Jack Wallen has a collection of Trello shortcuts that can make your life within the kanban board significantly more efficient.
Trello is my go-to kanban service. The combination of features and ease of use makes it one of the more robust and capable tools available. A simple drag-and-drop interface, power-ups to expand the feature set, and automations to make your workflow even more efficient come together to create what I believe is a true project management workhorse.
But the fun doesn’t stop there. If you’re a kanban user who wants to make the workflow as simple as possible, Trello has another trick up its sleeve: shortcuts. With Trello you will find quite a few useful shortcuts. While you may scoff at saving a few seconds here and a few seconds there, by the end of the week those seconds add up.
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These shortcuts provide different actions that allow you to keep your fingers off the keyboard and off the mouse or trackpad. Why is that important? Ask any programmer how not relying on a mouse can help make the workflow more efficient.
Consider this: every time you move your fingers from the keyboard to the mouse, you lose no more than two seconds. How often do you do that during the day? Hundreds? Suppose you move your hand to and from the keyboard 500 times a day. That’s 1000 seconds or almost 17 minutes. At the end of the week, that’s 85 minutes. Monthly the total is 340 minutes and annually 4080 minutes… or 68 hours.
If you want to be as efficient as possible, you should start incorporating more keyboard shortcuts into your workflow, and I’m going to show you how it works in Trello.
What you need to add keyboard shortcuts to Trello
All you need for this is one valid Trello account. Since hotkeys are enabled by default, you don’t need to configure anything. You just need to log in and start using them.
The Trello keyboard shortcuts you need
The full list of Trello keyboard shortcuts can be viewed using a keyboard shortcut. Imagine that. To see the full list of keyboard shortcuts, press the / key on your keyboard. This will appear as a scrollable popup for you to view.
For those who don’t want to scroll through a pop-up list blocking your ability to use Trello while it’s open, here’s the shortlist of what I think are the most useful keyboard shortcuts.
Navigate maps
For me, one of the most useful shortcuts is using the arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate from card to card and list to list. It really is as simple as the left arrow moving from one list or column to the left. Use the right arrow key to move one place to the right. The up arrow takes you to the next card up and the down arrow takes you to the next card down. Once you land on the map you need, press Enter and it will open.
You can also move cards from the keyboard. To move a card to the top of the right-adjacent list, select the card in question and press the less-than key. To move a card to the top of the adjacent left list, press the greater-than key. To move a card to the bottom of the right-adjacent list, press the dot key. Press the comma key to move a card to the bottom of the list on the left.
Show or hide labels
Sometimes you want to show or hide map labels on your board. While most project managers and team members prefer to have those labels visible, eventually you’ll know the color-coding scheme and won’t need additional card clutter.
To show or hide board labels, just press the semicolon key. When the labels are turned off, the color coding is retained.
Add new map
To add a new card, all you have to do is press the N key. One thing to keep in mind is that the new map will appear above the currently selected map, so before creating the new map, navigate to the map below where you want the new map to appear.
Watch a map
At some point you need to look at a map. By viewing a map you will receive notifications if something changes on that map. To view a map, use the arrow keys to navigate to it and press the S key. Repeat the same action to undo a card.
Assign yourself to a card
To assign yourself to a card, use the arrow keys to navigate to that card and press the spacebar. That is it.
Automatic completion
There are two autocompletions that you want to know more about. The first is for members. When writing a comment, if you hit the @ sign and start typing the username, Trello will autocomplete the name for you. You can then use the arrow keys to select the name you want and press Enter to add it.
The second autocomplete is for labels. If you hit the # symbol and start typing, Trello will automatically complete the label for you in the same way as the username.
Copy cards
At some point you need to copy a card. When that time comes, use the arrow keys to navigate to the map, then press the CTRL+C combination to copy it. The only caveat to pasting the map using the CTRL+V hotkey is that you must move your cursor over the list containing the new map. This is one of those keyboard shortcuts that doesn’t work exactly as planned because you have to take your hands off the keyboard.
Okay, that’s enough to get you started. Remember, when you need more shortcuts, press the / key to open the popup and see the full list.
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