Trol is one of my favorite tools for managing projects and managing tasks whether I'm just managing my own personal to Do's or if I'm working and collaborating with other team members. But one of the best ways to use Trello and to add information to a Trello board or to respond to comments on Trello is to use your own email client.
And today I want to show you two different ways that you can use email so that you can both add new information, maybe it's an email, maybe it's an idea that you have while you're replying to email, and give you a way how you can respond to comments for questions that other people that you are collaborating with on Trello.
How you can use your email to do just that. There's so much you can do without even having to jump in to the application itself. So first, let's start with using the email, the unique email address that each Trello board comes with.
When you click show menu, you're going to get a variety of options here. And I'm going to go to the main menu just to show where you need to go because you're going to have to hit the more option here. Under more, you'll see options such as settings, labels, archived items.
And roughly halfway down, you'll see the email to board settings. If you click on that, you'll notice there's a big long, doesn't look very friendly, email address here. You don't have to worry about all the random numbers and letters here.
This is the unique email address for this Trello board. So if I send an email to this address, it's going to show up here on my Trello board. Now you can copy and paste it directly from here, or you can select this option to email this address to the email that's associated with your Trello board.
They also give you the option to generate a new email address. Now you may be wondering, why would I want to do that? Well, if you're collaborating with others, and perhaps there's someone in that group who you no longer want to have this functionality or give this access, you can always generate a new address in the future.
But if you're working just, you know, just for yourself, if it's just a personal Trello board, you'll never really need to use this option on your end. Now, the only other decision you need to make at this point is where are your emailed cards going to appear first?
You need to select the list that you want it to appear in. So for myself, I want it to appear in my first list, notes and ideas. And the only other thing I have to consider is do I want my new emails, the things that I forward to my Trello board, do I want them to appear at the top of that list or the bottom?
Am I going to select bottom? That's the default option here. I don't have to do anything else here. I can close this window. I can minimize the menu here. And now when I go to my email and let's say I've got an email here from someone, it's about a conference.
It's got some information here, you know what? I'd like to consider that. I'm not gonna reply just yet. I'd like to throw this in my ideas list. Well, all I need to do is select forward. Find that Trello email address here. I've saved it here as part of my contacts.
It's my Trello board. I can add some more messaging to it if I want to, but I'm just going to forward it as is. I'm going to hit Send. And now I'm going to jump back to my Trello board. And look at that. Almost immediately, it's arrived in my notes and ideas list at the bottom, like I specified.
The subject of the email is in the top. And if I click on it, I get all the information of that email within the description. So the contents of the email are going to show up under the description. The subject of the email will show up at the top.
And of course, I can always go in and edit this. I can change this now if I don't want to leave the default email subject header. But what I love about Trello is that it keeps all of the links, it keeps all the information.
And here we see a link to the conference. I can click on that right away and see the information that my sender wanted me to see. Now you can forward emails that you come across to your Trello board.
But you can start a brand new email as well. Let's say I've got an idea while I'm in my email inbox. Find that Trello email address. I'm going to say, you know, new project idea. Remember, this is going to be the title of the Trello card.
How about refreshing the log web page? Alright, I'm just going to hit Send on that. And again, jump back over to our Trello board. Immediately, it shows up there. There's the subject heading. I open it up and there's the question.
It shows up in the description. Any other information in that email is going to show up here. Now yes, it's also going to bring in an email signature into the description area as well.
You may not always want that information, but it may be helpful depending on if you're forwarding that information or if you want to remember where that idea, where that information was coming from originally.
So find out your unique email address for your Trello board, email to board settings, and start forwarding or creating new emails and sending them directly to Trello.
Now, the one other email-related item I want to show you today is responding to questions or comments in Trello using your email client. So you may realize if you have notifications turned on, you get updates from time to time in your email inbox, especially if someone is asking you a question.
So here's an example where I've got perhaps a teammate, and they're wondering what the status is of this particular project. And they've said, hey, have you called this person yet? If I go to my email inbox, look at that, I got a reminder earlier today telling me that I've got this question in Trello.
Now I can click on this link and go directly to that card. I could click on this link, which is the name of the board, and go directly to that Trello board. But depending on what I'm doing right now, I probably want to stay, or I might want to stay in my email inbox.
I want to continue replying to emails and reading unread emails. I don't want to jump into Trello right now, but I would like to answer this question. Well, you can either select this link, reply via email, or if you use an email client such as Gmail, which already has your reply text box already open,
I'm just gonna reply like I would any regular email. Yes, I will call her later this afternoon. I hit Send just like a regular email. I'm gonna go back to my Trello board just to see what happened there. And look at that, immediately it's replied under the comments section.
Now anyone else who has access to this card, anyone else who is on this card can see my reply, and I didn't have to jump into my Trello board. I didn't actually have to open up Trello to make use of this functionality.
So if you get questions or if you have updates that are coming through your email inbox, make use of the reply feature. Just reply directly like you would any other email, and get to know your unique email address for your Trello board so you can quickly and easily add things to your board.
It's very simple.
