One gripe, though, with the iPhone app. A lot of times I'll use my time on the BART or stuck in traffic to prepare for different tasks. So for example, I had a card on To Do for a 401k rollover. So on the train one morning I did the research for it. I added comments to the card with account numbers, phone numbers, etc, so that way when I had a moment i could make the calls and everything was in one place. So with all that preamble: Telephone numbers in comments aren't clickable. They look like they are. They turn underlined blue. But clicking them doesn't start the Phone app.
If you want, you can add notes to any item in a list, and other people can add comments. There are options for watching items, lists, and boards such that you can get alerts when something changes or is added.
It's very flexible. Spolsky has said the original idea traces back to when he was a program manager at Microsoft on Excel, and during customer visits he discovered the vast majority of users simply used Excel to lay out lists -- they didn't care about advanced features like formulae or macros.
Aside: As a silicon valley person, when viewing videos of people on the east coast I always feel like I'm watching people in another country. Such an odd, overly formal look.
Trello is designed for a high level overview of a project. So if you start to get too many items on your board, either it's not the right tool for what you are trying to do, or you need to think more about what you are adding to Trello. For example, you could use Excel to take notes, or make a todo list, but it's not the right tool for that. Trello really shines when you are using it for group collaboration and either focusing on a high level (and leaving the details to something else) or only focusing on the very top level important details.
I know a lot of companies that use Trello in tandem with tracking apps. There's even a nice bookmarklet that integrates with a bunch of them (FogBugz, Jira, Github, Saleforce) so you can hit one button and turn your case into a card in Trello. See https://github.com/danlec/Trello-Bookmarklet But don't make the mistake of trying to duplicate what those programs do in Trello.
We meet regularly with other departments to triage their request queue (list) and move it forward. It's great for them to see the software process and see their request in context with the (many) other requests.
We often break out separate project boards and link to it from a master (planning) board. That really helps break down the larger tasks.
mhp noted that it's not designed for bugs, but we have no problem using it for that, in conjunction with some GitHub issue tracking.
I'm certain a startup would have no issues adopting it into a great workflow.
I think Trello looks nice(r), but it's easy to create a mess with it.
That said, we want to create the best experience for your device, and nothing beats the experience of a native app. Try them side-by-side. Each native app is written in its native language (Obj-C, Java, etc.). It's more code, but they just turn out better that way.
I think multi-platform development is more important than it has ever been. Since these days the data lives in the cloud anyway, I want to pick up whichever of my various devices fits the situation and get the absolute best user experience that the company can design.
Web apps still don't (and still won't in 2023) provide the very best software user experience on any platform, even the desktop. Certainly not on mobile.
When choosing among competing cloud-based services, I always award bonus points in my evaluation to services with good iOS and Android native apps. Even though I don't currently use very many apps on Android, if there is a native app for it in addition to iOS, I feel more confident that the company behind the product gets it that users need native interfaces on the platforms they care about.
I think this is a key reason, perhaps not well-understood, why services like Evernote, Trello, and others are doing so well.
E.g. my wife uses Evernote all the time on Mac and iPad, but there is no way she would use the web interface on either one. She just wouldn't use Evernote.
She may not consciously think 'I prefer services with good native apps in addition to their web interfaces', but she does. (And I suspect so do many people.)
I love the app. Now I just need the ability to move cards between boards.
However, after trying the iPad app, it is a much experience than the web app was.
However, two things that bothered me as a heavy Trello user:
1) I could not figure out how to move a card from one board to another. Just does not seem to be possible (yet)?
2) The drop-down in the upper right corner of a card is where I expected the close button to be, as it is for the web app. I keep tapping it over and over, expecting the card to close, but instead it shows a drop-down menu with one option: "archive"! This feels like a big UI mistake to me.
Other than that, a fantastic first release. I can't wait to walk around the office tomorrow with my iPad, tending to projects, instead of always popping open my laptop!
A tablet Android version is planned, but no specific date to announce.
I'm very much looking forward to a more native implementation of this stuff. It's a natural use case for the iPad. Now to see if I can attach Notable documents to my boards ...
Seems like a pretty daunting task to keep their site, their iOS, their Android and their Windows Phone app all in sync with functionality and UI.
Any Trello developers care to share the secret?
I think actually that at this point Trello has much more Obj-C, Java and C# than CoffeeScript.
There are certain visual projects that I use Trello for on my iPhone that I wish could to see the attached images for each card. Describing items that are going through a flow is difficult when they're all the same item but look different.
However: it seems that when you're offline (eg: away from wifi / on a plane, etc) the app becomes Read Only. This means no adding to cards, creating new cards, etc.
Is there a technical limitation which means that changes made offline couldn't just be sync'ed back later on?
(I don't speak for the Trello team, but I remember trying to reason out whether we could do something similar on FogBugz, and rapidly concluding that the real answer was "absolutely not.")
You're absolutely correct though - yes - this quickly becomes a way bigger issue than I originally gave it credit for in my HN-esque knee-jerk comment. I'd still love to be able to leave comments on a card though.
