How our design team uses Trello to streamline productivity
Tags: productivity, design, agile
Published: 2019-12-18 14:11:51

![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1500/1*p_U3uPzkg31EpGCUSglzOA.jpeg)

If you’re a UX designer for a small agency, you are used to wearing many hats. You work across multiple projects and assume various roles, which makes the job very exciting but also super stressful. The more balls in the air, the easier it is to drop one.

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2000/0*VI9nf8kZSGkmw6r_)

I work for a small consulting agency and we use Trello to manage all our tasks. Why do we do this? Because Trello is easy-to-use and crazy powerful; there is a plethora of integrations available to help streamline your workflow.

We have a Trello *mission* board per product team and on that board we keep all the cards we are working on in the current sprint. As a designer working on multiple teams, things got complicated fast. As someone who is always looking for ways to streamline processes, I knew I had to find a way to minimize the noise and maximize the work done.

So I created one board…the board to rule them all! 💪

This new master board would provide an overview of all the tasks the design team (3 of us) had to work on across products, and would also include a way for us to manage those pesky *“5-minute”* tasks that come in via email.

Here is my how-to guide to creating a design team Trello board:

*(Please note that I will be referring to members of the design team as [unicorns](https://miro.medium.com/max/700/1*TIL2ZPN83lgVJYabFe9PQg.png) *🦄*)*

## 1. Create Custom Fields

The name may mislead you into thinking this is a native Trello feature, but [Custom Fields](https://blog.trello.com/trello-custom-fields) is actually a Trello Power-Up. It allows you to add dropdown menus, checkboxes and additional fields to your cards.

As a company, we use Custom Fields on our cards across projects to add data like size estimates, product owner and project area. For my new master board, I wanted a custom *from *field to tell me which board a card has come from.

## 2. Setup Butler Rules

[Butler](https://help.trello.com/article/1198-an-intro-to-butler) is a powerhouse of automation. In their own words, they “supercharge your Trello workflow”. The best part about using Butler is that it’s super easy-to-use - you don’t need any || or &&’s.

Here are a few rules I setup:

* When a unicorn is added to a Trello card, copy that card onto our master board and [connect the cards](https://blog.trello.com/related-cards-related-boards).

* When a card is moved into list X, move the connected card into list Y (or X if your boards all have the same lists/lanes)

* Add the custom* from* field, mentioned above, to each new card and populate the value with the corresponding board name.

![Example of Butler rule combining bullet point 1 & 3](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*0BOxsBJ2L7whyKugLhGTaw.png)*Example of Butler rule combining bullet point 1 & 3*

Another cool feature of Butler is that you can create *Card buttons* that do specific tasks. For e.g. I created a button called ‘Done’ that would move a card to the ‘Done’ column (it’s very complicated, I don’t expect everyone to understand)

## 3. Connect your Email

It doesn’t matter how well you train your clients, you are bound to receive a few emails requesting changes (i.e. work to be done). In order to keep track of ALL our work, we needed the ability to forward emails to our new Trello board as cards.

Trello has a built-in email to board feature, did you know that? 🔥

You can find it here: Menu → More → **Email-to-Board Settings**

![Trello’s Email to Board feature](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*4JihhtLdzbF8Xnx6LFqeAQ.png)*Trello’s Email to Board feature*

This allows us to forward in emails to the board as cards in a specific list. Super useful! But wait, there’s more…

There is a new Trello Power-Up on the scene called [SendBoard](https://trello.com/power-ups/5d4c0b80452f202510cce4cc/sendboard) that not only connects an email to a board, but gives you the ability to reply to emails in Trello as well. Win-win! 🚀

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*bxmo7YFnaWlJZMWxyb_ylQ.gif)

You set up a custom board address, similar to Trello’s feature, but the cool part is that you can connect your own custom email-address so when you reply the client will have no idea that you sent the email from within Trello.

## 4. Utilize the power of the Trello network

There are so many great Trello Power-Ups out there to enhance productivity and streamline your workflow. Every team has varying requirements and uses different tools but it’s worth investigating if an app your team uses can be incorporated into Trello, for e.g. we use Github’s Trello integration to link PR’s and branches directly to a card and we use Harvest to track our time, without having to leave Trello.

[Here](https://blog.trello.com/the-big-list-of-free-trello-power-ups-for-everyone)’s a list of some free ones to get you started.

## We’re almost there…

Using the above Power-Ups and integrations have substantially increased our team’s productivity but there are still improvements to be made on this solution.

I would love to be able to auto-send an email to clients once a card moves to list X.

I would also like a feature similar to Trello’s ‘Connect cards’ but one that actually linked one card across boards, instead of copying and attaching the related card.

Have any other tips on how to streamline processes with Trello? Did I miss a great Power-Up? Let me know in the comments… 😃

![Bye and thanks for reading!](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2000/0*eFa-naaPlit4jeq6.gif)*Bye and thanks for reading!*