Placker adds progress tracking to Trello by monitoring your Trello boards and detect your cards progress changes when they happen. Because we log the progress dates we can show you the progress status in different ways, the Gantt chart can be used to compare planned versus actual timelines, the track view will show you the burndown or completion graphs.
Why track progress?
Project and work management involves knowing and tracking your progress, progress helps you to focus your effort on getting your tasks and projects completed. It also helps you to understand and communicate the status of work for you, your team and your stakeholders.
Placker adds relevant dates to give you the information you need, like:
The % complete on each of your projects so you can work towards finishing each of them.
A zoomed in on the number of tasks that are blocked, so you can focus on them specifically.
A list of tasks that are open for each team member so you understand their workload.
How your team’s productivity is evolving over time.
Comparison of projects based on the same metrics.
Comparison of planned timelines with actual timelines to understand bottlenecks and draw lessons learned.
Manual progress tracking
If you prefer to set the status for each card, you can click them and set the status in the panel, or simply clicking the status icon.
Also, marking a card as completed will change the Placker status to completed (these attributes are synced).
This is good for a high degree of control on your cards. However, it may become laborious to update dozens of cards everyday. That's why there are cases where setting the progress automatically can save you time.
Automatic progress tracking
Placker can update the progress attribute automatically in two ways, by updating the progress based on the list the card is in or by adding a label to the card. Both ways work well with Trello as moving cards and adding labels in Trello will be updated in Placker automatically, this will therefore trigger an update of the progress attribute and its dates in Placker.
In case you already have a board layout that depicts a process or flow, you are probably already set to start tracking your progress this way, this is what you need to do:
Go to the board settings (click the gear next to the title of the board)
Click on ‘progress tracking’ to open the board tracking details
Select list or label as the way to track your board progress
For each of your lists or labels, set the default progress value (or leave it empty, then the status will not be updated if you move from list to list)
Alternatively, you can go list by list, click the three dots and select a card status
By List
You can automatically update the status of your card if you move them from list to list by adding a list status value. This way the card progress status and progress dates are updated automatically while the card is moved from one list to another, as is shown in the picture below.
List based progress tracking works two ways: if you update the status of the card, also the card will be moved to the correct list (if needed). This way the cards in your lists and the status is always synchronized between Placker and Trello.
By Label
If your boards are not setup as processes but are categorized in a different way, for example by project, then updating the status by list does not make sense. This is because there could be cards with different statuses on the same list.
You can then set up your board to update your card by adding a label to a card. This way members in Trello can still set the status in Placker. An added benefit is that Trello users will know the status as they can see the label as well.
Label based progress tracker works one way, you will need to add a label to the card to update the progress, also removing a label will not reset the progress status. This avoids an accidental reset or update of the progress status and dates.
Board settings in Trello
If you are using Placker through the Trello Power-Up, it's also possible to change these settings from the Power-Up settings, following the recording below:
What are Placker status options?
Placker adds a progress status attribute to your cards, we support 7 progress states to indicate the progress:
No scope – For cards that are not yet ready to be picked up, ideas you might have, backlog items that are not yet planned etc.
Open – For cards that are ready and waiting to be picked up, these cards are on the plan to be worked on.
Started – For cards that are started and are in progress.
Paused – For cards that are started and are paused for some (internal) reason.
Blocked – For cards that are started and that are blocked for some (external) reason.
Completed – For cards that are completed
Cancelled – For cards that are cancelled and no longer active.
These states are linked to dates in Placker. When you update the progress states, Placker will log the progress dates to the card. 6 dates are logged in Placker, which can be used to generate reports later:
Creation date – Indicates when the card was created
Scope date – Indicates when the card was put in the status Open
Actual start date – Indicates when the card was started
Actual end date – Indicates when the card was completed
Pending start date – Indicates when the card was put in Paused or Blocked state
Pending end date – Indicates when the card was released from Paused or Blocked state
These dates are set automatically and can always be changed by updating the card detail (by double clicking on the card).
Some examples;
When you update the status from Open to Started, the start date will be logged to the card.
When you update the status from Open to Completed, both the start date and the end dates will be logged.
When you update the status back from Completed to Started, the end date will be cleared.
Questions, issues and feedback
If the steps above weren't clear or if you followed them and couldn't get anything done, please reach out to us using the chat button at the lower right corner of this page.