As more people, teams, and organizations adopt remote work setups and processes, the need for strong digital tools that sustain productivity and foster collaboration will also see an increase. In a distributed environment, you can’t swivel around in your fancy Herman Miller chair to ask your co-worker to help out with the quarterly presentation or even know who is working on what by a simple glance around the office.
Digital collaboration tools like Trello and Slack simulate this in-office experience online, creating a virtual workplace for teams of all types. Everyone on a team and in management can get a full view into who’s working on what and with whom, across all company projects
Trello was built with remote teams in mind (and we’ve operated remotely as a company for nearly a decade!). From meetings to project planning and every team-building activity in between, Trello is full of treasures and features that make working remotely together genuinely enjoyable.
Whether you’re a new user or an avid fan, these new and core features of the platform will transform the way you work on your tasks and with your team.
Your Productivity Savior: Keyboard Shortcuts
When you’re in a Trello board, try out these popular and lesser-known keyboard shortcuts in order to save some valuable clicking time and prevent the dreaded charley horse in your finger:
- B — Access Board menu. See all your boards from a bird’s eye view. Navigate & hit Enter to open a board.
- N — Add a new card to a list.
- Q — See only your cards. This allows you to quickly filter to just show the Trello cards that are assigned to you on a board.
- F — Use this to easily access the filter feature so you can filter the board and cards by keywords, labels, members, and due dates.
- D — when viewing a card, use this shortcut to make a due date. It will open the due date picker and navigate to a date.
- C — Archive a card. Clean up that clutter!
- SPACE – Assign yourself to a card. This shortcut will add you to that particular card/task.
- ? — Want to see even more shortcuts? Just hit “?” on your board to open up the many shortcuts you can use in Trello.
Make Collaboration Colorful With Card Covers
You can make Trello boards and cards even more visual thanks to card covers and colors. You can upload your own photos or use the Unsplash Gallery to set a front cover display on your Trello cards.
All you have to do is click on the button named “Cover” on the card back, and then choose whether you want the attachment to display above the card name (how it worked previously), or as the full height of the card:
On a remote team, you may not meet or know everyone in your company. This is where a Team Directory board can help put a face to every name. Each list on the board is a department and each team member gets their own card with the card cover as their photo. The card allows every team member to give the company details on where they live and their hobbies.
Align Your Team On Tasks With Advanced Checklists
Trello is a visual and organized way to plan out projects and tasks but sometimes your project boards can get cluttered with too many cards. When you want to get into the granular details of a task or have several due dates and people involved to accomplish said task, Advanced Checklists allows you to clearly map out these moving parts.
With a Premium plan, you have access to this feature. Simply add a checklist to any card, write in the tasks as items on the list, and assign a team member and due date right there on the task. This gives everyone on the team a clear understanding of who is tackling what and when these subtasks need to be reviewed or completed.
You can also see your assigned checklist items if you have the Calendar Power-Up enabled on your boards. No task can slip through the cracks when you and your team use Advanced Checklists!
Build Better Workflows With Butler Automations
If there is one Trello feature that will quite literally change the way you work, it’s Butler.
If you get bogged down with routine actions like checking due dates or moving cards to the ‘Done’ list (but who doesn’t love that confetti feature?), then it’s time to step up your automation game.
Butler allows you to set up automations, rules, and commands on your Trello boards in order to cut down on repetitive work. Best of all—Butler doesn’t require advanced coding skills. Automations are easily created using natural language. It’s like productivity Mad Libs!
To add Butler’s powerful automations to your boards simply click the Butler icon in the board menu and begin giving your board Butler-like things to do. You can create these types of automations:
- Rules that are instantly triggered by a set action.
- Buttons that run an action on a card or across an entire board in a single click.
- Due Date commands that run in relation to approaching or past due dates.
- Calendar commands that run at set calendar intervals.
For example, you can set a rule that when a Trello card is moved to the ‘Done’ list, the due date is automatically checked, all items in the checklist are crossed off, and all members are removed from the card.
You can also use card buttons to set up a variety of aspects on your Trello cards. For instance, a card button, when clicked, could move that card to a specific list, add a due date for two days in the future, add a board member, and apply a specified label.
There’s so much to uncover with Trello through Butler— it’s definitely worth the time to explore, test, and automate. The more you use it, the more it learns your behavior to make tailored recommendations thanks to its AI capabilities. You can get started with these 5 other easy Butler rules.
Butler is available to all Trello users, and Butler on Premium and Enterprise comes with even more advanced features and automation capabilities.
Dark Mode!
When you’re at peak productivity, your eyes can still feel the strain of your effort. You can enable dark mode in the Trello app for iOS and Android. So the next time a great idea strikes in the middle of the night or you just need a break from the traditional format on mobile, you can enjoy Trello at all times of the day.
To enable dark mode in Trello, simply go to the device’s settings and toggle it on in order to switch to dark mode automatically. On Android devices, you can also toggle dark mode on/off from within the Trello app settings.
Uncover Trello Treasures And Many More Features
Productivity and effective collaboration are always a work-in-progress but with some time and dedication, you can set yourself up to do great work from anywhere in the world. Trello is full of fun and powerful features to take your work to the next level. Time to dig a little deeper and find yourself in an efficiency goldmine.
Good or bad, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Find us on Twitter (@trello)!