Assessing Trello mobile app
Asked by Michael:

Hello,

We are a small electrician company trying to move away from paper lists as they are to easy to loose or get damaged. As a former it guy I got the task to find a digital solution. Trello seems like a good option for us as it is free and seems to work well.

So we would like to ask the community how active is Trello listening to requests from their users?

How active are they developing the hole system? Web app, mobile app and so on..

How fast do they fix global and local issues? Global as in affects all users, local as in is a problem only affecting my setup.

One issue we have already is with the mobile app for android and the list view in a board. We will have many lists and the constant side scrolling both to get around and to create new lists is just not going to work for us. We need a vertical list and the add new list needs to be a button or a menu item for fast access when our guys are in the field which is every day, all day.

Any help is much appreciated.

Thanks

/Michael


Answers:
author: Michael Pryor
body: My biased opinion is our mobile apps are one of the best productivity mobile apps around. As far as fixing global/local issues - it depends. Given there are millions and millions of Trello users, it isn't feasible for us to prioritize each individual person's issue, but we do listen and take notice of most things. (Hi! I'm the co-founder of Trello).

The left to right lists is core to how Trello works though. If this is a non-starter for you, I'm not sure if it is going to be the best visual tool for your needs. On my phone (iOS) it's pretty easy to scroll around - then again, maybe you shouldn't have as many lists and should be making more use of checklists on the back of cards (instead of having each card represent a task).

comments: author: Michael
body: Hello Michael

Thank you for taking time to answer our questions.

About the global/local issue is that global affect all users so what timeframe are Trello using to fix such an issue? When I was in IT, most companies would drop everything if there was an issue that meant users were cut off from using part of or all of it. I must assume Trello has this mindset also?

For local issues, that would be some bug only affecting our boards.. We have been using asana for a couple of months now but that is a joke.. The support is very helpful but rarely fixes anything. Just today as we all got back from summer holiday a big project I am on I was in the field and could not get to our images. Needless to say that just can't happen as we are on the clock and we can't have the customers pay because our backend is not working. I also assume this is something Trello would try to fix as fast as possible? Anything less is just not serious enough for us.

I don't know what you mean by "on the back of cards"..

What we would do was to have each List represent an address. Since lists can hold all the things we need, tasks, attachments, dates, descriptions, we didn't feel the need to have Boards as projects, even though that is how Trello was meant to be used.

As a former programmer I fail to understand why anyone would limit users to get the most out of a program, when we are talking about a simple view. If it is because it would mean too high of a load on your servers from free users I can understand putting the option on a paying tire but not wanting to improve the software simply because that is not what "I" envisioned is a bit short sighted if I may be blunt. Of cause you can't go add features based on all your customers wishes but surely you can see that the view is not designed for a high amount of lists. Again, why must we be forced to use it only as envisioned?

Sincerely Michael


author: Michael Pryor
body: Based on the density of information you need, and the requirements, I think Jira Work Management would probably suit your needs best:

<https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/work-management>

(same company, different tool that likely fits your vision better)


author: Michael
body: Seems like a better fit..

Thank you for your time. We will try jira next.