up your Trello boards with these roles and board controls!

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Ever work really hard on your Trello boards and someone (they always have the best of intentions) messes up something by moving a card in the wrong place, archiving a list, or even joining boards where they're not wanted needed? 🤦‍♀️

I get asked a lot of questions about controlling access and roles and preventing people from changing things in Trello. While Trello was designed to be a collaborative platform allowing everyone to interact freely together, there are some things you can do to prevent Trell-uh-ohs and control who can do what in your Trello boards. 

My latest video explains all about these features and where to find them, but if you prefer the written version, keep reading below. 

Set a user to an Observer role

If you want people to view content on your boards but unable to edit anything, then you can set a board member to an Observer, which will only allow them to view cards and add comments. No archving cards, moving them around, creating new lists, or even adding information on cards!

This is a Trello Premium feature, so if you're using free Trello you'd need to upgrade to use this. If you don't want to upgrade, you could just make your board public and then send the link to the board to whomever you want to view the content. Don't add them to the board, and they won't be able to edit. Since it's a public link though, they can still see the content.

Create fields only specified members can view or edit 

The Amazing Field's Power-Up has a really nifty feature allowing you to create custom fields and specify who can view them and who can edit them. You can set it by role on the board (for instance, maybe you want everyone to view but only admins to edit), or you can specify individual board members to have viewing powers and other members for editing powers. 

Advanced permission board settings

A lot of people don't know about this, but Trello actually has a special section where you can control a few more permissions on your board. 

Click the three dots in the top right corner of any board and choose Settings. 

You'll see a few additional options for controlling who can: 

• comment on cards
• invite people to your board
• join and edit your board (you can make a board workspace visible, but prevent people in your workspace from actually joining your board and editing it with this setting)

So what do you think? Are these options helpful? Are there other things you wish you could prevent people from doing in your Trello boards? Sometimes you can use automation to help with that! Let me know in the comments.