Xero Projects

[Andres Lopez de Faria]

Hi,

Hopefully someone can help me, I'm starting to work with Xero Projects and I was hoping for someway to schedule my tasks, so I came across Trello which seems like a great organisation tool.

I've purchased the Business plan for Trello, and added the Xero Projects PowerUp. However my Projects/Tasks don't come through from Xero to Trello.

The only thing I can do is track time based on a manually created card within Trello.

I also haven't found any way to get Cards created in trello to go to Xero.

Is this really a manual process where I have to create projects and tasks on Xero then create Lists and Cards on Trello? Surely there would have to be a more automatic way of doing this!

Hopefully someone using Xero Projects and Trello may be able to provide me with some insight as I've exhausted my options trying to find any support documentation.

I look forward for a response, and thank you for your time in advanced.

[Iain Dooley]

@Andres Lopez de Faria 

The only thing I can do is track time based on a manually created card within Trello.

Based on the description of the power up, that sounds like it's all you can do! I don't use Xero Projects so I have no experience with the power up but in general there's nothing "hidden" in Trello power ups, usually what you see is what you get.

If you want it to be more automated you'd need to get something written that uses the APIs of each product directly. Xero Projects looks like it does have an API and tasks are available in it:

https://developer.xero.com/documentation/projects/tasks

but it doesn't look like it's available in Zapier yet (if it's not in Zapier my guess is it won't be in other "no code" integration platforms but I haven't done an exhaustive search).

When I do this type of more sophisticated integration I typically use Google Apps Script as the integration hub, via Trellinator:

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Marketplace-Apps-Integrations/Introducing-Trellinator-Automate-Trello-with-Google-Apps-Script/ba-p/925271

For example I did a SalesForce integration for someone that had more functionality and automation than the power up.

It's been my experience generally that Trello power ups are pretty weak integrations with very little automation, and that they're mostly presentational.

For example the HelpScout power up lets you see a bit of the latest email in a card, and gives you a link to the conversation in HelpScout, but you can't email from Trello with it and you have to manually create the ard in Trello to link to the conversation.

The SalesForce power up lets you link a card to a deal, but you have to create the card manually first, and even then all you can do is see some information about the deal on the card, there's no interactivity.

Add to that the fact that the only power ups that are available on mobile are those that are actually supplied by Trello (ie. calendar, maps and custom fields) and the whole power up ecosystems starts to look pretty lame imho.

That's not say there aren't some cool ones:

 - Planyway calendar

 - Placker

 - Unito

They're all pretty powerful -- the best power up ever written was Butler (which itself was a watered down version of the Butler Bot) and that was acquired by Trello and integrated into the main product :)

HOWEVER, the question I would be asking is:

Why are you using Trello in addition to Xero Projects? What functionality does Xero Projects have that Trello doesn't?

My experience with Practice Studio and Workflow Max is that they were so horrific that I can't imagine anything coming out of Xero in terms of project management would be much better.

Have you considered simply using Trello for all your task and project management, and using something else for time tracking? The best integration with Trello for time tracking imho is Time Doctor (their desktop app totally sucks but their mobile app is awesome and you can log time against individual trello cards that you're a member of in a stop/start fashion directly from the mobile app -- all other time tracking integrations for Trello I've seen run only in the desktop via power ups or Chrome extensions).

[Iain Reed]

Hi @Iain Dooley is there any update on this. I've been using Xero since 2011 and it's great for time sheets and billing. we have started using Trello for managing our teams this year (in favour of Fogbugz which is now very old). is there a way of automatically pushing time recorded in trello with a timer app into Xero projects?

If not then it can't be so difficult to build something like this. how do we register to make our own power-ups?

[Phil Curtis]

You've hit the nail on the head @Andres Lopez de Faria, and @Iain Dooley . I too am frustrated - Projects in Xero are good now for detailed billing, but the Project Management tasks should be generated in PM system, so Trello is promising and has the Xero Power-Up... woohoo! But although you can send the time entries to Xero, you can't send the Task name, so have to type and synchronise both! D'oh!

They've done all the hard work but it is indeed completely lame until Trello can simply send the Card Name as Task to Xero too. Should be easy. Hopefully they will post here when that simple function is finally included.

Meanwhile, off to find alternative to Trello (or write an integration, but have other projects to bill first!). 

[Hydro Earth]

This is the exact automation I was looking for. Staggering that they haven't built it in already.