There’s a Power-up for That!

[#1]

So you’re using Trello at work, at home and to track your new DIY crafts. The family and co-workers are all on board and everything is organized, color coded and has a due date. But still, there’s something missing. Somethings you wish existed. Well just like our phones, Trello provides us with the basic. But we go to the app store to add our banking, social media and meditation apps and it enhances our phones and makes our lives much easier.

Power-ups act in the same way. It enhances your Trello board and it allows you to get past your simple, To Do - In Progress- Done columns. Power-ups are like phone apps and Atlassian add on’s, they add on to your foundation.

To enable Power-Ups go to your board menu and select “Power-Ups.” You will then be prompted to the power-ups directory. The directory provides different categories to choose from and the ability to search using keywords.

Clients often ask me if they can do this or that with Trello. My answer usually consists of “there’s a power-up for that.” Here are some of my favorite power-ups:

1. Custom Fields: Similar to adding custom fields in Jira Software, Trello also has a power-up for that. Custom fields power-up can be customized to reflect text, numbers, checkboxes, dates and more. I’ve often seen it used by users who integrate their Trello Board with Salesforce and would like to reflect the value of a proposal for a potential client. Others use the date fields to display start dates, due dates, and delivery dates.
2. Projects by Placker: Similar to Portfolio for Jira and Gantt chart for Jira Software, Project by Placket provides you with the tools to plan, track and report cards on multiple boards. The small details may be too much information to show during a meeting, so I like using a projects by placker dashboard to show the progress our team has made.
3. Butler: Similar to conditions, triggers and validators in Jira Software, Butler automates your Trello board with rules which saves you from doing a lot of manual work. After using your board for some time, Butler provides you with recommendations based on your activity. One of the many rules I use is “create a new card with the title “Submit timesheet” in the list “to do”, and set it to Friday at 5:00 PM.

The list of awesome power-ups goes on and on. And if there’s something out there you’re looking for and can’t quite find, head to the Atlassian Community for help from the community experts.

[Stephanie Alexis]

This is a good power-ups overview. Thanks Mary! My favorite power-ups are Calendar, Read Me (allows you to write and display a description of the board, which I think should be built into Trello by now), and Slack.