Trello: Tips for Advanced Users & Expert WorkFlow Organization

hello YouTube thank you for watching my video on tips and advanced workflow of Trello before I begin let me just preface by saying that I believe that anything can be organized on Trello it's all in accordance with how well you understand the organization I've tried all the platforms Monday Zera asana Zoho all of them I'm surprised every time another one pops up it's like can something original be created but Trello and my mind is the most user-friendly and if you learn some of how it works some of its power-ups you're basically able to accomplish just about anything first I'm going to begin by showing you something very useful tips and then we'll get into the more of the advanced stuff and so some of the most frequently asked questions if you're in a board you have a lot of lists and creating a new list requires you to scroll to the right and then drag to the left if this is your dilemma and you'd like to know how to create a list on the left side the answer to that is that you have to double click on the screen so if I double click here and I insert and you know you give your list a name it'll pop off right here if I do it over here it'll pop up right here so that's a quick way to get the list in the desired location without having to scroll click drag number two a lot of cards right and the cards give very long and extensive and you want to create a new one but then you have to you know you're used to doing this and then you drag it to the top what happens if it's really really long the list you don't want to do that so the way to solve that is by hovering over a card and pressing the letter n on your keyboard and as an Nancy if you press the letter n while you're hovering over a card it'll allow you to insert a card beneath the card that you are hovering over if you want one under seven you press n and you insert the card very useful number three on yourself to the card you hover over the card I press the spacebar that will automatically assign you and or unassign now without having to go to members which is often found in here you could avoid three or four clips by just space space and you could also unassign yourself very useful if you want to add another member other than yourself without having to click in and then click on members you press the letter A T and you'll have to your members list right here learning keyboard shortcuts is the key to proficient workflow if you're the guy that sits behind the computer the guy or the gal who sits behind the computer for hours every day doing this kind of product project management it's important to work to use to learn keyboard shortcuts it saves over all hours and hours of work so we have the letter A for member as well as M m ISM Mary a and M seem to trigger the same thing now a couple things regarding text there are a couple tricks for writing bold tags italic or crossed out text or even linking text link you text is very important especially if you're linking between cards let me show you some examples I just Irish star the word star star the work if you put star star before and after a word that will turn it into bold to have I love you the word love is involved because of the stars anytime you want to have anything volt you put stars in front of after hi if you want italic with underscores or you put one start talak you do this symbol I don't even know what it's called and you cross out the word for a sentence or paragraph and then the most important is links blinking you would put the text and brackets brackets link and without any space parentheses you would actually put the link okay so let me show you why let's say I want a link let's give you some case example services okay here you have a list services here you have a list customers customer one has its own URL you can always get the URL by copying it over here with copying it from up here if you have on their services the list of customers that are using this services for example you may do something like this bracket customer one bracket parentheses the URL it's saved now you have customer one is actually linked to the custom and then your in this customer just like that so social media you may have something organized like this social media includes a-b-c so say you're describing what social media includes then you might want to write current clients using the service and then you have a list of clients customer one customer two you do the same thing here you would get the URL Schatzi you the reason you want to learn how to link cards and boards together is for the smoothness of the workflow less clicking less is more in general less is more for someone who sits behind the computer all the time and and you're jumping between boards and cards and lists you want them all to work together another thing you might do is you might copy this card and you may want to attach it here attachment attachment link attached that's another way so when you're in social media learning about what this service is and then you could easily click on the clients that are using the services to learn about the client you could easily come back to where you came from services the amount of clicks that you saved by doing this and this is potentially from one board to the next so imagine how many times you'd have to click around to get to the next board which reminds me by the way I'm sure you know this but you'll have you would have your list of boards here on the side and you could keep this I always keep this menu open because I have probably a hundred boards you always want to keep this left side menu hoping it shifts everything over to the right for right now I'll close it because this is a demo and I don't have it open so attaching you could attach a Trello card which links you to it so here we're jumping in circles from here to there and you can connect a bunch of lists a bunch of cards a bunch of boards and turn it into something that is more alive something that is more intuitive it's almost like building a web app where you're going from one place to the next and accomplishing one thing after next without the manual without the legwork you that reminds me also notice this that if you put a hashtag in front of something it becomes a header it becomes bold and big like a header so these are just formatting text formatting that could also be helpful all right so that basically summarizes some of the the most important tips learning how to attach things you could also drag-and-drop URLs directly here and turn it into attachment they're going to attachment and attaching a link so you can put any link here it could be to Google Doc this minute turn this makes it alive now let's get more into the advanced user so I used to work in a dealership where we sold use the vans so imagine a dealership and case you don't know the industry for buying and selling used cars automobile is very dynamic there are potentially a hundred between a hundred and two hundred steps that any vehicle has to go through from I guess you could say from conception until one is completely sold and all the paperwork is done I mean there's just an extensive amount of steps that the vehicle has to go through say it gets purchased in the auction from getting the title to getting the vehicle to check in the vehicle inspecting the vehicle fixing the vehicle cleaning the vehicle I mean the list is just endless I worked in a place and I had it down to a science I'm telling you it went through more than a hundred steps it doesn't matter if it's a five thousand dollar used vehicle if it's a legit dealership the amount of steps that each vehicle has to go through in order for it to process from purchasing it to selling it is very extensive now to build a software where you automate or you keep track or you manage all of this would cost a couple hundred thousand dollars and a small dealership may not have the money for that my point my point is Trello Trello can often solve workflow you that hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of software would otherwise have to solve and if you don't have the budget for it all you need is someone with a creative mind with organizational skills that could organize a Trello board or a similar platform to Trello to solve these types of workflow processes let me show you an example so here's the actual Trello board that I created or that dealership I recovered it in my archive for it's by the way if you'll never archive in other words delete or get rid of a board you can recover it you just go here and you go to see clothes boards if it was a team board it will be closed and archived and it'll turn into a personal board but you could still recover so if I go in over here I named it vehicles and sales well I didn't want to attempt to build an example because this took weeks or months to really perfect so I figured I'll show you on the real deal I created lists incoming unlocked pending sale ready for paperwork that's post-sale if he made the sale if the salesperson made the sale it's ready for paperwork this is sold finished paperwork and filed and then there's some miscellaneous no dead deals deals that either something happen with the vehicle or halfway in something up sale and under some vehicles that we would purchase for parts but for the most part we were dealing with one two three four five six six lists we're managing the entire back end and the way that I had conceptualized it was that if you know dealerships the way they work for example they have the envelope and all the the title and all the paperwork goes into this envelope and they try to keep meticulous record of this envelope so from a modern and evolved perspective technology wise it's a little bit archaic I mean here you relying on humans you're relying on papers physical paper it was just a mess that didn't make sense to me as a technology person so I had conceptualized a completely different I had seen the envelope as something that should really be virtual and something they should have concise reconciliation so I turned that concept of the physical envelope into a virtual envelope and this is what each card became a virtual envelope really envelope or each card just refers to a vehicle but what is the vehicle as far as the dealership is on certainty the vehicle is just this idea it's a collection of papers potentially money signatures because you're not holding on to the vehicle so it's not really the vehicle itself it's just a collection of things and throughout the process of when you purchase the thing until when you get rid of it the the collection of things changes and this is what each card represents I had created a vehicle template using one card McCulloch vehicle template in the vehicle template I had put description with a couple five or six initial questions New York or at estate deal commercial or personal deal commercial of personal plates Oh issuing transfer our ITP is it a cash or finance field you is the actual deal mileage in the system that they were using the reason these questions were here was already set up for further down the pipeline it was already set up for the salesperson why because when the salesperson makes the deal and fills this in if the salesperson were to take this vehicle as it's in a deal and fill in those questions then the person who is going to do the paperwork who's in process all these upcoming steps would already have answers to everything that they could possibly need answers on in order to make the deal so again we're using one card to define all kinds of conditions and the way that I did it was as follows I used the description for some of those questions then I created checklists and I created a lot of checklists I basically created a checklist for every possible deal scenario why because again reconciliation you should not be running the back end of a company with ifs or maybes there has to be clear and concise reconciliation if every vehicle as you can see over here a hundred and thirty three items on these checklists now granted not every deal gets every checklist but it still comes out to over a hundred and this doesn't even include what goes on in the shop when the vehicle actually enters the shop that would require a whole nother board this just from the sales and admin standpoint if every vehicle goes goes through 100 steps from when it is bought until when it is sold and filed away then you can't leave that up to memory and this is how dealerships work again my point here is not dealership you need to take what I'm explaining and apply it to your back-end your workflow your project management I'm giving this as an example because I am in project management I manage development and marketing projects they don't come close to this level of complexity not even close dealerships and services that offer those kinds of dynamic transactions where the product or the service goes through a million steps those are far more complex than project management I'm trying to go to the epitome I'm trying to show the top here I'm trying to point out how Trello for similar technology project management tools can solve the most complex workflows of course you need a business owner who is willing you know a lot of old-school people they're just not willing they're they're willing to just rather run their company with mistakes why because they leave it up to memory and this is what I'm trying to point out here you can't leave it up to memory a hundred steps when you're selling 10 20 vehicles per week or month it's not severe sufficient to leave it up to memory oh did we get the signature over there did we get the finance did the finance go through what's the APR did he send his license these are these are typical questions this Trello board seeked to minimize all the question took all the guessing all the guesswork out you and to put everything in front of the eyes now initially if you're not used to project management and Trello this board might look like a mess to you but for the person who learnt it which was me the person sitting behind it I knew the answers to any question just by the click of two buttons you I created checklists for every step new vehicle checklist received condition report create stock number it doesn't matter how small or seemingly insignificant the task was the fact that it was a task to me meant that it had to be on a checklist new vehicle checklist so the vehicle goes to all of this stuff new vehicle arrival so the vehicle arrives on the lot because it has to go through all of those stuff and then once it's on the left we would move the card from incoming to on the lock now even though we're not trying to solve this per se now we know exactly which vehicles are on the left and then once it's on the lofts and it's in a deal we move to further checklists so you're literally just going down the pipeline task after task after task all deals that means that any deal that happens all of these steps have to take place all deals paperless paperwork checklist every deal had to go through all of this and if you're doing with complicated stuff MV 82's and and DMV paperwork and all that stuff you could create see over here I linked it to a different Trello card where you could have the user manuals you could have all of the training to any of these kinds of stuff right within the card so if you have somebody that you're training and they're not familiar with this they could easily reference other cards through linking which I explained earlier in my video so as you can see every vehicle went through just an excessive amount of steps and then there were conditional checklists new york deal so what's if this is not a new york deal then I would simply delete the checklist what's the point the point is is that at the end everything has to be green when it's filed everything has to be green if it's filed and it's not green meaning every single checklist was written off then something's missing and something wasn't done right that was the brilliance of the setup of this board it takes the guessing out everything in black and white there's a reconciliation process for everything and needless to say there's an activity feed so if you have multiple employees working on a system like this there's activity there's reconciliation on their activity you know who did what at which point if you want to research it conditional lists however so if it wasn't New York plates I would delete the checklist and what would end up happening is I would only be left with the checklists that I needed for that specific deal in transit plate trek checklist transmittal checklist buttoning up the file checklist every vehicle every envelope became alive it had a piece of real estate in our Trello board it meant something it wasn't just a vehicle that's sitting on a lot it was part of our inventory and if it was incoming then we knew exactly what was incoming and some of the important stuff I used labels for you see the red label waiting for title because when you buy a vehicle from an auction or online you don't have the title right away so the red meant we were waiting for the title sometimes the vehicle shows up before the title shows up as you can see right here you have a you have a vehicle right here the title wasn't here and over here and over here that means how you gonna sell the vehicle if you don't even have the title yet so we utilized labels for very important stuff the pink labeled you could ignore the pink labels over here files uh played uploaded to Google Drive that's only there because the place that I was working at decided not to use this he was more old-school he found it easier to just work off of memory and not reconcile again you can't force people to want or have organization so it has to be up to the owner the manager whoever's making visit these decisions it has to be up to them whether they want to solve the inner workings or complications of of an office so I had moved everything over to Google Drive for him he found that easier to work on the brilliance of having a virtual envelope I mean there's so many benefits to it but think about it a physical envelope requires physical presence what's if you're not in the office and somebody has a urgent question my idea was that the virtual envelope is right here on Trello you could access it from anywhere and any paperwork any paperwork throughout the workflow would get directly scanned in so we had bought a scanner so when the title shows up for example scan it directly onto my desktop and I would drag it on so as this envelope was unfolding on Trello the envelope meaning paper wise the paperwork was building online of course it was also building in real life because DMV requires you to have all this all this physical papers and envelopes and references but everything was growing virtually as well so if you had a question about the title and you're sitting in a rule on vacation you could go onto Trello you go into that vehicles envelope and you have the title right there who don't know you don't have to attach things through clicking on attachments you could drag and drop not only that you could drag and drop without even having the cart open it should drag and drop like this very important so all this paperwork doesn't matter for which company you're trying to organize you set up a scanner that scans directly to desktop these quick scanners are three four hundred bucks and I would drag and drop documents straight into the cards the card the envelope was alive the vehicle was incoming than it was on the lot then the salesperson takes it from there and puts it in pending and if he sells it and it's ready for paperwork then the salesperson would just have to fill in these six questions and me the person doing the paperwork I would know exactly which checklists I need to use based off of those questions and then we would sell it get all the paperwork scan all the paperwork in and move it over the sold finish paperwork and then there was a checklist how to finish the paperwork and button up the file and then once it moves over to file then buttoned up that means the physical envelope was buttoned up and put in that button up and put into a drawer for safekeeping that was the life cycle of a dealership the back end of a dealership now if you apply this same kind of organizational logic to any business and any workflow granted you might not have what it takes my point is there are dynamic ways to use these technologies me for example I do consulting for a lot of businesses my name is Nate Mendel from expect huge if you would like for me to help you organize your business you find me online expect huge calm I specialize in all things digital I consult with companies all the time you may see that your inner workings of your office is a mess it needs organization but you might not know how to organize it but you know that it can be organized you could hire people who could organize it for you it doesn't even have to be me anyone with this kind of creativity or organizational skills can do the same thing and believe me every company needs a different kind of set up on Trello some companies have a board for every employee some companies have a bunch of employees on one board it all depends what you're trying to solve and how you're trying to solve so every company gets essentially their custom workflow but when it's set up correctly the amount of money that you save and headache that you save is instrumental and then there's a hundred percent reconciliation when my file is over here all buttoned up all in green there was no ifs or buts when my boss used to ask me did that happen I said I don't know I have to check Trello just like you would have to I can't keep track of 50 vehicles a hundred tasks per vehicle that's insane it's not even realistic it's old-school it's archaic being in the tech arena being in technology you learn that there's more modern ways to try to solve things you're looking at it if you have any specific questions let me know they could create a video tutorial on it if you need help organizing your business virtual consultant or here in the tri-state New York area it could be in person consultant let me know thank you for watching I hope this video was informative

Channel: Ohkie

Views: 29,399

Keywords: trello, software, app, how, to, tips, list, board, card, expert, keyboard, shortcut, butler, power ups, tutorial, class, enhance, organize, flow, work, track

Id: lj9QlETK9do

Length: 32min 28sec (1948 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 01 2019