Setting up slack with trello boards
The first Power Up that actually saved me hours of back and forth was Slack. I thought it would just spray my entire board into a Slack channel non stop, but it turns out you can pick and choose notifications pretty carefully. In my case, I only wanted updates on one list called “To Review.” I connected Slack through the Power Ups menu, logged in, and then had to pick the Slack workspace. The part that confused me for about half an hour was that nothing was happening after turning it on. What I missed was the tiny dropdown inside the card settings where you also need to pick which list or board events should go to Slack. Once I set it to only ping when a card lands on the review list, it felt like magic. Seeing a teammate drop a card there and instantly getting pinged in Slack was faster than asking “hey is this ready yet” in DM. Downside though, if someone moves five cards at once, your Slack erupts with messages — so I ended up muting the channel during my focus time :).
Using google drive for quick file grab
Adding Google Drive into Trello has been so underrated in my team. Before enabling it, half of my day was spent asking where files were. Now each Trello card can directly attach a Drive file, but what I didn’t expect is how much I’d lean on the Drive preview. You don’t even have to click away; it shows a little thumbnail with details right inside the card. That meant when my designer dropped a Figma export into Drive, I could confirm the right file in Trello just by glancing. One hiccup I got — once my login expired on Drive, attachments showed “Authorization error” and I thought the files had been deleted. Nope, just needed to reauth through the Power Up. Took me ten minutes of panic to realize, so now whenever the preview disappears I just log back in instead of bothering teammates. That alone helped cut file hunting down by a ton, and it feels lighter than trying to throw links into random docs.
Calendar view for spotting delay patterns
This one feels boring until you actually live with it. The calendar Power Up takes any card with a due date and throws it onto a board style calendar. First mistake I made — I assumed it would just show all cards instantly, but actually cards without a due date vanish into thin air here. Once I figured out that I had to manually add deadlines, the calendar made sense. The big “aha” for our small dev team was watching half the due dates pile onto Fridays. No one was scheduling Mondays, and that was causing a weekly crunch. With the calendar open, it’s painfully visible, so we started forcing ourselves to shift a few tasks mid week. Another nice but hidden trick: you can drag cards directly in the calendar to change their due dates instead of opening each one manually. Just be careful if you have Zapier automations tied to “due date changed” — mine fired twice when I dragged too fast ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Voting as a fast feedback loop
Sometimes half a project stalls just because we cannot decide on a priority. Enabling the Voting Power Up solved that ridiculously fast. On any card, a simple “vote” button shows up and teammates can click without even opening the card fully. So instead of ten Slack messages like “I think this one is more urgent,” you just let people vote. Real case: we had five potential features to build and no time for them all. We threw them in Trello, had everyone vote, and within five minutes the top two were obvious. No debates, no meeting. One weird limitation though — external users who are not members of your board cannot vote at all. I lost a whole evening thinking my client could participate, until I realized only Trello board members can interact with it. Once I accepted that, I just screenshotted results for the client. Not elegant, but definitely better than arguing in email threads. 😛
Butler automation for repetitive clicks
Confession: I accidentally broke my board with Butler commands. At first it felt like the best thing ever because you can automate little tasks like “when card moves to Done, archive it automatically.” Which is perfect, since I always forget to tidy up Done lists. But my mistake was creating overlapping rules. For example, I set up one rule that moved cards to a “Ready” list when a due date was marked complete, and another rule that archived anything older than a week in Ready. Added together, my cards disappeared before I even got to confirm them. Lesson learned — always test one Butler rule at a time. Another simple but effective one I like: when a card is added to the Review list, assign it automatically to me. Saves so many clicks, and it actually feels like Trello is working on your behalf instead of annoying you with repetitions.
Custom fields for clarity at a glance
I ignored Custom Fields for months thinking it would just clutter the cards, but it turns out having a little status bar or priority indicator helps way more than I expected. Instead of hiding details in card descriptions, now I see whether something is High or Low priority without opening the card at all. I even set up a checkbox field for QA tested, which means my testers just tick it off instead of leaving random comments like “tested.” The confusing part was finding where to set them up — it’s inside the Power Ups menu, you create the fields, then you have to enable them per board. At the start none of them showed and I thought it was broken. Once configured though, I almost don’t remember how I worked without it. The caution here is keeping fields minimal; more than four custom fields per card makes the cards start looking like mini spreadsheets, and everyone in my team just stopped paying attention when it got too cluttered.
Linking trello with confluence notes
If your team uses Confluence, this Power Up is surprisingly smooth. Adding Confluence pages right into Trello cards means you don’t have to dig through a wiki jungle. For me the win was attaching our design decision documents next to feature cards. That way, when someone asked “why do we need this feature,” the reasoning was one click away. Once when I forgot to enable permissions, half the team saw “No access” errors and thought the page didn’t exist. After fixing that, the cross link flow turned into the fastest way to surface knowledge. It’s especially handy when onboarding new hires. Instead of dropping them into a giant wiki tree, we just send them to cards with the right documents attached. Almost feels native. You’ll still need to maintain the wiki separately, but the context finally shows up where work is happening.
Connecting trello cards with jira tickets
This one only made sense for us because the engineers refuse to leave Jira, while the marketing folks never open Jira. By connecting them with the Jira Power Up, a Trello card can show live status of the corresponding Jira issue. What shocked me first was how much less duplication I had to do. Before, I copied Jira ticket numbers into card titles and manually updated status. After the Power Up, Trello actually pulls in the current status. The downside, sometimes it lags, and you need to refresh Trello to see the update. I lost patience a few times wondering why a Jira bug still looked “To Do” in Trello when it was marked closed already. But overall, it keeps both ends aligned without forcing people out of their comfort tool. In meetings, I just share the Trello board, and engineers nod because they know behind the curtain Jira is up to date.
Choosing which power ups actually matter
Trello offers a ridiculous number of Power Ups and honestly most are fluff. Every time I enable too many, the board gets heavier and slower. The real test is whether a Power Up saves minutes of clicking or typing every day. If not, it’s not worth keeping on. In my setup, Slack, Butler, Calendar, and Custom Fields stayed while the “fun” ones like card aging or sticker packs got tossed out quickly. For a team speed boost, picking fewer but stronger Power Ups works better than stuffing everything in at once. That’s the messy truth I keep repeating — less toys, more flow.
For anyone experimenting, check out trello.com because even just browsing the Power Ups list with filters can give you some wow moments before deciding what to actually keep.