I have mentioned my love for Trello. I’ve also been trying to work around the lack of global tags since about the time I began using it on Dec 31, 2018.

This shortcoming finally lead me on a trip around the world of kanban software. I plan to review some of the stops I made. First off, I’d like to write a love letter to Trello on what may be the eve of our separation.

Some things I love about Trello:

• The primary functionality: kanban. I didn’t realize that’s what my life was missing until Trello came along. To-do lists just don’t cut it anymore.
• The pretty background pictures. They call the Unsplash API to allow you to select a pretty background. It is surprisingly pleasant. I assume this hasn’t been copied due to some intellectual property reason. If/When Trello and I part ways, I’ll miss it.
• The ability to use other boards and cards as attachments. It turns out to be surprisingly handy.
• The ability to copy lists and move copies to other boards.
• I have yet to find anything I can do on the website that I can’t do in the app.

The thing I don’t love:

• It’s very siloed

Things I’d love to see

• Global tags
• A dashboard
• It’s the nature of Trello’s beast to be closed source, but I’d sure love to find an alternative that’s so free rms would approve.

I’ve found a few open source web-based Kanban packages on Github, but none have all the features I’d need to be wooed away. I’m currently scoping out a few to potentially add missing functionality myself, but I’m still in the market.