Can I add more color label options to organize my cards?

[Tammi Labrecque]

One more post, then I'm done. 

From your blog discussing the redesign to use Material principles:

• The colors provided in the Material guidelines, while vibrant and playful, didn’t mesh with our brand
  • We stuck with the colors specified in our branding guide. While it might not seem like a big deal, staying on-brand really helped emphasize the Trello-ness. This will also help with consistency in the future when working on other platforms such as iOS.

LMAO. Really? You stuck with your branding rather than use colors someone else tried to impose on you, huh? WILD.

Seriously, you couldn't make this stuff up.

>> Source: https://blog.trello.com/we-are-living-in-a-material-world-and-i-am-a-material-girl

[Tammi Labrecque]

Oh, and as far as this not being a much-requested feature, this thread is the 4th most viewed thread and 1st most liked. So, not to put too fine a point on it, I don't believe you when you say no one is asking for it. 

I would suggest those of us who are interested in this feature begin emailing regularly until it changes. Forum posts are easier to ignore. 

[Pu Koh]

If they’re not going to fix your issue, then go to a competitor. Who’s forcing you to use trello?

[Reed Meyer]

Our organization is making us all migrate from Trello to Jira later this year.  So this problem will eventually no longer be a problem for me :)

Congratulations, Trello, on losing a few more customers!

[Pu Koh]

Uhhh. you know atlassian owns trello AND jira right...

You 'jumping ship' and paying them more money is the reason they're not implementing more colours.

[Reed Meyer]

LOL.  Of course Atlassian owns both.  But I doubt very much that they have the same team managing both products.

It's difficult to imagine a scenario where the Trello team looks great in moving customers over to Jira ...  unless it's what the parent company actually wants.

[Pu Koh]

I personally use Labels to indicate a status of a job, and not who it's for.  and I assume that's what the original devs built it for. 

You can already assign people to cards. If you want to use colour to differentiate cards, you can get everyone to upload a solid colour image for their profile picture, then you can choose what ever colour you want.

[Gregory Van Riper]

I personally don't think anyone here requesting this is trying to use labels for who it is assigned to. I use status and type for the job. Which makes labels very limiting. ZenHub offers a full color picker. Trello should as well.

[frsh-inc]

so...as of today i'm seeing label text on my cards when i click the label color (i've no idea how long that feature has existed); and it seems like the color-blind patterns have changed, but...oh, wait, yeah, it's still too difficult to allow for additional colors. but see, now that you can have your label text, you don't need additional colors, you silly users!

[Tammi Labrecque]

It's hilarious that they didn't consider adding text to labels as the solution for colorblindness. No, instead let's make 92-99.5% of the userbase do a workaround. Makes perfect sense. LOL

[Steven Sefton]

I originally used the labels with colours to represent a person. But we ran out of colours and then we wanted to use labels for specific tasks or the importance of tasks. 

Now, we attach members to the card and leave labels for the stage of a project, like so...

You can attache members here...

The colours can also mean a member too. My part in the project is Planning and Content so when I see these colours I know I have work to do. 

Hope this helps.

[Brittany Joiner]

There's a couple chrome extensions that will let you add more label options - one is Trelabels. I've seen a few others out there if you google "chrome extension trello labels", but Trelabels is the only one i have used before.

For the most part what I do is stick with the main colors Trello provides, but i click the labels show it always shows the name of the label and not just the color.

[Charisma Riley]

Sure, but they only show up to the browser user; you can’t make the others in your team see it. Also, what about many of us with standardized style guides that we are not only expected to work with in all things, but also expect to see as a company in all things since we’ve been religiously trained to do so! Any other new color system in our product docs would be confusing and a time suck figuring out what’s what.

[Jovan Jancev]

You can not. But you can add granularity by combining labels with custom fields.

[Matt Beamish]

Hi @Jovan Jancev

This discussion's been going a while, and it seems that this answer comes up often.  The problem is, for a majority of use cases, it's not enough.  The consensus of those of us asking for this is that while we get that we can use Labels - and you can even add Emoji to add a bit of colour - it's not got the at-a-glance functionality or communicability, not to mention the personalisation factor, of having more than a set palette of reusable colours.

[Matt Beamish]

Okay, this is a dumb 5-second workaround, that - unless someone wants to build a powerup - only works on the web version and requires TamperMonkey or GreaseMonkey.

Basically if you add [#rrggbb] hex codes to the end of any label, this script will apply the colour and then rewrite the label.

Edit: v4, fixed the labels for opened cards, fixed a couple of warnings that were coming up in Tampermonkey due to undeclared variables and lazy programming by me.  Chrome seems to try and run the userscript before the cards are displayed, added 1s delay.

// ==UserScript==
// @name Trello Unlimited Label Colours
// @version 0.4
// @description Applies hex codes embedded in trello labels to the label itself.
// @include *//trello.com/*
// @Grant none
// @Run-at document-idle
// ==/UserScript==

(function() {
var o,re,t,m;
function applyColours() { window.jQuery(".card-label[title*='[#']").each(function() { o = window.jQuery(this); re = new RegExp("^(.*?)\\s\\[(#[0-9A-Fa-f]{3,6})\\]"); t = o.attr("title"); m = re.exec(t); o.css("backgroundColor",m[2]).text(m[1]); }); }
window.setTimeout(function() {
window.jQuery(".list-card").on("click",applyColours);
applyColours();
},1000);
})();

[Charisma Riley]

Matt, this is awesome. My only question then is: will anyone else be able to see the new colors without Tampermonkey or Greasemonkey?

[Matt Beamish]

No, unfortunately.  They'll be able to see the hex code at the end of the label, but it'll show the original colour you selected for that label.  I wouldn't suggest this is a good solution for a team environment or for use in production, unless someone wants to have a crack at turning it into a power-up.

Edit: just realised this also doesn't work when you click on a card to open it.  *sigh*.  Will try and come up with a v2 if I get a moment.

As @Ben David pointed out above: we shouldn't have to work around issues like this.  This post is trending, and it's in the top 5 viewed ones on the Trello community, so hopefully we're slowly getting attention from the devs... maybe one of them will chime in one of these days. @Mike you mentioned talking to the team above... did anything come from this?

[Charisma Riley]

That's great. I have a team of 3 in my dept and we can all add the userscript, so for us it's not an issue.  I am, unfortunately, experiencing an error with the userscript in Tampermonkey, however:

Any thoughts?

[Matt Beamish]

You can ignore that and push on; I just took some lazy coding shortcuts.  Trello's page loads jQuery, which will solve the rest of those issues.

[Matt Beamish]

@Charisma Rileyupdated the code above to fix those errors anyway.

[Charisma Riley]

@Matt Beamish You are awesome! I updated the script in Tampermonkey, but I am getting no joy in Trello. :(

Perhaps I am not making the Label correctly? Here is my process after making sure the script is running and :

#1 - Create Card

#2 - Create Label

#3 - Save Label, but Label color remains the blue color I picked:

#4 - Close Card, Label color still remains the blue color:

#5 I tried another color, with the same result:

I'm obviously doing something wrong. :(

[Matt Beamish]

Try changing the label from "Hurrah #DC0073" to  "Hurrah [#DC0073]" - the script looks for the square brackets.

[Charisma Riley]

@Matt Beamish I decided to see if any of the extensions I have loaded were interfering, so I unloaded all of my Trello extensions, cleared my browser cache, and closed my Chrome browser. I reopened it and created a new card, with a new label, and a new label color, with the same hex color using the brackets. Unfortunately, the results are the same:

I really appreciate you trying to help, Matt. I don't know why it isn't working. Thank you, though, for trying.

[Matt Beamish]

@Charisma Rileyokay, think I've got it pinned.  Again: quick and dirty fix for a quick and dirty solution, just needed to delay the loading slightly.

[Mike]

Matt, I'm afraid not!

In transparency to everyone, the primary reason there's no color picker for custom label colors is that we provide a color-blind version of each label. There's not an infinite combination of color-blind patterns available for each custom color hex code, so a custom picker isn't something we're planning to add.

As for additional colors, I agree, it's something I'd like to see too. There's no malice or laziness here, but the team does have competing priorities, and it's not something that's currently being worked on. That's not to say we'll never add this, but in the short term, it's not something we're planning, though we're always taking threads like this into consideration!

[Matt Beamish]

@MikeI think the problem is that while supporting colour-blind users is of course a noble course of action, it's restricting a vocal portion of your userbase; the very number of responses on this thread, and the fact that people are considering workarounds (and unfortunately calling you names) comes down to the fact that these restrictions are impeding workflow.

Spitballing, I can see several ways around supporting colourblind users while still providing more label options:

• Allow the user to select a colourblind colour/pattern when they stray outside the defined palette;
• Turn on/off colourblindness mode at a board or team level (and consequently open up full-colour tagging);
• Have the palette dialog warn if the colour the user is selecting may be difficult to see for colour-blind users; or
• Even have the palette dialog represent what colourblind users may see, similar to this: https://davidmathlogic.com/colorblind/

While it may not be a priority, the fact it's rating so high on the Trello Community Feed (3rd highest question by views, at the time I write this) signifies that maybe it should be taken under serious consideration?

[Morgan Benjamin]

@Mike @Matt Beamish Matt has articulated this considerately and to his credit, politely.

The key points that I'd zero in on are:

Priorities - it seems there's a failure at Atlassian to recognise how many multiples the number of votes on here really represent, and proritise accordingly (a theory which the lack of response on this thread would confirm).

Color Palette - there is a need to implement at the very least your OWN colour standards ; https://design.trello.com/style/color. Bcoz, to agree with the sentiment oft reiterated here - yes, it's 2019 and the lack of options simply doesn't fit in such an otherwise developed, integrated and extensible app.

At present this lack is doubtless a bottleneck for so many of the functions it seems to exist to address.

[bd]

@Mike  - it's one thing to make your application available to color blind people, it's quite another to allow color-blindness to be the basis of your color decisions thereby restricting the entire non-color-blind human population who use it as if they were color-blind. 

Sorry, but it's ridiculous reasoning.  Availability is about making apps available to those with disabilities, not restricting everyone else as if they had disabilities.

[Mike]

We appreciate the comments, honestly. Yes, there are other solutions, and those are things under consideration, but not all solutions fit into the Trello-style. I'm also trying to be transparent that this isn't a priority for the team, and we're not hiding that. A good number of people on this Community are asking for it, yes, but overall, this is not very frequently requested. We track many feature requests, and those help drive our teams' priorities and roadmaps, along with the direction they're looking for the product.

We'll, of course, continue to track this and evaluate if it fits into the Trello product in the future—I hope we'll see something like this before too long!

[bd]

I appreciate your being transparent about the priorities.  

[Charisma Riley]

@Matt Beamish , I really wish I could get that pesky script to work. Would have been nice, lol. :D Why might it work for you and not someone else? What could be interfering with it, you think?

[MikeThomasDev]

Hmm, 6-8% of the population, as much as I'd like to have custom colors I have to admit that's pretty high. How about only allowing custom colors if the labels are also accompanied by a string? You know, a label with text inside.

[Charisma Riley]

@MikeThomasDev While I understand that you would like a limited selection and that works for you, my point is that fine, sounds good. You can feel that way. And maybe just access to the material Design colors would be great, at a minimum. BUT, the real issue here is that it takes nothing *away* from you, or anyone else, to have a feature where you can pick a hex color of your choice, if you so choose. We have an internal style guide. *everything* follows this guide. So to use Trello, we have to re-vamp our whole color system and it's been a massive turn off for people. Our staff want to be able to see a color and know what is expected of them and generally what it refers to. So, while I understand that it may not be a great choice for you personally, to have that option, my point is that having that option doesn't affect anyone who isn't going to use it, either. See what I mean? theerare open source free projects they could even rip a color picker from. It's a very odd choice, of all things, to limit color. How does that affect anything on Atlassian's end? We've already debunked the "requires more resources" and "security risks" mumbo jumbo. So what's left? Atlassian doesn't think it matters. And so there it is.

[kimberlyn.crowe@gmail.com]

@Mike  Your argument of this not being a frequently requested feature is rather disingenuous. In my experience, many users will simply give up and suffer in silence. A smaller sub-set will search out posts like this one, see that dev doesn't give a flip and look for another solution; or they will expend resources coming up with a workaround because they have already invested in building out some complex project/processes based on Trello's functionality and then probably wind up trashing it all and moving to a platform that gives them what they need (note the use of the word "need" not "want" - that's intentional.) An even smaller sub-set of users - like me! - take the time and make the effort to advocate for all the other users to try to get through to dev that this is a relatively small thing that would payoff exponentially in positive user experience. Instead, y'all keep doubling down and telling us we don't need what we are asking for, that there is no way that you can accommodate color-blind users (like, you can't figure out how to offer the OPTION to limit color selections to color blind friendly ones? You freaking HAVE the option to turn it off/on now for pity's sake!). Le sigh. 

[Reed Meyer]

@Mikesays that the problem is that this feature request is a low priority.

The thing is, adding additional colors and a color picker has to be one of the easier tasks Atlassian's team would handle.  It could easily get done in one sprint by one UX designer, a front-end dev, and a back-end dev.  If those resources couldn't get it done in one sprint then I would seriously question their abilities.

Plenty of people are asking for the feature.  So the benefit-cost ratio for this task would be quite high.  What other tasks have so strong benefit-cost ratios that this one has fallen by the wayside for three years?

[Tammi Labrecque]

This is a genuinely absurd policy. You are refusing to implement a feature that users have been requesting for years now to avoid POSSIBLY making your app SLIGHTLY less useable to a TINY percentage of the population. (1 in 12 men are color blind (8%). 1 in 200 women are color blind (0.5%).)

I just went and looked at your colorblind options, and I have to say, they are terrible. The label on a Trello card is VERY small; the patterns don't even show very well. I can't tell them apart. Oh, irony! This must be what it's like to be colorblind. Except colorblindness doesn't give you Superman vision, so I'm guessing the colorblind can't distinguish the patterns either. 

So rather than tell those of us who can see colors that we should use a Power-up to have the actual text of the label show on the label — never mind that that should be core functionality, by the way, that's a rant for another time — instead, let's have the colorblind folks (who are, again, a tiny portion of your userbase) show text on labels, since they likely can't see the patterns any better than they can see the colors.

Oh, and not all colorblind people are blind to EVERY color on the spectrum, by the way; 98% of colorblind people are red/green impaired. Another reason you should give us MORE colors rather than FEWER — companies with colorblind workers could simply not use red/green, but could instead use myriad shades of the other four colors, and then the colorblind and non-colorblind alike could have more than 8 options. Praise Jesus and sing Hallelujah!

I wondered if the CEO of this company, or someone they love dearly, is color blind, thinking that might explain this foolishness, but actually if that were the case, they would know this solution sucks. At this point, I'm pretty sure Trello is just trolling us. 

[Brittany Joiner]

@Tammi Labrecque you don't need a power-up to show text on the label? Just click the label and the text shows up.

I think Github lets you use custom hex colors, so you might want to check that out if custom colors are the ultimate feature required for your use case!

[Rachid El Guerrab]

You are seriously directing a customer to another product for a feature that many have been requesting for 5 years??