Am I overthinking the card listing behaviors in my profile?

[J.C. Schaumleffel]

Hello...I'm new to Trello and really liking it so far.  

One of my main issues right now is wrapping my head around how to get a list of all my cards (across all boards) with due dates.  I have a handful of personal boards and then created a "team" with more boards for my farm (wanted it separated from the personal boards for clarity sake).  

At first, I understood I had to subscribe to a particular board, card, team and so on to be able to see it under "cards" in my profile.  Well, that didn't seem to work.  So then I learned that I had to be a "member" of that card in order to see it in card list in my profile.  

Here's my issue...I am the only one using this.  I don't have anyone else involved with day to day projects for personal or farm related items.  I'm not understanding why I can't have full viewing/listing/management control of a board, card, or team when I'm the one that created it without be a member of something that again, I created.  It seems to me that the owner should just get carte blanche being the creator/owner without having to go through the process of subscribing and/or being a member.  Please clarify. 

Also, what other differences are there in subscribing to a board/card/team versus being a member?  Again, I'm a little turned around on this.  

As a side note...I bought into Cronofy for the Google Calendar options.  Found the whole subscribe/member thing to be an issue there also.  

Any help on clearing this up would be very much appreciated. 

[Alice · Accepted solution]

I mostly use Trello solo and I took the habit to always assign myself a card once I add the due date, you can even automate it using Butler that can automatically assign cards to yourself when you add due dates (or removing you from a card when you complete it). It might sound silly at first, but it would look a bit crazy having all the cards of all your boards in the Cards page in my opinion.

Assigning a card to yourself allows you to see it in your Cards page, as you mentioned, while subscribing to a card or a whole board allows you to be notified when another user makes a change to a card, list or board in Trello. So, if you are the only one using a board, subscribing wouldn't be useful. You can read more about it here.

I'm currently using the Trello Connector by Cronofy, what kind of issues are you experiencing?

[J.C. Schaumleffel]

Thanks for your reply Alice...I appreciate your time.  Sorry if my original post seemed pointed...didn't mean for it to come off that strong.  That was "midnight frustration" at work!

Your info clarified what I've loosely figured out over the last few days.  I'm realizing that Trello is very team oriented and being a solo user requires some tweaks to adjust some features.  The Butler power up is great!  Thank you for that suggestion and for clarifying the subscriber vs. member features.  

As to Cronofy, I think my issue was related to making cards with due dates visible in Google Calendar.  I've since worked my way through this issue and it is working perfectly.  If I remember correctly, it had to do with the "member" concept that I was slow to grasp.  

All in all...it has been refreshing to move over to Trello.  The wider visual interface is very engaging in all aspects of planning/managing projects.  

One last question for you Alice...since you are mostly a solo Trello user, do you have any other tips, tricks, or suggestions that may not seem obvious to a beginner solo user?

Thanks again and take care!

[Alice]

Glad you found my comment useful and don't worry :)

Butler works also as a Power-Up, but a nice trick I learned is to add the Butler Bot as an additional user to my board instead and save the Power-Up option for other things since I have a free account (that allows you only one Power-Up per board).

I'm glad you managed to get Cronofy working! I think it's a great tool and, if assigning cards to yourself is still not a thing for you, you could set Cronofy to show all the cards with a due date on your calendar. It's a nice way to use it if you don't share the board with other team mates.

A couple of things I do as a solo user is to deactivate the comments (Menu - More - Settings - Commenting Permissions) and hide the Activity log (just click Hide Details) this way the cards look cleaner to me. If I have to add some info or brainstorm additional stuff, I would add it to the description box rather than a comment and seeing the activity log isn't useful for me since I'm the only one doing stuff!

Finally, if you end up having a bunch of boards and you'd like to organize them, I would recommend to create Teams. It doens't matter if it's just you, it's a nice way to group boards, you can create a team for work related boards, personal ones, and so on. I even created a team to save interesting template boards that I find around.

Hope it helps!

[J.C. Schaumleffel]

Thanks for those suggestions Alice!  I was wondering about the the commenting and activity log as they do clutter things some.  I will definitely adjust that. 

Great call of the Butler Bot...works great!

Yes on the teams...that was a must to keep different entities from cluttering each other. 

The more I dig in...the more I like it!  Thanks for all of your help...have a great rest of your weekend!

[Alice]

I'm so glad you're enjoying Trello even more! Feel free to write again if you have any question. :)

Happy Monday!