Have you ever thought to yourself that you might want to take your spreadsheets to Trello, but you never saw Trello as a good way to organize your data? If that’s the case, think again. Trello is actually a powerful way to manage numbers, projects, and, well, all sorts of data!
Maybe you want to track how much you spend on Christmas gifts. Maybe you want to track how much work your team is completing a sprint. Maybe you want to keep track of your marketing and sales pipeline data. Or, perhaps you want to keep track of how much time you’re spending on your clients so you can quickly create accurate invoices!
Regardless of what kind of data you want to keep track of, why not utilize Trello where your work is already living? Here are a few features and power-ups that will help you manage your data in Trello.
First, Protect Your Data
Nothing is worse than putting a ton of effort into your Trello board, only to have someone accidentally make a few wrong clicks and make the board go all wonky.
Your data is very safe within Trello, and there are not many irreversible accidents that can be made (even if you archive a card or list, you can send it back to the board. And if you close a board, you can open it again).
But accidents do happen and it’s easy for people to move cards around in places that you might forget where they originally lived. If you want a magic button to revert your board back to a previous version and undo mistakes add the Backups for Trello Power-Up to your board!
Reporting On Your Data
While Trello is great for managing your projects, it’s also great for reporting on your projects as well. If you need to keep other stakeholders informed on what you’re doing, or if you need to keep track of how many issues your product has, there are many features and Power-Ups to help you report on your Trello data.
Use Dashboard View
With Trello’s Dashboard View, you have access to reports and stats on your Trello board out of the box.
Want to see if you have any certain labels that pop up more frequently than others? Or do you want to see which lists hold the most cards? You can customize your views to create charts that show exactly the data you need, in exactly the format you want.
Start by selecting the chart you want.
You can quickly pivot to adjust any settings until you get your charts just right. If you want several charts, it’s easy to add more!
You can hover over any data point to see more specific details.
If you need to share this view with others, just share the board link with `/dashboard` at the end of the URL. Anyone with access to your board will be able to see it. It’s a great way to identify any bottlenecks (such as lists that have a lot of cards in them), or requests that are getting out of hand (like a pie chart of labels). You can also show how much faster your team is at getting work done by looking at cards in a list over a time frame.
Not seeing all the data you want? Try exporting your board to a CSV and create pivot tables from there so add all the customization, charts, filters, and just about anything else you can think of!
Work With Your Numbers
If you have Custom Fields that include numeric data, there are a couple of Power-Ups that will interact with those numbers to help you aggregate data across your board.
The Number Stats Power-Up looks at every number type of Custom Field you have on your board, and sums, counts, and averages all of those, for each field.
I like to use this for any time I’m planning to spend money, such as Christmas gift shopping, home improvement projects, or vacations. It’s a quick and easy way to compare my budgeted numbers to my actual spend numbers. But it’s not just for budgets, you can use it for any other number you like!
Want to see this sum of numbers broken down by each list? Use the Sum Up Power-Up and update the value field at the top of the card to be able to see the sum the field totaled in the card at the top of this list.
Note—this will only work for ONE field (unless you upgrade to the paid plan) and it’s totally separate from the Custom Fields Power-Up.
It’s easy to use. Just add the Power-Up, create a “total” card at the top of a list. And then go to the cards below it to add your values.
As you update individual cards, your total number card at the top will also update!
You can customize a couple of options to make sure you see the numbers exactly how you’d like.
Want to do more advanced things with your fields? Use the Smart Fields Power-Up to create formulas and update fields based off of the result of other fields in the card.
Business Reports
If you’re using Trello for your marketing or sales team, the Crmble Power-Up can help you keep all of your data in one place.
As you set up your Crmble board, you’ll create lists that define the process your leads go through. You’ll also create custom Crmble fields that will help you keep track of all your important information about those leads. From there, viola! Just add your contacts, and your reports will be available out of the box.
Quickly see how much your leads are worth, your conversion rates, and your marketing sources’ contribution to your pipeline! This is just scratching the surface. Crmble reports and dashboards are extremely customizable and make reporting a breeze.
Integrating Kanban Reporting
Already using Jira to keep track of your agile projects? Use the Jira Align Power-Up to sync your Trello cards with your Jira epics and stories. You can assign points to each card so that you can report on your velocity each sprint.
Brag About Your Year
Ever wish Trello had an annual recap like Spotify does? Well, you’re in luck. Get the Annual Report Power-Up and you’ll get a nice report on how your Trello board performed throughout the year, what list was the busiest, who completed the most tasks, or other fun facts!
Time Tracking With Trello
If you’re already keeping track of your projects in Trello, why not keep track of how much time you’re spending on them? It’s helpful to see which tasks take up a lot of bandwidth and if you’re a freelancer, it’s a great way to show your clients exactly where your time is going while also making an easy way to sum up your time and generate invoices.
The world is your oyster when it comes to tracking time inside of Trello. Check your favorite time tracking app to see if they have an integration (they probably do).
My personal favorite is Toggl. I love to use Toggl because even in the rare moments I’m not inside Trello, I can easily start a timer from the Toggl chrome extension or desktop app. But of course, when I’m inside Trello, it’s super easy to track my time for each card.
Click the gear icon to configure settings. You can tie the time spent on a card to a specific client and project that you’ve already created in Toggl.
From your Toggl dashboard, you can see how much time you’ve spent total on that card and be able to reference as needed for invoicing or client questions!
Don’t use Toggl? Trello supports several other time trackers, like Harvest Time Tracking Power-Up, Chronos Time Tracker Power-Up, and Activity. If you want a super lightweight time tracker, I recommend Activity because it keeps everything nicely inside the card and doesn’t require integration with another tool. It’s the simplest to get started with and track total time spent on a card if you just need something simple!
Take Action With Your Data!
Ready to show some data on your Trello boards? Hopefully these features have given you some ideas on how to take your Trello boards to the next level. If you have any other ideas, we’d love to see them! Pop over in the Atlassian Community and share your favorite data-driven Trello features.