There are over 100 different power-ups available for your Trello boards.
But have you ever gone through this list, thought that you found something perfect, only to discover that it had an additional cost?
Well, in today's video, I wanna show you five of my favorite Trello power-ups that are absolutely free.
But first, I'd like to thank today's sponsor, SaneBox.
SaneBox is the AI tool for your email inbox.
Whether you use Gmail, Office 365, or iCloud, SaneBox provides powerful filtering to allow you to get rid of all that email clutter and allow you to focus on the messages that are really important to you.
If you'd like to try SaneBox for yourself and receive a special offer, go to sanebox.com/simpletivity.
So let's get to our list, and the first one that I always recommend, no matter what type of board that you are using Trello for, is Custom Fields.
Custom Fields
Custom Fields is an absolute necessity, no matter what you're using Trello for.
Here, for example, if I open up this card, you can see that I have two different Custom Fields that I'm using.
I've created a dropdown here called priority, and here I have a start date as well.
This can be really, really helpful, especially in this priority list, because I know a lot of us may want to use and save these labels for other purposes, such as departments as you see here.
I can do that and create my priority level here that also can have color coding.
So if I need to demote this from high to medium, it can change to this yellow color here.
And, of course, I can turn this off altogether if I want to.
But let's turn it back to medium here for a second and show that it actually appears on the front of the card as well.
I know that start date is another custom field which is very helpful for many users because, of course, the due date, the primary due date, for any Trello card is what's going to trigger notifications and trigger other things that we are looking at on a day-to-day basis.
But sometimes, it can be helpful to record that start date.
Or maybe you'll have multiple dates that you'd like to record and reorder in any way that you like.
Number two on my list has to do with lists, and in particular with list limits.
List Limits
The second one on our list is actually called List Limits, and it can be a really powerful one to make sure that you don't have too many things going on in a particular list.
So let's take a look at this testing list, for example, and let's say that I really need to keep this to about a maximum of three. Otherwise, we're gonna have big issues, and we're gonna have a big backlog, and people are gonna be angry at us.
So what do I do? Do I just need to keep a count every once in a while? Do I need to just come in here and manually count up my cards? What if I have 100 different cards? What if you're dealing with a very, very long list?
Well, this is exactly where List Limits comes into place.
At the top, once you've enabled List Limits, at the top of your list, you will see an additional setting here called Set List Limit.
Now by default, of course, you're gonna have none on any of your lists because you don't have to apply this to every list. Maybe there's only specific lists that you'd like to add this to.
By selecting this option, I can say, let's have a maximum of three cards in this list. I'm gonna hit save, and now you can see at the top, I've got a number.
You might actually wanna use List Limits just for the purpose of seeing the number of how many cards you have in a given list.
But if I add another card, let's add, let's just call it New Card, okay?
So now I'm at three, I'm at three of three.
What if I move this card over here? What happens here if we go over that three?
Ho, we've got a color change, something visual, something that is hard to ignore!
Now I can see that yeah, we've got problems. We're four of three. We need to address this backlog.
So again, you can come in here, you can change and adjust these limits as necessary, and you certainly don't need to apply them for every single list on your board.
Maybe there's just one, or maybe there's just two key lists where this would come into play.
As soon as I move one of these cards over here and out of the way, I should say, into its next phase, hey, that's perfect. We're three of three. That color goes away.
So you might wanna check out List Limits.
Number three on my list has to do with cost and has to do with tracking financial figures, whether it's a budget, whether it's expenses, however you are managing or perhaps working with money here within Trello, and this power-up is called Costello.
Costello
Now what Costello does is that it gives you an additional field within all of your cards to add a cost.
So, for example, if I open up this card here, you can see on the power-up side below Custom Fields and this other power-up I've enabled, I've got something called Total Cost, and here it's labeled at 500.
One of the things that I like about the Costello power-up is that they actually haven't indicated a traditional dollar sign. So whether you're working in pounds, in euros, no matter what type of currency that you're working in, you don't have to worry about having something that maybe doesn't align (laughs) with that number.
So here, I can enter in a new cost. Actually, I underestimated it. It's not 500 anymore; it's actually 900. So here I have that Total Cost information right here within that card.
And you'll also see that it appears on the front of the cards as well. Here's one with a total cost of 300.
Why don't we add a cost to this one as well? Let's add a new cost here. I'm gonna say add total cost, and let's make this one $250, for example.
So that's great and all. I've tracked the cost, and I can see it at the front of my card, but it gets better. Here in the top of the right-hand corner of the screen, you can see that there's a Total Cost summary.
So what it's actually doing, it's actually summing up all of that cost data across the whole board. So no matter how many different cards, and especially how many different cards that have this cost data, you can see that total up here in the right-hand corner, making sure that you stay within budget or hit your targets, whatever that number means.
But it gets better. If I click on this, I can see the three different values here, and in my example, I've got three different cards for what that value is. But I can also summarize it by label or summarize it by column.
So if I click on Summary by Column, here you can see oh, yeah, I've got the most in the queue. I've got some in Development and Testing. And so if you want to be able to see a snapshot of where the cost data is, either by column or by label, you can do so with Costello.
Now the next one on my list is something that's relatively new to Trello. It's only been introduced in the past year, but it can really be used in so many different ways, and that is the Map power-up.
You can see here at the top of my screen, I already have it enabled. I can click on this and show a map of everything here that has a given location.
So, for example, if I click up here on this map, you can see that I've got a few different things here. I've got cards associated with areas in the Bay Area.
But before we dive into this map view, let's go back to the card level. So here you can see some of my cards have this little push pin icon because this map does integrate directly with Google Maps.
And if I click on this one, you can see I've got a small snapshot here, here of the Googleplex. Not only do I have this miniature map here, but if I want to, I can go in and change that address. If I click this location here, the great thing is is that it just gives me a search bar here, right?
So instead of having to know the exact address, I can just say, well, what about Facebook? Let's put that in there. And now I've got my new address. I just click on the results, and now I've got that new address located here.
And I can click on the map if I want to to get a larger view of what's going on there and then go back to the card, but the nice thing is is that, when I click this Map button at the top of the board, not only do I get this big snapshot here but I can actually click on these different push pins.
So, for example, I can click on this one here, click on the card, I can work within this card, and then go back out. And now I can click on this one down below, I can see what's going on with this card, I can click in it, I can make a few adjustments, make a few changes, and then come back out.
I can actually work within this Map view for a while if I want to.
So think about it. Could it be client visits? Could it be something you're doing? Maybe you're visiting a particular location. Perhaps you're involved in real estate in some manner. Whatever makes sense to you with location, this can be a great way of doing so.
So don't forget to check out the Map power-up.
Now the very last one on my list today is yes, just like the previous four, absolutely free, and it has to do with activity, in particular, tracking your activity.
Activity
And how long you are spending on particular cards.
Let's take a look at this Testing list a little bit closer. You can see on this first one here, I've got something with a stopwatch. It says 29 minutes, and then I've got another here with a slightly different stopwatch icon, and this one's all in red, and it says 14:14.
So what exactly is this telling me?
Before we dive in deeper, I wanna let you know that the Activity power-up uses a 24-hour clock. The reason why this says 14:14 is that it represents 2:14 PM, meaning that I started the timer on this card at 2:14. This one's still active, which is why it's displayed in red, while the other card shows I've spent 29 minutes on it, but the timer is not currently running.
Let's go to this active one. If I open up this card, you can see down below that 38 minutes have passed since I first initiated this timer. That's what's going on here. If I want to pause the timer, I just need to click it. When I click it, it turns green, so now the timer's no longer running.
Over here on the right-hand side, it shows me the total time spent on this card. If I click on it, it breaks down the activity among different board members. In my example, it's only myself, but if other team members were working on this card and initiated the timer, we could see the breakdown between multiple members.
If I want to start it again, it's as simple as clicking it, and now the timer will continue. You can see when I paused it, it gave me a few quick buttons. Maybe I started work on this and forgot to start the timer, so I can just add five minutes or add 15 minutes if I need to. It also has an edit icon, so I can update the total time or even reset the timer if I want to.
This Activity power-up, although simple, can be a great way to manage and track how long you've been spending on each of your cards.
Well, I'd love to hear from you next. Number one, what was your favorite of the five power-ups I showed you today? And number two, what did I leave off this list, or which Trello power-ups are helping you the most right now? Be sure to share that with me and with others because they'll find great value in the things that are benefiting 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.
