Trello & Todoist: the best solution with IFTTT

Once entered in the Todoist world, it’s difficult to switch to another task management tool. However, especially in the working environment, you need to use other task management tools. Paradoxically, these needs bring to a strange sense of confusion.

In my particular case, that confusion was born when I was forced to use Todoist and Trello at the same time: two apparently similar tools, but with totally different scopes. On one side, we have Todoist that is a great tool to manage single tasks in a rapid and easy way. On the other side, we have Trello that, thanks to the board view, is a great tool for complex projects management and for team collaboration.

The real problem appear when Trello tasks and Todoist tasks should fit together. For that reason, I’ve decided to use Todoist as a “HUB” and include on that the most important Trello tasks. In an initial phase, I’ve done this process manually and this took me away a lot of time. Fortunately, I’ve found a solution that allows me to automate the process and that saves me a lot of time.

Todoist + Trello: possible thanks to IFTTT

Strange but true, neither Todoist nor Trello have a plugin or a feature that allow putting in communication these two great tools.

Apparently, the only solution to establish a contact between these two tools is to do it manually (yes… copy and paste tasks). Although this help to establish a better task’s order, it is an inappropriate way because require a lot of time and is vulnerable to mistakes and oversights.

For that reason, I’ve decided to use IFTTT to make an applet as useful as effective: when a Trello task is assigned to me, Todoist generates a new task (automatically) formatted in clear view:

[ Board Name ] — Task Title
@BoardName @ListName

This simple structure is the best solution for me, and it worked from the first moment. If you’ve different needs, you can customize the applet as you wish (I will tell you how to make this IFTTT’s applet in the next few lines).

Task management on Todoist and Trello

Before to deepen the IFTTT applet, let me show how works the task’s management process:

1. I assign a Trello task to myself (or a collaborator do it for me)
2. After few seconds or few minutes, the Trello task appear also on Todoist
3. I assign a date to my new task on Todoist
4. When I complete a task on Todoist, I also opening Trello to manage the task also on the Trello board

IFTTT applet and the structure of the Todoist task

[ Board Name ]
This elements at the beginning of the tasks title is an easy way to understand which is the project. It would be great to use a Todoist project (or a “folder”) instead of a name in the tasks title, but unfortunately, this isn’t a supported feature by IFTTT right now.

“Task Title”
Is the task title written on Trello. It must be simple, but clear enough to not force you to open the Trello board.

@BoardName
At first glance, this could seem like a repeated element, but if you know Todoist, you also know that the “@” symbols allow you to set a new label. This particular element allows me to filter specific tasks without using a Todoist project (this features could work also without Todoist premium, but in this case, you will have some limitations).

@ListName
This second label isn’t useful in every case. If you have Trello lists with useful titles, you can choose to include that as a Todoist label.

Link
The task’s title on Todoist has an “hidden” element: a link to the corresponding Trello task. This is particularly useful because allow you to check other details, chat with collaborators on Trello, and so on.

Date
With IFTTT Applet I’ve decided to not import the date (also isn’t possible to set it in a dynamic way at the moment), instead I’ve decided to set a fixed date: “Today” with no specific hours. This choice allowed me to see all my new Trello tasks at the end of the current day and is particularly useful when you need to schedule them.

Priority
In conclusion, the IFTTT applet set the priority task at P3. This is a simple way to give greater visibility to my Trello tasks (that are often for tasks related to my job and important projects).