Why Buy Trello for Timeline when it can't get Start Dates right?

[Jeff Bean]

There was an existing thread including discussions of Start Dates, which was still relevant to me, but has since been closed for comment. After Michael Pryor made one last reply saying the Timeline function is the solution, it was closed and is now euphemistically labeled as "Solved."

It is not.

I've been using Trello personally, in a limited fashion and somewhat effective fashion, for years. We were evaluating Trello for our business, but we are not actively evaluating it anymore because of the goat-rope of the Start Date rollout. The problems were well-documented in the other thread here.

The last and most important failure of Trello's Start Date function for us was the complete inability to do any automated information processing of cards based on the values in the fields. You can't even sort on them. Trello has that functionality for Due Dates, but deliberately chose not to provide that functionality for Start Dates. You can look at them and that's it. 

I won't be taking the flying leap of faith to buy premium, trusting Trello to somehow get Timeline right, when in it's free version it can't even get the basic Start Dates right.

Posting here again just in case there's useful information I'm missing, or if someone has a workaround they'd like to share, or if Trello has a change of mind to finally provide functionality to Start Dates.

[Michael Pryor]

Thanks for seeing my request to open a new thread. 

When you wrote: “ inability to do any automated information processing of cards based on the values in the fields“ do you mean that Butler can’t automate things based on Start Date?

[Jeff Bean]

You’re asking me? I’ve no idea. Can Butler do things Trello doesn’t allow me to do myself, like sort lists by Start Date?