Keep your project organised using Trello

[Nate]

Trello is a really amazing project management program that is free to use and works seamlessly across most platforms (iOS, Android, all modern browsers). It works with multiple people in teams and allows you to filter to the tasks that are important to you. The best part is that it is super flexible - it could be used for managing tasks in your daily life, such as chores or shopping lists, or can be used for multi-tiered development.

There are 3 main terminologies that are used for using Trello. They are Boards, Lists and Cards.

Boards
Once you have created your Trello Account you will be able to create your first board. A board is a collection of all your data and todo items. You'll probably just need to create one, however Trello lets you create as many as you want. I would recommend to just create one for each project you're working on. If you have multiple projects, your board might look something like the below image. You may notice that I have multiple boards. I have one for a Client I'm currently working on, one for my Youtube so I know what I'm doing and when, and one for the development of my game. I've also created an Example Board to use for this Guide:

Lists

A list is a container within your board that holds multiple cards. You might use a list to separate "Dave's Work", "Aimee's Work" and "Claudette's Work", or perhaps you could have a list for each place you need to visit today, such as "Groceries List", "Family to Visit", "Clothes I need to buy"...  For this guide we will have "Todo", "In Progress" and "Completed" :-

 

Cards
You can see on the image above that the lists have white todo-items in each list with a little description. Each white entity is called a "Card". While it may looks very very simple, and it can be used in a very simple way, it can actually get extremely details once you get into the nitty gritty.. however the detail is completely optional!
Clicking on a Card brings up a view that allows you to customise it, such as assign that card to someone else (more on that later), label it (and give it a fancy color), give it a description, a due date and more. Each Card also has a comment-chain, so discussions on that particular item can take place within the card itself. The best part is that the cards can be moved between lists simply by dragging them..
Clicking on a card brings up this interface:


There are all sorts of customisation options available, so let's go ahead and fill in some details for the battle arena.
- Description - We'll give it a better description so we know what we're planning to do.
- Members - I'll click members then my name to assign the ticket to me. My initials "NW" (or my profile photo if i have one set) will then appear. Multiple people can be assigned to a Card, and anyone can assign anyone.
- Due Date - We want this completed in a reasonable fashion, so we will set a realistic due date.
- Attachment - We dont have any attachments, however ANY file can be attached to a Card.

There, this looks much better:


You'll notice in the background that the card we created called "Code the Battle Arena" has had it's white area within the list updated. This allows you to have more detail at a glance of your entire board, and not have to click on a card to see who it is assigned to, or when it is due.

You could also add a Checklist to your card which updates depending on how complete it is, and also shows progress on the list detail. I've created a checklist of items for creation for the NPC Shops. I then clicked "Attachment" to show the attachment dialog. Following that, I uploaded the drawn (hehe) bananas, and checked bananas off the list. You'll see the card gets updated in the open-view and on the list-view also.

 

The last thing I'm going to share information on is Labels.
Labels are a way to "tag" cards as belonging to a particular group to help stay organised. You can customise the color and the name of labels and apply as many as you would like to as many cards as you like;

 

This allows you to have very organised and detailed Lists, such as:

 

Which can then be filtered by label, by member, or by date:

There are many, many other things on Trello, however those are the Core functionality. Let's not even start on Power Ups which can be used to integrate Trello into many different platforms. I would definitely recommend Trello, and if you do decide to start using it, please go via this link which will give me a referral :- https://trello.com/natewiggett1/recommend


Please let me know what you think, and if this guide is helpful. Any questions, post them here and I will add them to this post with their answer

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