Introducing Google Drive Integration

You already love Google Docs, the online productivity suite that lets you create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations and easily share them with others. Google Drive is the new home for Google Docs, but lets you store all your files — documents, photos, videos, music… anything — and gives you access to them anywhere.

We use Google Documents on the Trello team to write specs for big, upcoming features. Notes from user interviews and plans for user testing are done in Google Docs, which makes them easy to share. We’re not the only ones using both tools. We’ve heard of lots of teams using Google Docs and Trello together. UserVoice wrote an excellent post about how they use a series of Trello boards and Google Docs for specs to manage their product.

Today we’re excited to announce that we’ve integrated Google Drive in Trello. It’s really easy. Open a card, select “Attach File…”, then select “Google Drive”. You’ll be asked to log in to your Google Account if you have not already. Choose some files and hit “Select”. You’re done! You’ll see a link to the file in the attachments section immediately.

Why just a link? Sharing permissions are handled on Google’s end meaning we don’t know who you want to share the file with. Google Drive files are private by default, so if you want to open it up other people, click the big, bright “Share” button on the top right of the Google Doc page.

We think you’ll love it. We hope to integrate with other storage solutions out there in the future. As always, check out the Trello Development board to see what’s coming up next. For more updates, be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

124 thoughts on “Introducing Google Drive Integration”

  8. Pretty much the best first-party integration of third-party software. What more could a business (or individual user) ask for? I love it!

  11. I need integration with Google Calendar.
    Imagine if your Due Dates Showed up on The Company Calendar. Would also be nice if there was a time estimate for each card that could show up – 4 hour project would block off half a day…

  15. I honestly can’t believe this feature is already here! Excellent timing by the way, I just migrated everything from Evernote to Google Drive.

    I love Trello, keep up the good work guys!

  16. We just simply love it, Is there a API available so I can create stats for the movement of a card, board, checklist, number of comments, etc ? I want to integrate that with some business benchmarks, that would be interesting for our nearshore business.

  24. I’m so impressed by how often you publish new features and the strong choices you make about which features to work on. I don’t normally read mass notifications for any system, but in Trello I read each one because they’re so relevant. Thanks!

  25. I have two Google Drive accounts. One for personal, and one for work on my Google Apps account. I’m logged into both at the same time, and Trello won’t let me choose. It only sees my personal account.

  26. I have stopped using Trello, but intermittently check on the progress of your wonderful little startup. The second you offer automatic Google Calendar syncing I shall return. Love the progress you have made!

  30. Plz add feature to select from which google account take files. I have my own account which i used to sign up in Trello, and corporate account. I want to use corporate account in attachments in our organisation’s boards, and probably use my own account in attachments in my own boards.

  31. Hi Bobby,

    great work!

    Question: can you use the Google Drive – folder structure rather than the search style ( where all files are in a flat dir ) ?

    Cheers

    Justin

      • thanks bobby for the reply

        if you only have a few docs in gdrive then the search style is fine

        but when you put all your files in there – and many may have the same name – the folder structure works much better

        thanks again – love trello – keeps getting better with age!!

        cheers

        justin

  33. I don’t know what happened, but since this upgrade today, nobody in our company can upload images the old fashioned way. HELP!

  36. Awesome feature! Trello is the best tool that I have ever used to manage my software projects!

  38. Noticed a small, unannounced change: hiding the following info under “More Actions”

    Vote
    Copy…
    Share, Print, and Export…
    Card #10
    Added Jul 6 at 3:11pm
    Delete…

    I must say, I liked it better before! Because of your beautiful UI design, the text never jumped out at me at inappropriate times. Now, the info and actions are hidden behind another click.

    I can see this becoming cumbersome especially for the ‘Share’ action, which I use a LOT to copy the location of a card to paste to another card (an already cumbersome task, which I have always hoped would be integrated as some sort of ‘link’ option where you can select the linked card, similar to the ‘Move’ feature).

    Just my 2… love the app and thanks for everything! :)

    Eric

    • Thanks for the feedback! We were a little hesitant about this change, so it’s nice to hear some opinions. That sidebar gets really busy.

      • Yes, I use the “share” and “vote” buttons more than any others. If some buttons MUST be hidden, it would be nice if the board admins could choose which ones.

  42. Excited to see the continual progress! First the Android App, and now Drive integration. Now if Google could get Drive to where it needs to be…

  43. Interesting that you guys don’t have privacy concerns to not put company specs and other documents on Google Docs.

    Do you use Google Docs for sensitive company information for products other than Trello? I ask because most places where this is discussed, the idea is hit on the head because of concerns that private information is up on someone else’s servers; up on the cloud.

    The concern of course being that someone could access the account — whether that be anyone trying to log in to a cloud service, or it be someone that works for Google or some other cloud provider.

    Cheers.

  53. After an awesome Android application, this functionnality is very usefull for our teams, helping them to have all their stuff in one place.
    Many thanks to you !

  58. Indeed +1 Dropbox… google is great… but is scares me to have secure docs there… nothing about reality, just a feeling & I don’t do anything that important LOL… but either way I feel like I live on Dropbox… either way Trello is AWESOME… Thanks!

  61. Looks nice, but the gmail account I log into Trello with is not necessarily the one with all the files in Google Drive! :(

  68. I’ve got two google accounts connected with my chrome. How can I quicklyattach files from google’s account, that is not set as a default?

  69. Nice feature.

    I’ll probably continue to use the drag-drop file integration. It works quite well with Google Drive, but it is nice to know there are alternatives for differing work flows.

  70. Great work. It’s a pity that if I choose save from gdrive feature – it does not make a preview, which is extremely useful when making design workouts :)

    • Trello doesn’t know anything about the file’s viewing/sharing permissions. That’s handled by Google. We’ll keep that request in mind, though!

  71. Howdy just wanted to give you a brief heads up and let you
    know a few of the pictures aren’t loading properly. I’m not sure why but I think its a linking issue.
    I’ve tried it in two different browsers and both show the same outcome.

  73. Nice! Is the Drive API different than the Apps API? If not, are you closer to considering gmail integration? Would love to create cards from email! :)

  74. Thumbs up! We are using Trello to the max, managing video productions, scripting and content production.

    This feature just made it so much more convenient for our editorial process!

    Thank you Trello! Keep up the good work!

    Daniel

  75. I am an Evernote user who has started using Trello instead of Evernote’s basic to do function. I link Trello to Evernote using note links, it can be a little tedious so I would love to see some real integration

  76. Dropbox over Google Drive any day of the week. Did you guys just do Google Drive because it was easier to integrate into Trello?

    • Google made it dead simple to integrate with Trello. We want to add Dropbox support one day, but there is a lot of work that will need to be done.

  79. I don’t want Trello to be peeking inside my Google Drive account but because I happen to be logged-in to Google then Trello seems to be able to list Google Drive contents without my permission. How is this allowed? How do I prevent it?

    • We don’t have the ability to look into your Google Account. The authentication is handled by Google, but it’s within our app in an iframe, like a website inside a website. When you click “select” and we just store a link to the Google Drive file, nothing else.

  80. Great idea guys. We’ve been using Trello to keep organized between the devs, designers and product people at Wavecation.com. I just logged on to see about building a new board so I could re-create some of my gdoc to-do lists and VIOLA, you’ve already done it for me! THANKS!