Trello is great for making lists of tasks within the context of a larger project, but one thing that it lacks, for me, are real reminders. You can assign due dates in Trello, but there’s not a solid reminder system, so unless you’re on Trello all the time, it’s easy to be surprised by due dates and scramble to complete them
I like using Google Calendar for events and their notification system works for me, so I wanted to integrate the two systems.
As you can learn in this guide, it’s possible to use the Calendar power-up in Trello, to sync with Google Calendar.
That works quite well, but if you’ve used all your Power-Ups, or want a more immediate syncing, Automate.io comes to the rescue. Automate.io is a system for integrating many different apps with each other, similar to Zapier. This is just one of the many awesome things you can do with it.
You can use a free account for this.
- Create a bot
- Click “untitled bot” to rename it to something useful
- Select Trigger App, then search for Trello and add it.
- A small window will pop up asking you to authenticate with your trello account. Follow the prompts to do that, it’s about 3 clicks.
- Next, select the Trigger event, in this case: Due Date Add/Updated on Card
- Input Fields > Board – choose the board that you want this bot to monitor for activity. You can make it more granular by choosing a specific List and card if you want.
- Next you have to configure the action. Select Action App, search for Google Calendar and authenticate.
- Then choose Add Event and which calendar (if you have more than one) that the events should be added to
- In the next fields map to Google Calendar the information you want to pull in from Trello. By clicking the + sign in the field you’ll see what Trello data is available. Most of the fields are optional.
- Click Save
- Activate the bot on the next screen:
- Test Bot: if this is the first time creating a bot, you should definitely test it by performing the action
- To check on the health of your bot you can see the log
Now you have an awesome system for integrating your Trello due dates with Google Calendar – don’t miss another task deadline again!
