We built teams into Trello so that you could group similar members and boards. Whether it's four housemates figuring out chores and groceries, or a software company of 30-40 people, say, Fog Creek for example, using it for development, sales, marketing, office, and support projects, it's nice to have a single place to keep everything together. You can also make a board team-private, which allows other team members to view a board without having to be a member of the board or make the board public. Handy.
Teams haven't done much besides categorize and add some view permissions, though. We decided to tackle some big pain points: adding members to boards and onboarding.
In the old way, you had to individually invite each team member to a board. Trello didn't list team members so you had to go through the search process every time. Trello is nice enough to bump people on your boards and teams to the top in search results, but it was still a pain. Once you found and invited a person, they had to go through the invite process which generated more email, which was especially junky if they are at the desk next to you looking at Trello. And because the person you invited wasn't instantly added to the board, you couldn't assign them to cards and start divvying up tasks.
Boo. This slows everything down.
Well, things have changed. Trello now lists all team members on the 'add member' pane, so you don't have to look them up. Team members can be immediately added with just a click, skipping the whole invite, email, accept process. You just get a simple notification that you've been added. There's also an 'add all' button that instantly adds everybody on the team, saving you a bunch of clicks. And because members are instantly part of the board, they can be assigned to cards.
But wait, what happens if I add a new member to a team? Do I still have to go to every board and add them? Not any more, reader! We've made onboarding effortless. There's a new board option that allows any team member to automatically add themselves. Just open 'Add Members' and click the 'Allow any team member to add themselves to this board' link. And now you can view all team-visible boards on your home page by clicking 'view more team boards'. There will be a 'join' button by those boards that have the 'self join' option set. So once a member is added to an team, they can easily add themselves to those important company-wide boards. Like the snacks board. Or the ping pong tournament board.
We've got more team improvements to come. Enjoy!
Good or bad, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Find us on Twitter (@trello)!
