Trello is a fantastic tool for managing so many different things, but Trello does not have a built-in form builder. So in this video, I'm going to show you how to create an amazing looking form that syncs directly to your Trello criteria.
Benefits of forms with Trello
Hello, everyone. Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And here I have a sample Trello board called a Sales Pipeline, and my very first list is called New Requests.
But all of the cards that you see here, none of them were input by me, nor did I copy and paste anything. All of these have appeared via a form which I've made available.
And better yet, if I open up one of these, this label, this due date, the description here, and this email address all have come directly from that form.
So I now have all of this great form information that I can take action on and no longer do I need to receive this type of information in my email or go to some spreadsheet to find it later. So how did I set this up and how can you set it up in just a matter of minutes?
Using Jotform to build a form
Well, I'm using one of my favorite form builders, Jotform, to make it happen. And best of all, you can do this absolutely for free. Now, Jotform is a very powerful form builder, but it's also very easy to use.
So let's go ahead and create a form together and then show you how you can connect it directly to any Trello board. After signing into Jotform, I just need to select create a form. Now we have a few different options to get started.
We could begin with a blank form or we could import a form as well, but I'm going to choose the template option here. And what I'm actually going to be looking for is the form layout, because there's an awful lot of different layouts, but I especially like the card layout within Jotform.
And I'll show you in just a moment. I'm going to select this one. You can select preview on any one of these. But as you can see, as I hit start, you can see how sleek it's going to be.
As people are entering in information, they will immediately be brought to the next question so they can answer these things one at a time and not get lost with some kind of massive vertical scroll. So I'm going to come up here and say use template.
And remember, everything here is absolutely editable. So I'm going to come up here and I'm going to remove this image and I'm going to upload a file instead. And let's go ahead and select my logo. So now I've got my logo here.
Next, let's go ahead and change this text because this is just giving me a description. I can just say something like, "Please fill out this form for more detail," something along those lines. Now of course, we're going to come down and edit a few of the questions that we have listed down below.
Customizing form appearance
But just before we do so, why don't we make some changes to both the colors and of course, the background here? So I'm going to come up here to the right hand side and click on Form Designer.
Now there's a number of different themes in which we can choose from, but I'm going to select on custom. And yes, I want to remove that current image, and I'm going to select upload a file.
And I've got something here from my computer, which I think is going to make things stand out a lot better, really help people focus in on those questions. I like that a lot.
And then down below, we can also change other things, so for example, that button color, green is not really in line with my own button color. So I'm going to come up here and let's pick something more sort of in that purplish range.
This first option is just for the welcome. And then down below, this will change all the other buttons on the screen. And I think that makes it look a lot sharper, a lot more in line with my brand.
So now that I'm happy with the display, with the style, let's come down and start editing some of the questions. Now, anything here you simply just need to click on and you can either edit or remove it.
This first section here just gives me an opportunity to give some more detail. So I'm actually going to go ahead and hit remove. I want them to see that welcome screen here. And then I want to go directly into them entering information.
And down below, maybe I'm not interested in their phone number, so I'm going to delete that as well. But I am going to add some other fields.
Adding input fields
And here on the left hand side, I can hit plus. And this is really where Jotform stands out from other form builders, cause there are so many different options available to you, and we haven't even gotten to the payments and the widgets.
We're not going to use that in today's example. But in this case, I think what I'm really looking for is I want to include a dropdown. So I'm going to bring a dropdown here below the email.
And then I also want to give them the option to pick a date. So up here, I'm going to select the date picker, and I'm going to put that in here as well. So I've got a few simple questions, name, email, type a question, we're going to come back to that, a date, and then requesting information more.
So with these new fields that we've entered, I'm going to say, what are you interested in? What service are you interested in? So this is my opportunity to ask them a question and give them a few different options.
Now, if we jump back to our Trello board, you can see that I offer coaching, product launch help, and also auditing services. So all I need to do here within my Jotform form is give them those three options.
So if I do it in the same order, coaching, auditing, and the last one is product launch. I'm just going to save my changes here. And now when I set up the Trello integration, whatever they select when they fill out this form is going to appear in my Trello board.
Here's a date picker. I better give this a title. I'm going to ask them, when would you like to get started? That's going to be the question for this one here. And again, it's just a simple date picker for them.
And then lastly, in this description field, maybe I'll say something like, anything else you'd like to share? So if they'd like to ask a follow-up question or anything else, I've given them the opportunity here.
Connect Jotform to Trello
So we have our questions, we've got our form. The last thing that we need to do is now make the connection with our Trello board. And for that, we need to click here on settings.
Now under the settings menu on the left hand side, we want to come down here to integrations.
And here you can see the long list of many different kinds of integrations that are available to us. Now if you can't find the app that you're looking for, all you need to do is just come up here and do a quick search.
So yes, we are looking for our Trello integration. So I'm going to select that option here. And all you'll need to do is authenticate your Trello account so Jotform can send the information directly to it. And once you've given permission, you'll need to tell it if you want to create a card, which is what we want, or update an existing card.
We're going to select that first one here in terms of create a card. Next up, we need to pick the particular board. We're going to select that Sales Pipeline and then pick the particular list on that board.
And we want it to appear in that very first one, which is called new requests. Lastly, and this is probably the most important stage, is where we are going to match our fields.
So the things that we have asked for within our form, where do we want them to appear within our Trello board? Now, on the left hand side, this represents the name of the Trello card.
And here on the right hand side, we just need to tell it which of those fields, which of those questions do we want to appear. Now it makes the most sense, I think, to make it the name of the individual, right?
When I'm asking for their name, that's who I want it to appear on the front of the card. So I'm going to select name, but let's continue down and add a new field. So next up we want to take a look at, let's say the due date, right? So what's going to appear of the due date?
Well, obviously it's going to be when would you like to get started, right?
That's the option we want there. So when would you like to get started?
We want it to sync with that due date. Let's add another field. In this case, let's take a look at those labels, remember?
And that's where we want to pick the dropdown. What service are you interested in? So I'm going to select that. And then the last one, the one that we haven't picked yet is the email.
Now you'll notice that you are of course are limited to certain areas of Trello, and of course, you can never use the same one twice. So for the email address, I'm actually going to select the attachments area because it's going to create it as a link anyhow, which might be helpful.
So I can just click on it and immediately start to email them. And one more here actually that I forgot, we're going to put this in the description is the last question.
Anything else that you'd like to share? Now it doesn't matter what order you set this up in. You can see that this actually isn't the same order that I created the form. That makes no difference at all.
And if you want to remove any of them, you just need to come over here to the right hand side and select that X or make a change. But everything here looks great to me.
So I'm going to say complete the integration, and it says it's ready. I'm going to click finish here. And you can see there's this little check mark beside our Trello integration letting us know that this is active and that the integration is working.
The last thing we need to do is come over here to publish, and now we are ready to test things out.
Viewing the form in action So we can copy this link here.
We can put it anywhere that we want. I'm just going to select open in a new tab and look at how more inviting this form is than your standard Google Form or other forms that have a long vertical scroll bar.
So I'm going to say start. Let's go ahead and enter in some just test information here. I'm going to say Jane Doe and hit next. Then let's put in just a test email address and hit next. I love how the user can focus on just one question at a time.
And down below, it shows them how many different stages or how many different things they will be asked, and they can always go back if they need to go back. That's really slick too. I really like the way that, that looks.
It might even feel even better for those who are visiting your form on mobile. What service are you interested in? Well, let's say that I am interested in the auditing service. I'm going to choose that one here. I'm going to say next.
When would you like to get started? They can either enter in a date, but it's probably a lot easier just to pick the little calendar here. I want to get started by the 12th. I'm going to hit next. And anything else? I'm going to say no.
I look forward to working with you. Something along those lines.
We're going to put this in just so we can see what it looks like in Trello. I'm going to hit submit. And again, nice and clean and crisp. And if we go to our Trello board now, here at the very bottom, almost instantly is Jane Doe.
This is the form that we just filled in. And if I open it up, we've got all of those details. We've got auditing. That's what she said she was interested in. We've got the date, December 12th. Here is what she put at the very end.
No, I look forward to working with you. And here is her email address. So no longer do I need to wait for this information to hit my email inbox. No longer do I need to look at a spreadsheet or some other form and copy and paste this information.
I can now sort this. I can reach out to her and move her along within my Trello process.
It is slick, it is fast, and it can make your life so much easier. And if you're not already a Jotform user, you can get started with their free forever plan at Jotform.com, or click the link in the description down below.
Thank you so much for watching today's video. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
