Trello is well-known as a Kanban-style, Web-based, List-making application developed by Atlassian. It allows you to bring the power of a visual perspective to your team, helping them better organize their tasks and enhance productivity. The Trello Timeline View helps teams stay abreast of goals, projects, and sprints with a clear visual layout. You can also flexibly drag-and-drop due dates to make adjustments on the go while keeping tasks aligned and synced every step of the way.

This blog talks about the Trello Timeline View in great detail eliciting the different aspects involved in its working. It also gives a brief introduction to Trello, its features, and benefits before jumping into its Timeline View. This includes how to access and use the Trello Timeline View, adding unscheduled cards, adding start/end dates, and using the group-by functionality.

Introduction to Trello

Trello Logo
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Trello has etched a name for itself in the market as a robust Collaboration Tool that can organize your projects in the form of boards. Trello lets you know who’s working on what, what stage a task is in, and what’s being worked on in a single glance.

Irrespective of whether you and your team are starting something new or attempting to get more organized with your existing work, Trello can adapt to any project seamlessly. This can help you standardize and simplify your team’s work process in an intuitive way.

Here are a few key benefits of Trello that make it an indispensable tool:

  • Simplified Editing: Trello focuses on keeping your Project Management hassle-free, which is why it makes sure you can edit task lists inline, using the simplest possible drag-and-drop mechanism. These lists are customizable, therefore, you can exclusively follow metrics useful to you, and use the automated notifications to stay on track with all alterations and changes.  
  • Reasonable Timeframes: You can make use of Trello’s Power-up Calendar to prioritize tasks with a shorter deadline, assign operations last-minute, and show them depending on their status. You can also trigger the iCal feed from your current calendar app, and import tasks that have already been assigned. 
  • Well-Organized Card and Board System: Trello offers a user-friendly Workflow Organization method, evident from their unique Card and Board system for comprehensive views. There is minimal risk for confusion with a board assigned for each project, and a card assigned for each task. This is because all the assignments are in order and can be easily tracked with specific performance lists. 
  • Integrations: Trello works with various public developer APIs that allow you to connect with every third-party extension, plugin, app, or system.
  • Robust Security: Trello is designed to comply with the highest security standards. It uses a bank-level encryption mechanism to ensure that your data will never fall into the wrong hands. As an admin, you will be allowed to set permissions and decide if boards are private, accessed only by authorized individuals. 
  • Searchable Database: Trello ensures that all relevant discussions and corporate data will be stored in the system for further usage. Apart from this, it also ensures that it will be backed up against eventual failure or breach. There are various searching filters and labels available to help you locate the desired file in no time flat. 
  • Collaboration: By using Trello, you can allow your entire team to participate in important discussions such as one-to-one chat sessions or group meetings and commenting on individual assignments and tasks. With Trello, you can also share files of all formats, notes, and diatribes. It further allows you to upload files straight from your Google Drive, Box, or Dropbox account. 
Trello Dashboard
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Understanding the Trello Timeline

The Timeline View can be used to give you a deeper understanding of Timeframes, Workloads, and Deadlines. By taking a look at how different projects and tasks work together over time, you will be able to identify quiet times, anticipate bottlenecks, and tweak your plans accordingly.

You can use the Trello Timeline View to manage due dates, plan out projects, and juggle multiple streams of work. It could also be used to simply try out a different way of functioning to see if it helps improve the efficiency of your workforce.

However, Timeline and all the other views offered by Trello can only be accessed by Enterprise and Business Class customers so far.

Trello Timeline View
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You can quickly switch through the Timeline View to group cards by label, member, or list for additional perspective over the statuses of tasks and team workloads. By providing you with a real glimpse of your team’s project pipeline, you can now easily identify active and potential blockers.  

Understanding the Benefits of Trello Timeline

Here are a few benefits of leveraging the Timeline View for your use case:

  • The Timeline View allows you to get a bird-eye view of OKRs and company-wide goals. You can easily zoom out to yearly and quarterly views in the Timeline and view everything in the pipeline that is aligned to the company goals. You can also use it to ensure equal allocation of resources for different departments.
  • With the Timeline View, you can plan every product sprint from start to ship. It makes it easier for you to break down big projects into sprints. You can create a new label for each sprint. This will allow you to organize cards in lanes by sprint and see your project come together from start to finish.
  • It allows you to execute and organize events seamlessly, irrespective of whether you are planning an IRL conference or your next virtual summit. With the Timeline, you can lay out speaker tracks, keynotes, and breakout sessions. You can also attach slide decks, assets, and speaker information to cards to keep everything organized in one place. It allows you to have this information on hand during the event with the Timeline View now available on your mobile phone.
  • The Trello Timeline View allows you to manage team workload efficiently and avoid overloads. Managers can ensure that team members don’t have too much or too little on their plate. This can be done by grouping Timeline lanes by members. With this facility, you can now take a look at any extra time you might have on your hands to take up new work or when tasks need to be partitioned and accomplished together.  

Understanding the Working of the Trello Timeline View

Here are a few key aspects to help you understand the working of the Trello Timeline:

Accessing the Trello Timeline View

The Timeline View can be accessed directly from your dashboard. You just need to open the View Switcher in the top left corner of the board and select the “Timeline” option.

Accessing the Trello Timeline View
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Here is an example of a Timeline View in action:

Timeline View in Action
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Using the Trello Timeline View

Here are a few functions that make it easier to utilize the Trello Timeline View:

  • You can click and hold on the edge of a card to stretch and set it up to incorporate the new date changes based on your requirements.
  • You can click on “Week” to change the granularity of the time being used. You can choose from the week, month, day, quarterly, or yearly time periods.
  • You can also seamlessly navigate through time with Trello’s header controls for finding the right day. If you get lost, you can always click on “Today” or scroll forward and backward with your mouse scroll. 

Adding Unscheduled Cards

Any unscheduled cards can be added from the Timeline View by clicking the “+” symbol, next to the “Not Scheduled” option. This displays an overview of the cards that are unscheduled where you can click on the card and add a due date.

Adding Unscheduled Cards in Trello Timeline View
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Adding Start/End Dates

Apart from the traditional due dates that can be added, Trello Timeline allows you to add Start and End dates to the cards as well. These dates will result in your cards appearing on various dates in your Timeline View. You can simply add a Start and End date while editing your card’s Due Date, or click the edge of a card in your Timeline View and stretch it to cover various dates at once.

Using the Group By Functionality

The Group By functionality provides you with a different perspective of your workload. You can easily group by member, list, label, or none of them.

Using the Group By functionality for Timeline
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Conclusion

This blog talks about the Trello Timeline View in great detail eliciting the different aspects involved in its working. It also gives a brief introduction to Trello, its features, and benefits before jumping into how its Timeline View works. This includes how to access and use the Timeline View, adding unscheduled cards, adding start/end dates, and using the group-by functionality.

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Content Marketing Manager, Hevo Data

Amit is a Content Marketing Manager at Hevo Data. He is passionate about writing for SaaS products and modern data platforms. His portfolio of more than 200 articles shows his extraordinary talent for crafting engaging content that clearly conveys the advantages and complexity of cutting-edge data technologies. Amit’s extensive knowledge of the SaaS market and modern data solutions enables him to write insightful and informative pieces that engage and educate audiences, making him a thought leader in the sector.