I have a fever for productivity software. I haven’t found anything perfect (the nerve of other people not to think of exactly what I want!). This is wishlist of things ideal software would have. I wrote this both as a checklist for myself and as a guide of what to mention when I review other productivity software.

So, my nearly-true love is ❤️ Trello ❤️. Next best is Asana. This review is based on the things I found pleasing and displeasing about each.

Terminology

• I use the terms tag and label interchangeably.
• I use the terms card and task interchangeably. I realize that the Official Kanban Term is card, but I’m not bent on it.

Yes, Please

Basics

• Kanban
• The ability to copy and move boards, lists and tasks
• The ability to do nearly anything in the app that you can do on the desktop and vice versa.
• The ability to use other boards and cards as attachments. Pasting URLs will do in a pinch, but I’d like it to be able to grab the board’s name without me having to enter it.
• Can see a list of all tasks assigned to me, regardless of board. Can sort these tasks by due date (among other things?). It remembers the sort.
• Open source LOL yeah right
• Native calendaring
• Reminders on my phone. I’m not really pleased with how this is done in Trello, but I’m not sure what I would like. In Asana, reminders disappear after a day or so. I’d prefer they stick around until dismissed. This is useful if I’m waiting on some other party to complete a step.
• The app should have basic functionality without an internet connection; it should sync automatically once the connection is restored.
• Global IDs for each task so I can put ID-123 in a description or comment and it automatically links to that card, again regardless of board.
• Attachments, including the ability to set an image as a cover on both cards and a list.
• The ability to create templates from boards, lists or tasks
• A library of ready-made templates.

Boards

• Boards should be scoped to private by default.
• The ability to create a template from a board
• Alphabetical sorting on list of boards
• Many pretty board backgrounds
• Detailed notes on boards, lists or tasks. It would be nice if this integrates with Evernote or Google Keep or the like. Trello has board and task descriptions, but I’d like it to allow for more detailed notes. I think Notion has this.
• The ability to see something as a board or a list with section headings.

Lists

• Per-list notes
• Per-list attachment

Tasks

• Assign a task to multiple boards.
• Multiple batches of checkboxes per task; the ability to promote a list item to a task
• Per task detailed notes

Tags

• Global
• Color-coded
• The ability to see a list of all tags, regardless of board - when I click on a tag, it should show me all the tasks across all the boards.

Other

• No time limit on the free tier. Although I’m willing to pay for a service I love, a limited time trial period is inevitably too short to get a sense of whether or not a service works for me.
• Analytics

What it Doesn’t Need But I’ll Tolerate

• The ability to share things with other people
• The ability to color-code tasks themselves

No, Thank You

• Boards shared by default

Drop me a line if you have a lead on something like this - resume@kjcoop.com