Is there a way to thread replies to comments on a Trello card?

[Emily Levy]

Our team is finding it difficult to communicate about the items on a card because replies are not threaded. I'm wondering if there's a way we don't know about (a powerup, maybe?) to achieve threaded comments on cards inside Trello. Thanks in advance.

[Dan Ivory]

Hey everyone! 

Quick update from my previous post on this topic. Good news!... Threaded Comments for Trello is now live on the Power-Up Directory! 🎉

It is free for our early users to please give it a try and let us know what you think. If you have feedback for us we'd love to hear it so we can make the Power-Up even better for you. Either comment here, fill out our short survey or add a feature request to our Nolt board. 

Can't wait to hear what you think about it!

Thanks,

Dan

[Joe Matazzoni]

I tried Threaded Comments for Trello and found it to be very buggy. I hope they get it working, because I'd love to have this feature. To that end, here is my feedback: 

1) Notifications did not work. I tested this pretty fully with one of my users who is a programmer and obviously quite technical. He and I tried pinging each other back and forth multiple times. Our expectation was that we would get emails, or at least a notification. But we got nothing.

2) The system seemed to have a hard time recognizing users so that we could ping them. When we started typing with the @, we  both had to find out what the other user’s full handle was and then type it in fully the first time or two before the system started recognizing it and autocompleted it. (And then the ping had no effect—see issue #1.) 

3) It appears that individual users of the board have to “authorize” the feature for it to work. I don’t know if that is standard for Trello, but it is not what I expected and is definitely an impediment to use. I assumed that as the owner of the board, I could authorize it and then it would just work for my users, many of whom are nontechnical. But I was informed that they were being notified to authorize. This is not good.

4) Other users of the board did not see my comments until they MADE a threaded comment. I was in a meeting with one as I directed him to the Trello card and told him where to look. He saw nothing. Then he was notified to “authorize” (see issue 3). Then, after he did that, he still saw nothing. So he quit, and came back, and he still saw nothing. Only after he made a comment of his own did he report that my comments suddenly popped into view. This is not acceptable, obviously.

As I say, I'm offering this detailed feedback in hopes that the developers can fix this Power Up, since it is an significant shortcoming of Trello. 

[Dan Ivory]

Hi Joe

Thanks for the feedback. I've reached out to you via the support ticket you raised to explain these points and to say we're working on the ones we have control over. 

So everyone else can see here I'll add the reply here too...

1. Notifications, this is 100% the main feature we want to release next. And is a big reason why this app is in a Beta phase right now. We wanted to collect validation for this feature because it's a tricky one to build on Trello. So your feedback here helps with that already! We are actively working on this but it might be a little while until it's available. 

2. Interesting, that's a new one for us, so again really helpful to know. Will ask the team to have a look into it and see if we can speed up those initial attempts at it recognizing the username. 

3. Unfortunately this is a Trello limitation that every user needs to authorize Power-Ups before they can be used. This is the same for all Power-Ups. I'd love to have it so it was just the board owner who needed to authorize. I'll feed this back to Trello, but I don't think it will change any time soon :(  

Some good news is, once a user has authorized the Power-Up for their Trello account, they will not need to do this again, even if installing/using the Power-Up on another Trello board. 

4. That is also a strange one, and I agree not acceptable so very keen to dig more into that and make sure the comments appear without needing to add another comment!

Hope you stick with us while we improve on this Beta release. 

Thanks,

Dan

[Alicia Shea]

Have there been any updates since Jan 2022 to address the comments above?

[Dan Ivory]

Hey @Alicia Shea hope all is well!

Was there something in particular you're interested in?

Since that post we've made a number of bug fixes including some mentioned above.

And we're working on email notifications right now so hope to have a beta of that available in a few weeks time. NB we have started with email notifications because there are Trello limitations meaning unfortunately we're not allowed to build in-app notifications. 

There is a badge notification already if that helps. You can see this in action here https://youtu.be/_hZVnTQfdBE?t=89

Hope that helps, feel free to email me (dan@orahapps.com) if that's easier to chat.

Thanks,

Dan

[Olena Nizalova]

I was very happy to find this information. But then carefully read the conditions:

Threaded Comments for Trello will be able to:

• Read your name and username
• Make comments as you
• Read your Enterprises
• Update and manage your Enterprises
• Read all of your boards and Workspaces
• Create and update cards, lists, boards and Workspaces
• Read Power-Ups you own
• Update Power-Ups you own

How come that level of access is justified in any way?

[JD Singh]

+10.  Please add threaded comments. It's an essential feature!

[Megan Kelly]

Absolutely 1000% agree....It is VERY difficult to efficiently keep tracking of threaded conversations (or lack thereof).  If you want to reply to a comment deep in the middle of 20, you reply and it puts your response at the top.  We pay for biz class and like another poster are knee deep in the usage for our over 100+ projects and this experience stinks.  Please add this functionality.

[Megan Kelly]

Trello Team:  This has been a constant several year old request (just do a search) and we can't seem to get any type of reply on if Trello will be adding threaded comments capabilities.  Please provide an update to a VERY MUCH NEEDED request.

[Michael Irving]

The funniest part about this whole thing is that this community board has the ability to thread comments, but the core product doesn't . . . beautiful irony

[Juan Lizarralde]

Funny we are hopping to see changes on Trello. It was acquired by Atlassian (Jan 2017) and has more than 25 million users. It was Atlassian’s  18th acquisition at that time. The company planned to keep both the Trello service and brand alive without immediate changes. At its core, Atlassian’s own JIRA project management service already features  a Trello-like Kanban board , for example. That’s only a small part of what JIRA does, however, and for many potential users, a board is really all they need to keep track of their projects. JIRA also features a full-blown issue-tracking service, reports, and an on-premise version that enterprises can run on their own servers. I doubt Atlassian wants to make Trello any better than it is because it can draw users away.

In other words, what we hope will never happen. We better look for an alternative if we really need threaded comments, its a shame, still it's the true.

[Andrew Courtney]

A great shame they won't develop this change for Trello - I think it would give them the edge in the market when compared with Asana and other Kanban-based systems. I don't know of any other systems that offer the same level of functionality as Trello, coupled with threaded comments.

Are there any alternatives to Trello that DO offer this functionality? We're unlikely to switch from Trello any time soon as we've just trained everyone up and set card templates up for teams to use but I'm just curious.

Maybe we'll have to start using Reddit ;)

[Dan Ivory]

Hi everyone,

Exciting news for those who want this feature!!

We also wanted to be able to thread comments in Trello. So much so, that we went and created a Power-Up to allow you to do it!

 

The Power-Up is in an early stage right now so if you're interested in this feature we'd love to have a quick chat (can be as little as 15 minutes) with you, so we can make sure we are building exactly what you want/need.

It's rare that a Trello card is just one task. It usually grows into more checklist items/subtasks, each of which might need discussing. Now you can easily discuss them all in one place without getting confused about who is talking about what task :D

If you're too busy for a call with us, maybe you could complete this quick (2 minute) survey while you drink your morning/afternoon coffee? 

Any feedback we can get is really valuable - https://forms.gle/mB745BAL5m89EjMT8 

We also have an early adopters form here. Please pop in your email if you want to be the first to know about the latest updates as we continue to build this feature, and be the first to use it when it's available!

https://www.orahapps.com/threaded-comments-request 

Thanks in advance,

Dan

ps - hope you don't mind me tagging you, didn't want you to miss out on this news! 

@Emily Levy @Nikit @Adam Hollander @Eric P @Jennifer A Black

[Rob Turner]

You created but have not added this powerup?

Also, you suggest a quick chat. But not a phone number?

[Dan Ivory]

Hi @Rob Turner 

Thanks for the message. Our Power-Up is coming very soon :) We're still finalising some of the development and in the process of submitting it to Trello. 

If you're happy to, it would be great to chat some more to get your feedback. Either pop your details into this form (the last question will ask for your email so we can arrange a call). or you can reach me directly at dan@orahapps.com.

Speak soon!

Dan

[Rob Turner]

When is very soon?

[Dan Ivory]

Hi @Rob Turner , I've sent you an email so we can chat some more. 

Thanks,

Dan

[Joe Matazzoni]

This power up is very buggy. See my detailed response to Dan's comment above (dated Jan 12, 2022). They intent to charge for this Power Up. So that is not really a fix for the problem, even if the Power Up did work. 

[Olena Nizalova]

and asks for incredible level of access to our boards!

Threaded Comments for Trello will be able to:

• Read your name and username
• Make comments as you
• Read your Enterprises
• Update and manage your Enterprises
• Read all of your boards and Workspaces
• Create and update cards, lists, boards and Workspaces
• Read Power-Ups you own
• Update Power-Ups you own

[Shawn Taylor]

I'm disappointed that threaded replies are not available as well.

[Adam_Muhammed]

I started to use trello with my VA yesterday, and today I am here.

I hope this feature will come pretty soon

[Adam Hollander]

2021 and still no threading 😰

I just posted a new question but then found this thread

Trello team, is there anything in the pipeline for threading to avoid absolute comment chaos like this 

[Nikit]

Yes, I agree.

At least commenting rooms (like it was for Google+). So the comment - answering comments will in the inner room. So Trello task will look more clearly...

[Bernie Wong]

Can't believe someone raised this 2 years ago and this feature is still not there. We are talking to our IT to get another 40+ licenses for our team, but a second thought, this might not work without the thread feature.

[themadpax]

My company is - well, I guess was - reviewing Trello business as a tool for our teams. We've loved pretty much everything about it and were just waiting to pull the trigger until we could figure out how to make threaded comments work (we assumed we weren't seeing the power up or something, as it felt less likely that this essential feature would actually not be included). Glad I found this thread and am looking into Slack now as an option for our teams.

Trello, it's so disappointing to see that for a few years this same request is being made and ignored.  We aren't asking for a 7th shade of blue or more stickers. Users have pointed out for years now that a CRUCIAL feature is being left out of your service. Our team is almost done with our two-week trial and some of our cards have dozens of comments between multiple people. The confusion and frustration I've had from the lack of threaded comments has literally made me less productive, as I've had to take real time and energy trying to figure out what people are referring to. The workout is not realistic and just not good enough. 

This is the ONLY reason why you aren't getting roughly 80 new business subscriptions today.

[Eric P]

Allow me to add an inline, threaded reply here to agree 10,000%. 

[Juan Lizarralde]

I wanted to use Trello. My team insisted to use Slack "just" because Trello is missing this threaded comments feature. What a shame. Come on we are going into 2020 and this is a basic functionality. It should be out there from the beginning.

[Ave Horowitz]

If you are referring to email, have you looked into Sendboard the powerup?

[Juan Lizarralde]

I'm referring as everybody to comments. That Sendboard powerup shows threaded emails. We will never receive or send emails from Trello, we are ok about emails managment. Have you tested that Sendboard powerup? Can you thread card comments? without setting any email thing?

[Andrew Courtney]

+1 for threaded comments. It would vastly improve our productivity to track where changes in our systems need to be made and also feedback on individual problems more effectively.

Is anyone aware of a plugin which supports this in the interim until it appears on the Trello development roadmap? Thanks in advance!

[Matthew N]

Hi Emily

There's not a way to thread replies to a comment , however there's a workaround that I recommend:

You can right click on a time stamp below a comment to copy the comment URL. Then you can paste that comment URL to the new comment... at least this way there will be a point of reference for the comment being made.  If you click on the link in the comment, you'll see a little blue bar beside the comment it's linking to.

[Emily Levy]

Thank you. That seems like a decent workaround, though certainly not as decent as true threaded comments would be!

I appreciate  your taking the time to make these annotated screenshots for me.

[David Bennett]

I agree with Emily. Comment threading is essential to effective communication, helping to track and reply to incoming problems as they arise. As it is now, it's stacked with incoming comments. Please consider putting this on a future roadmap.

Cheers!

David

[lkraav]

Yep, Slack alone is probably boosting this requirement to the next level.

Everything is just less noisy (=== yes, better) in the threaded model.

[Lordmuppet]

Agree we really need threaded comments

[Robert Woehrle]

Yes, please. This is our single biggest issue and potential deal breaker 😢

[Landon_Cope]

+1 for threaded comments. This is the only missing feature that causes us to even consider alternatives.

[SuperAtic]

+1 for threaded comments! This is the only missing feature that causes us to consider alternatives.

[Michael Irving]

+1 for threaded comments. We currently pay for Trello Team and are deep in the eco-system. I find it super confusing to understand what is going on especially as cards address more complex matters. Threaded messages along with the ability to email from a card to an outside user (see Sendboard) being an integral part of Trello will help keep it more relevant and expand it's potential. At the moment we are getting overwhelmed with the shear number of power-ups and the strapped on cost of some of the more effective add-ons. We are approaching the point where the cost of all combined and the lack of some now "expected" features makes us seriously consider other alternatives.

[BloomBoy]

+1 for threaded comments! Our number one request

[Mac Earle]

+1 we need threaded comments

[Jennifer A Black]

Oh my goodness!!! This workaround just saved my sanity. Still very disappointing that another year has gone by and this feature still hasn't been added, but this timestamp "copy the link" hack makes it a little more manageable,

[MarcusFuto]

Great workaround!

I have seen some people use citations as well which would be helpful, but not sure how they have managed to do it!

It is a default feature because we are not paying.

Does anybody know how to do this?

[Nikit]

huh, 2020 outside and there's no thread comments? it's funny, back to 2000...

[eugene]

Atlassian, Trello teams, are you kidding? 

For 5 years users are asking you to add threaded comments? Is that such a complicated task?

That is one of the major issues that force users to migrate to Linear for example, and you ignore resolving it, even in Standard/Premium plan where clients are paying you.

[MarcusFuto]

Another workaround is to do text citations. However I don't know how this is acheieved.

Does anybody know how to do citations like this:

[Unal Perendi]

Please implement this, this is essential! you lost track in discussion

[Robert]

Warning to those of you who have been waiting for YEARS for this feature ... after all the time time we continued to support Trello, they're making the most obvious, critical feature one that we have to pay for!

From the PowerUp description: "We will be making this a paid app soon, so take advantage of this phase and enjoy it for free!"

How is it possible a service can be this out of touch?  
Unbelievable, frustrating, and sad.