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Trello - Task items should be able to reference other tasks.

Trello - Task items should be able to reference other tasks.

I'm currently doing this via Checklists, however, it would be nice to be able to reference another task you made in a "dependency" fashion.

For instance, you could create an Epic, and this Epic task would need sub-tasks a, b, and c to complete. I currently use labels and checklists to make a pseudo version of task dependency. (Sub tasks have targeted release labels, and checklists for further required or referenced tasks)

I know this is essentially asking for JIRA features in the "free" Trello boards, but It would be a valuable feature!

Otherwise, since this is a discussion, how do you guys manage your workflows in Trello?

6 answers

1 vote

@MattStrom the way you're doing subtasking is the "best practise" for subtasking in Trello.

I wrote about some automation options for this method of subtasking here:

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Trello-articles/Trello-Subtasks-with-Butler/ba-p/1060392

You can also use the Epics power up which might have some of the dependency functionality you're after.

The Butler for Trello team wrote about managing task dependencies:

https://medium.com/@butlerfortrello/managing-task-dependencies-in-trello-a837f614adc3

Although that was written prior to the Trello acquisition of Butler and also references features that were present in the Bot that, if I'm not mistaken, are not present in the power up.

Placker is a 3rd party Gantt charting tool that allows you to do more formal dependencies:

https://placker.com/product/trello/plan_and_track

They have a power up, I've never used the power up but their product is really good.

If all you want to do is have a task depend on sub-tasks, then having a checklist where the completion or archiving or moving to a "completed" list of a subtask card will automatically mark a checklist item as complete on the master is fine, however if what you really want is to have due dates "bubble up" from dependencies then it's trickier to do in Butler because one Butler command can't trigger another, so you can't just have an infinite level of layers that operate automatically.

This Trellinator command would set the due date on a linked "master" when the due date is modified, and would trigger up the chain so that the due date on all master cards will automatically reflect the greatest due date + estimated completion time of any subtask:

https://gist.github.com/iaindooley/0b6f5b9b19f8f0c026197f91c337e7a9