- [Scott] Trello does not make it easy for us to export the information within our boards. I could come up here to menu. I could select export as a CSV file but when I open up this file, is this really helpful? I mean, I guess this is my entire board but I don't know what to do with this.
Well, what if you could not only export your Trello board into a spreadsheet, but also have it sync both ways? Well, in this video I'm going to show you how to set up this type of sync and also why you should consider adding this as a part of your workflow.
Hello everyone. Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.
First things first, why would you want to set up a two-way sync between your Trello board and a spreadsheet? Well, depending on the way that you or members of your team work, you may just be more comfortable viewing this information within a spreadsheet.
And of course, it's especially helpful if you want to apply some formulas or other data when it comes to the information here within your Trello board.
But perhaps the most helpful reason for setting up this two-way sync is to be able to share certain pieces information with others without having to add them to your Trello board.
As a Trello user, you recognize that anyone that you add to your board has access to every single card. You can't limit a particular list or a particular card by criteria. But by setting up such a sync, I can share this information with anyone that I want.
They are up to date with what's going on within that Trello board. And in addition, they can come in here and change cards themselves if they want to change a due date or change a time estimate or change really any other field that I include here, and it will automatically be synced back to my Trello board.
So what is going on and how can you set this up for your needs? Well, to make this happen, we are using a power up from Unito. To add this Unito power up, all you need to do is select power ups, go to add power ups and search for sheets as in Google Sheets.
And the very first result here is Google Sheets plus Trello. Two way sync. Once you've installed this power up, you will see the Unito sync option here amongst your other power ups.
Now by selecting this option, you can open up the Unito sync menu without having to leave your Trello board. But once you've set up your unido account, I would recommend that you access this screen from a separate tab.
You can log in directly from Unito and have access to the exact same screen. I find this is a little more convenient so I can toggle back and forth between these tabs. Let me close that menu here.
And so here I can adjust and use my settings and here I can see what is going on within my Trello board. Now, Unito is a leader in connecting productivity and project management tools together.
When I select on connect a new tool here you can see the full list of all of the tools in which you can connect together. So whether it's from a project management tool to a CRM or syncing your calendar to other database tools you can do all of it here within Unito, but in our example we're going to keep it between our Trello board and within a Google sheet.
So here is the sync that I have set up. Here is the example board cards and I have set up a two-way sync with my sheet. Now if I click on this, we can go under the hood and see exactly what is going on.
So here, if I select edit tools, you can see that I can choose any of the boards that I want on the left hand side and on the right hand side I can choose which ones I want to sync to. Next up, we can choose if we want to sync in just one direction or in both directions. So there may be a use case where you just want to
feed your spreadsheets certain information but in this example, I find it's most helpful
if we have information going back and forth. So no matter where you update that card whether it's within Trello or within your spreadsheet everything will stay up to date. Now the third step that we need to select are the rules created.
And what this means is which cards are going to be synced which ones are going to be sent to our Google spreadsheet. So here we have a combination of if and and commands.
So if a card in this board is open, meaning it's not archived and the member is myself, we want to then create a matching row in Google Sheets. So this is very important.
I can add as many rules as I like. This is exactly where we can filter out certain cards and I can only share certain cards with others. If I want, I can select to add a new rule, and I can say and the label is, let's say, medium priority.
So I can add and layer on as many rules as I want so that the things that appear within my sheet are only a fraction of what is going on in the board. And then down below we have a rule for the other direction meaning that if a row in Google sheet, and I haven't added any rules here, we want to create a matching card in Trello and keep them in sync.
And if I'm creating brand new cards from the Google sheet side, I want them to appear in my ideas list. This is a list which is located within my Trello board. So with these rules set up, I have the freedom to create and also edit that information wherever I am.
Lastly, and perhaps the most important step is mapping our fields together. So let's select this icon. In this example, I have mapped six out of a total of 23 fields, meaning there are 23 total fields within Trello in which I could map to my Google sheet but I've only decided to map six.
Remember that first example, that huge dump of CS information? That's not useful to anyone here. You can choose exactly what you want
and only what you want on the Google Sheets side. So down below here, you can see everything from the title, description, label, due date. The link to card is just one way, and this is referring to the link directly to that Trello card. So it only makes sense
that it's going to be displayed on the Google Sheets side. And then here is my estimated time in minutes. And yes, this sync works with all of your custom fields
so you can include all of that quantitative data and have it match over on the same side. And if I need to go ahead and add any new mapping, I can just come up here and select the add mapping button.
It will give me two new dropdowns so I can select which in my Trello side will be mapped to that on the sheet side. Now the only other thing that we need in order to make this work is to add two special columns here on the Google Sheets side. And Unito has made it super easy for us to do so.
Here you can see my first column is Unito id and my last column is called Last Modified. Now, no, I didn't have to add these manually here Within my Google Sheets extension, I can select the Unito extension and select getting started. And with just a single click, it will insert those two columns in this sheet or any other sheet where
you want this synced to occur automatically. You must have the rest of your information in between these two. This is required, so Unito knows which rows to back to Trello. With our setup now complete, let's take a look at a few real world examples.
So first, to make sure that our sync is working let's take a look at how many items we have here. You can see that the last row is row number 13. I want to see if we can populate this next row by adding a new card on Trello.
So here within my Trello account, I'm going to come up here to the task list. I'm going to add a new card, and this is a new task created in Trello. So I'm going to hit enter. And at this case, nothing is going to sync over until I am assigned to that card.
Remember, we told Unito that we only want to have cards where I'm assigned to appear within our Google Sheets.
Now, when we jump back into our Google sheet here you can see on row number 14 is our new card complete with the title, the due date, and the label, which is assigned to it.
And remember, you'll always have access to that direct link at just a single click here in this link to card row. But let's see if our sync is working in both directions.
You can see that there is no description for this card and I have not given it a time estimate. So I'm going to give it a time estimate of 60. In this case, in the description, I'm going to say let's do this in August.
And then as a result of this description I'm going to come here to the due date and I'm going to choose the August 31st, 2023
as the new due date. Let's jump back to Trello and see if everything is working. Here at the bottom of my task list, we have that same card but now the due date is August 31st. And if I open it, here's the description and the estimated time is added as well.
So a perfect sync between my Trello board and the specific cards that I want to see within my spreadsheet. So if you want to export your Trello boards in a more meaningful way or share information without having to add someone to your boards,
Unito may be the best solution for you, to get started, simply add the power up to your boards or go to unito.io. And if you enjoyed this tutorial, you'll probably like the video which is being recommended to you right now.
Thank you so much for watching. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
