Whether you use Trello for team collaboration or for your own personal projects, adding checklists is a great way to enhance your use of Trello.
Today I want to show you how to add checklists and how you can repurpose those checklists, especially if you have a process that you want to replicate if you want to repeat time and time again.
So to add a checklist, simply click on a Trello card and on the right-hand side, under "Add," you will see "Checklist."
Here you can give the checklist a name, or you can go with the default. I'm just going to go with "Default Checklist" for now, and you can see a checklist appears below the description area.
Now I can just start typing the steps or the process that I want to follow in my checklist. Just by hitting Enter, I can add the items in my checklist.
If I'm unhappy with the order that I've displayed them, it's just drag-and-drop. I can reorder my checklist any way that I like. I was happy with my initial order, so I'm going to go back to that.
And immediately I can start using this checklist. Let's say I've already contacted the client, and I've made the appointment. You'll see Trello gives you a nice visual indicator here at the top—a percentage of the amount of things that you've completed within this checklist.
This comes in very handy, especially when you have a very long checklist. Let's say you have seven or perhaps even more items in this checklist. It also gives you the ability to hide completed items, which is great. It can keep your display here on the Trello card nice and clean.
In parenthesis, I can take a quick glance at how many items I've already checked off. But if I have a lengthy checklist, I can just see the things that I have yet to complete.
Now when I close this card, you can see there's a nice visual indicator on the front of the card as to how many things I've completed, how many are yet to complete. There's a little checklist icon followed by a fraction—two out of three are complete on this card.
Now when I complete everything in this checklist, not only does the status bar go to green and show 100%, but on the front of the card, it gives me a nice visual indicator. It changes to green, and here you can see the contrast between a card just above, which is not yet complete, and the one that is 100% complete.
So again, I can take a quick glance and know that I've completed everything in that process.
Now let's say the checklist that I just created is something I want to replicate. It's something I want to use again. So I've got another new client. When I click on that card, let's say I want to add that same checklist.
I hit the "Checklist" button, and below there's a "Copy Items From" option. Here I can see I've got two different checklists. I've got one I created called "Meeting" under my potential client card, and here's the one we just created called "Checklist."
If I select that one and hit "Add," boom, I've got the exact same process. The exact same checklist appears on this card. I don't have to re-enter anything. I don't have to start from scratch. Immediately I can start using the items in this checklist.
One last feature that I love about checklists in Trello is that if I copy this card—maybe there's another part of this card that I want to replicate—if I go and copy this card, you'll notice that I've completed two out of three.
If I hit "Copy," let's say I'm going to call this one "New Client Three." It gives me the option if I want to keep the checklist or not. I'm going to say yes, I'm going to say "Create Card."
It properly resets the checklist. Here you'll see I'm now back down to zero out of three, which I believe is the right functionality. I don't want to copy the steps here. This is a brand-new card. This is a brand-new process or project.
However, I'm using this card, and I want the checklist to be reset, and you can see I'm back down to zero. I can now follow this process in the order given.
So again, whether you're collaborating with teams, maybe you're using Trello for your own to-do list or for your own personal projects, add checklists. It's a great way to add more functionality to Trello—a great way to manage subtasks as well.
It's very simple.
