Trello GitHub Integration: 5 Easy Steps

Project Management can be quite frustrating sometimes, but with the appropriate tools, the process can be simplified, efficient, and easy for everyone to use. By using the correct Project Management software, you can stay on top of project updates, reprioritize work, and interact with your team on the fly.

You’ll find a wide variety of Project Management solutions on the market nowadays. Trello stands out from the rest because it is so simple. It provides a simple approach for organizing and tracking all your projects from a glance. The Trello GitHub Power-Up is designed to be flexible enough to fit into any workflow and provide semantic meaning for anyone who needs to view progress on a given project.

In this article, you will be introduced to Trello and GitHub. The article also highlights the features of Trello GitHub integration. Moreover, you will understand the steps to set up the various features of Trello GitHub integration. So, read along to gain more insights and learn about Trello GitHub integration. 

Table of Contents

• Prerequisites
• Introduction to Trello
• Introduction to GitHub
• Need for Trello GitHub Integration
• Trello GitHub Integration Features
  • Trello GitHub Integration Feature: Pull Requests
  • Trello GitHub Integration Feature: Checks
  • Trello GitHub Integration Feature: Labels
  • Trello GitHub Integration Feature: Commits
  • Trello GitHub Integration Feature: Issues
  • Trello GitHub Integration Feature: Person Assigned and Comments
• Steps to Set Up Trello GitHub Integration
  • Step 1: Enable GitHub Power-Up on Trello
  • Step 2: Authorize GitHub on Trello
  • Step 3: Access GitHub Power-Up
  • Step 4: Disable Automatic Comments in GitHub
  • Step 5: Disable GitHub Power-Up
• Conclusion

Prerequisites

• Working knowledge of GitHub
• Working knowledge of Trello
• A Trello account 
• A GitHub account

Introduction to Trello

Trello is a visual, Kanban-style, collaboration tool that allows users to manage, track and share your project with teammates. The name “Trello” is derived from the code name for the project at its early stages called “Trellis” which is typically used to support the growth of trees or plants. Trello’s boards, lists, and cards let you organize and prioritize your life in a fun, flexible, and rewarding way.

Trello can be used for both personal and professional purposes, like:

• Real Estate Management
• Software Project Management
• School Bulletin Boards
• Lesson Planning
• Accounting
• Web Design
• Law Office Case Management

For more information on Trello, refer to Trello’s Official Website.

Introduction to GitHub

GitHub is a web-based graphical interface that provides access control and several collaboration features, such as wikis and basic task management tools for every project. Millions of developers and companies build, ship, and maintain their software on GitHub. It was established on Git, an open-source code management system created by Linus Torvalds to make software builds faster, and launched in 2008 as a SaaS service.

GitHub facilitates social coding by providing a web interface to the Git code repository and management tools for collaborative work. It can be considered as a social networking site for Software Developers. Along with its well-known SaaS offering, GitHub also offers an on-premises version of the software. 

GitHub Enterprise provides a wide selection of apps and services from third parties. The platform offers a wide range of integrations for code review automation, continuous integration, code performance, error monitoring, and task management, ranging from apps that connect GitHub to your Amazon and Google Cloud accounts to project management tools.

To explore GitHub, refer to GitHub’s Official Website.

Need for Trello GitHub Integration

GitHub is used and coordinated by many teams within a project and it can become cumbersome to keep a track of Pull Requests or the Status of projects. Hence, to prevent Engineers and Project Managers from constantly switching between GitHub and other platforms to check on the status of projects, the Trello GitHub Power-Up is designed to give enough essential information about project status. This implies that monitoring Pull Requests just got a whole lot easier and that everyone who needs to know the status of Commits and Code Bugs now has a much clearer picture.

Trello GitHub Integration Features

In this section, you will explore the various features provided by Trello Github Integration. Some of those features include:

• Trello GitHub Integration Feature: Pull Requests
• Trello GitHub Integration Feature: Checks
• Trello GitHub Integration Feature: Labels
• Trello GitHub Integration Feature: Commits
• Trello GitHub Integration Feature: Issues
• Trello GitHub Integration Feature: Person Assigned and Comments

1) Trello GitHub Integration Feature: Pull Requests

Pull Requests let you share changes you’ve made to a branch of a repository on Github with other users. All essential information about a branch will be loaded straight onto a Trello card whenever you attach a Pull Request (PR) to it. This includes the following:

• The Name of the Pull Request
• Labels (if applicable)
• Name of the user who opens the Pull Request
• Is the Pull Request merged
• Person assigned
• The number of Comments
• Most recent Pull Requests that have been worked on

2) Trello GitHub Integration Feature: Checks

Status Checks indicate if your commits fit the conditions provided for the repository you’re working on. A specific Pull Request’s status is displayed in the GitHub Power-Up, based on whether or not the configured checks were passed as shown below in the image.

Release Managers may now rapidly scan the “Ready for Launch” list and identify cards that haven’t passed all of their checks and are therefore not ready to be merged into the master branch. In this manner, commits with known errors are prevented from being merged.

3) Trello GitHub Integration Feature: Labels

Labels are used to sort and describe Issues and Pull Requests. According to broad themes, you can group Labels based on color. Except for a few language-specific themes, Labels are uniform across repositories.

Under the Pull Request, Labels appear if they are part of your workflow in GitHub. A person’s approval of a change, for example, can be indicated by using GitHub Labels, which will appear on the Pull Request embed on your Trello card as shown in the image below.

4) Trello GitHub Integration Feature: Commits

A Commit records changes to one or more files in your branch. A Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA) or Hash is assigned to each Commit in Git, and it identifies:

• The specific changes
• When the changes were made
• Who was behind the changes

Whenever you Commit, you must provide a Commit message that succinctly outlines the changes you’ve implemented. For example, let’s imagine you’re still in the prototyping phase of your development process. It’s easy to view the Commits on the card’s backside. A description will be included in the Commit Comments if one is available for a particular Commit as shown in the figure below.

5) Trello GitHub Integration Feature: Issues

Issues track your work on GitHub, where development takes place. Whenever you cross-reference an issue in another Issue or Pull Request, the Issue’s chronology reflects the cross-reference, making it easy for you to keep track of related activity.

If you’ve been utilizing GitHub Issues to collect Bug Reports and Feature Requests, you can now tie those Issues to specific Trello cards relating to that feature. Seeing why something hasn’t been merged, as well as following up with the individual assigned to work on that problem, is now much easier than before.

6) Trello GitHub Integration Feature: Person Assigned and Comments

A repository’s write permissions allow anyone with the ability to assign Issues and Pull Requests to it. Each Issue or Pull Request can be assigned to up to 10 individuals, including yourself. In the code review assignments, it is clearly stated who is responsible for reviewing the Pull Request.

In GitHub, if you appoint someone to do code reviews with, for example, the other Engineers on your team, that person’s avatar appears on the Pull Request. A person’s avatar is displayed next to comments if any. If a deadline is approaching, this is a convenient way to check in with the correct individual. Moreover, the explanation for the delay by the person assigned the task can be explained in the comments section. So, everything you need to know is now only a mouse click away as shown in the image below.

Steps to Set Up Trello GitHub Integration

In this section, you will learn the steps to set up Trello GitHub Power-up. You can use Trello GitHub Power-Up to attach Pull Requests, Issues, and Commits directly to your Trello cards. Follow the below steps to set up the integration:

• Step 1: Enable GitHub Power-Up on Trello
• Step 2: Authorize GitHub on Trello
• Step 3: Access GitHub Power-Up
• Step 4: Disable Automatic Comments in GitHub
• Step 5: Disable GitHub Power-Up

Step 1: Enable GitHub Power-Up on Trello

To set up the Trello GitHub integration, you need to enable the GitHub Power-Up. Follow the below steps to enable the Power-Up:

• Open the Trello’s Board Menu on the right side of the Trello’s page
• Select the Power-Ups menu option
• Click the “Enable” button next to the GitHub Power-Up

Step 2: Authorize GitHub on Trello

GitHub supports two plans. The general GitHub account and the GitHub Enterprise. Large-scale enterprises and small to medium software development teams can utilize GitHub Enterprise to host their repositories behind a corporate firewall (on-premise).

To authorize your GitHub account, follow the below steps.

Authorize GitHub Account

After enabling the Power-Up, follow the below steps to authorize a GitHub account:

• Click on the Gear symbol and then click on “Authorize Account”
• Next, click on “Link Your GitHub Account”

• In the new window, click “Authorize Application” to allow Trello to access your GitHub account.

Authorize GitHub Enterprise

Follow the below steps to authorize a GitHub Enterprise account:

• Click the “Click here” link for GitHub Enterprise as shown below.

• Next, a pop-up window will ask for the API endpoint for your GitHub Enterprise instance. Enter the URL where your GitHub instance is hosted (e.g., https://github.yourcompany.com/) with /api/v3/ added to the end of that URL as shown below.

Step 3: Access GitHub Power-Up

When the Power-Up is active, you may access it by clicking on the Power-Ups button on the back of any Trello card on that board. Branches, Commits, Issues, and Pull Requests can be attached to cards here.

Step 4: Disable Automatic Comments in GitHub

If you link GitHub content to a Trello card using the Power-Up, a link to the Trello card will be immediately added as a comment when you do so. As part of your GitHub Power-Ups settings, you can turn off this option.

• Click on the GitHub Power-Up in your Board Menu
• Choose “Edit Power-Ups Settings”
• Uncheck the option to “Add a comment…” as shown below

Step 5: Disable GitHub Power-Up

In case, you wish to disable the authorization with your GitHub account, you can follow the below steps :

• Open the Power-Ups menu on the right side of the Trello Board
• Click the gear icon next to the GitHub Power-Up as shown in the image below
• Select “Remove Personal Settings” and then select the option to clear data

It’s also possible to disable the GitHub Power-Up for the board by entering the Power-Ups menu and selecting “Disable”. Data will not be lost by disabling the Power-Up. In the card, the links will be formatted in the same way as any attached links.

Conclusion

In this article, you learned about Trello and GitHub. You also explored the various features of Trello GitHub Integration. In addition, you gained an understanding of setting up Trello GitHub Integration. 

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