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Why doesn't Trello have these Features?

Dane Salmon September 3, 2021

First of all, I would like to commend the Trello team for the superlative work done in developing this application. From concept to implementation, you guys have demonstrated what it takes to produce a comprehensively and flexibly functional app without sacrificing usability and learnability. It is as if you analyzed what cognate applications were doing wrong and ensured you did the opposite. My sincerest adulation to you guys.

That said, there are a few things (lacking features) I found limiting with the app, which are expounded on below in order of importance:-

Feature 1 - Custom ordering of control artifacts/widgets

Labels are one of the most useful widgets in Trello. Due to their ease of use and the fact that they quickly add organization and presentation to cards, they are potentially the most commonly used items in the application. It has been discovered that the label colors, although originally designed with predefined meaning in mind, can be repurposed to suite a target domain semantic with the aid of custom label names. 

The limitation arises in a situation where labels are classed into enumeration groups (such as Card Type or Card Status), and are expected to be displayed in a fixed card label position according to the designated class. Due to the rigid alphabetical ordering enforced by the Labels menu, which governs the ordered placement of labels on a card, labels are rendered impervious to any such fine organizational control.

The same can be said for Card Buttons, which are very cool action widgets, if I might add; however, they suffer from lacking the convenience of being ordered in a user-defined  manner (e.g. by similar functionality), instead of just alphabetically.

Automation Rules could also provide benefit to the user in this way. Naturally application performance will be impacted as the rules catalogue becomes larger, manifested by delayed background action executions. By enabling rule trigger executions to be prioritized by the author could help alleviate lags for critically acclaimed rules.

Feature 2 - Auto-populate current Tigger/Action settings on edit

Typically, when editing an item or model possessing a particular configuration in a UI , it is usually expected that its particular settings would be auto-populated into the UI configuration console for modification/tweaking. However, the editing mechanism provided by Trello works in such a way that the UI only remembers the last saved configuration, regardless of the rule being edited. This makes making small adjustments the already created rules unnecessarily difficult and prone to user error. 

Feature 3 - Multiple triggers per rule

Just as a single rule may have multiple actions, a rule should also be able to have multiple triggers. Each trigger would be ORed together to form the ultimate predicate. This would alleviate the redundancy in creating multiple rules with the same action(s).

Feature 4 - Do more with Board Buttons

Board Buttons are a good idea! Surpassing Card Buttons as a more panoramically scoped set of action widgets, these control artifacts have the potential to do more. 

Suggestion

Enable board buttons to enable and disable command libraries, providing even more dynamic automation to the board. This, and other board exclusive actions can be categorized under a "Board" (or something similar) action tab.

 

Well, that's my 2 cents guys. There are more I could have mentioned but I suspect you guys have a lot on your plate so I only wanted to present short-listed items.

Again, great job on the Trello app, I hope you keep the same spirit going as what got you this far, and I hope this post adds a fair contribution towards its improvement.

Best Regards

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Lara
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
September 16, 2021

Hi Dane,

Thanks for reaching out and for your feedback here!

All of your feedback aligns with feature requests we're tracking internally, and I've gone ahead and given those an official bump for you.

Thanks for bringing all of this to our attention. It's awesome to know the lengths our users will go to help make Trello better.

If you're curious about how our team decides on what requests we work on, we've also published a blog post with more detailed and visual information here: https://blog.trello.com/feature-requests-unite-support-and-product

If you'd like to see our latest features and releases you can take a look at our dev board at http://www.trello.com/dev. Our mobile boards are available at https://trello.com/b/5tj4qAvo/trello-ios-app and https://trello.com/b/ud59t1fL/trello-android-app.

Please let us know if you have any other questions or concerns, and have a great day.

All the best,

Lara
The Trello Team

Dane Salmon September 17, 2021

Ok Lara, I'll do that.

Thanks, and all the same to you.

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