Connecting Gravity Forms to Trello: 3 ways we use the plugin

Many developers of WordPress plugins will tell you that their best ideas and work are plugins that they need themselves. It’s certainly true of many of our WordPress plugins, the latest of which, Gravity Forms to Trello is no exception.

In this post I’m going to outline 3 ways that we wanted to work, specifically automating data between Gravity Forms and the Trello system.

Using Trello as a CRM

Over the years we have used a number of different online CRM systems. After using Trello for over a year as our main tool to manage our projects we looked at it from a CRM perspective and it was not long before we were excited about using it as a CRM too.

Like many, we have a enquiry form where people can make enquiries about our services. Traditionally these went into an online CRM but now that form (…using Gravity Forms naturally) sends the enquiry into Trello making in a new card in a board called “Leads”. In that board we have a number of lists like “Incoming“, then as we talk to a prospective client we might move them into the list “Waiting on Scope Document”  or  “Project Approval” depending on where the lead belongs.

This kind of setup makes it easy to see which leads are up to a certain stage, we open the cards and can leave comments, attach files or even assign them to other team members.

Use Trello as a support / issue tracker

We have a support system for our WordPress projects where a user can open a support ticket, perhaps a bug or a new feature they would like. Again the form is Gravity Forms but now we inject these into Trello as a new card, this time into a board called “Support”.

Using the tools in Trello we can assign the card to the best person in the team to work on the request, recording progress or communication with the client inside the card.

We use the coloured tags in Trello to denote if the card is urgent, or waiting on a response and move it through some lists in the board depending on status.

Sorting tool for new contractors

From time to time we’re looking for new developers or designers to work with us. Something we do regularly now is create a blog post outlining what we’re looking for and in that post we’ll create a new Gravity Form the collect some information from people interested.

As you can imagine, you have to sort these responses – flag the ones that you’d like to interview, create a short list etc… When we create these forms we can now also send the responses directly into Trello so that we can work there with the applications.

Yes, we love Trello!

The real beauty of Trello is that it gives you a loose set of tools that you can choose how to use, you’re not forced to use the system in any specific ways. Automating the input of data into it just makes the whole thing easier!

If you’ve not tried it, you should! It’s free to sign up, check out Trello.com here.