Trello is an amazing resource for keeping your team’s assignments and tasks organized and readily accessible. Everyone on your team can view everything easily and keep up with their part, keeping all of the different assignments throughout your team centralized. In this article, we’ll cover how to automatically add your HubSpot tasks to your Trello board, further centralizing your team’s assignments while also saving yourself time and mistakes.
What you’ll need:
- A HubSpot account with access to the Calendar API (requires a paid account)
- A Trello account with a board/list for your HubSpot cards
- A Zapier account
Step 1: Create A Trello Board For Your HubSpot Tasks
The first thing you’ll need to do is create the Trello board that your new HubSpot tasks are going to be added to. If you already have a board created that you plan on using for this Zap, feel free to skip to Step 2.
To create your board, you’ll need to go to your homepage in Trello:
Once there, you’ll select Create new board…, which brings you to the following screen:
Make sure that the title of your board makes it clear that the added items are from your HubSpot Zap. Having a designated Trello board for the cards created by your Zap is a good idea, since you may find that combining your Zap created cards with the rest of your Trello cards creates too much clutter on one board.
Once you’ve created your new Trello board, you’re ready to create your Zap.
Step 2: Create Your Zap
Now that your Trello board is in place, you’re ready to make your Zap. If you’ve never used Zapier before, your “Zaps” are just the automations that you create within the service. To make your Zap, you start by connecting your Trigger app to your Action app. In our case, our Trigger app is going to be HubSpot and our Action app will be Trello. On your Zapier dashboard, you should see this at the top of the page:
In the Connect this app… field, you’re going to search for “HubSpot”. Make sure that you select HubSpot and not HubSpot CRM. In the second field – with this one! – you’re going to search for “Trello”. Your page should look like the following:
From here, all you need to do is select Make a Zap!
Step 3: Create Your HubSpot Trigger
You should now be looking at the following screen:
This is where you’re going to choose your Trigger. As the name implies, your Trigger is what tells your Zap when to run. In our case, that’s going to be anytime a new task is created in HubSpot. You’ll notice, however, that you don’t see New Calendar Task as an option. In order to bring it up, you’ll need to type the “Task” into the search field.
Once you select it, hit Continue. You’ll now need to connect your HubSpot account to Zapier if you haven’t already. All you need to do is select Connect an account and follow the instructions on the next page. After your account is connected and selected, you can Continue.
At this point, Zapier will bring you to the following page:
To continue creating your Zap, Zapier needs sample information. This information is only used to establish how your Zap will work, and won’t actually be used when your Zap runs. If you already have tasks created on your HubSpot account, then you can have Zapier pull in a random task to use as your template. If (like in the image above) you don’t have any tasks created yet, you can choose Skip This Step. Choosing this means that Zapier will create a fake task to use as our sample going forward. Either one of these options works fine, so the choice is up to you.
Once you’ve chosen your sample, you’ll keep clicking Continue until you get to the second part of your Zap, creating the Action.
Step 4: Create Your Trello Action
After you’ve finished setting up your Trigger, you’ll end up at the screen below:
Since we chose to connect HubSpot to Trello when creating our Zap, you should see Trello listed first, as in the image above. If not, you can simply type Trello into the search field and choose it from the list. Once Trello is selected, Continue.
Now you’re going to choose the Action that Trello performs when your Zap runs. You should be on the following page:
Since our goal is to create a card on our Trello board, you’re going to choose Create Card from the list of actions. Once you’ve chosen it, Continue.
Next, just like with HubSpot, you’re going to connect your Trello account to Zapier, assuming you haven’t already done so. Once you’ve connected your account, Continue to the next page.
Now it’s time to create your template:
This is where you’re going to decide how the Trello card that your Zap creates looks like. You can fill in the bare minimum amount of information, or fill in every field you want – it’s up to you. We’re going to cover the required fields, as well as a few other fields that you may find handy.
First, you need to choose what board your card is going to be created on. On the right of every field, you’ll see a tab for a drop-down menu. These drop-down menus pull information from your connected accounts as well as the Zap itself. If you choose the drop-down menu for the Board field, you’ll see all of your Trello boards available as options:
Once you’ve chosen the Trello board that you want your HubSpot cards to be added to, you’ll need to choose a List on that board for the card to be added to. For organizational purposes, you may find it helpful to create a list specifically for your HubSpot cards.
Next, you’re going to Name your HubSpot card. Obviously, you don’t want all of your HubSpot cards to have the same name. This is where variables come into play. You’ll notice that when you choose the drop-down menu for this field, Zapier pulls information from your first Zapier step using the sample information you chose. Just to keep things simple, we’re going to name our card after the HubSpot task that triggered it, like so:
For the Description field, you can essentially do the same thing by choosing Description from the drop-down menu. However, you can also customize your Description a bit by combining text and variables. Next is the Label field. You don’t have to fill in this field, though it might be helpful to label your Zap-generated cards as such – just so that there’s no confusion for you or your team later on. In the Custom Labels field, you can enter something like “Zapier-created card,” to let yourself and others know that it was created by an automation.
The next couple of fields are fairly self-explanatory and will be used differently by different users. In the Due Date field, you can select Task Due Date from the drop-down menu. The rest will likely be left empty, though that’s entirely up to you. Once you’ve filled out your template exactly how you want, you can Continue.
Next, Zapier will ask you if you want to send a test to Trello. All this means is that Zapier will run the Zap using your sample information, just to make sure that everything is working as it should. Just keep in mind that the testing the Zap will create a sample card on your Trello board, so you’ll need to delete it after testing the Zap. Once you’ve skipped or submitted the test, you can Finish your Zap.
You’re now at the last step!
All you have to do from here is name your Zap and turn it on. Once you click the OFF switch in the image above your Zap will go live, and any new tasks created in HubSpot will automatically be added to your Trello board as cards.
Conclusion
Here’s a quick recap of everything we did:
- Created a new board/card in Trello specifically for our HubSpot tasks (optional)
- Created a new Zap that links HubSpot to Trello
- Set our app to trigger anytime a new task is added in our HubSpot account
- Set our Trello account to add a new card to our Trello board using the information from the HubSpot task that initiates the Zap
Automatically adding your HubSpot tasks to your Trello board is a great way to stay in touch with your team and save yourself time. It ensures that no HubSpot tasks ever get overlooked as well, so you’ll be much less likely to fall behind.
This is only a sample of what can be accomplished through Zapier. Don’t hesitate to explore what else the service has to offer, and get creative with your automations!