Jack Wallen shows you how to use and generate random email addresses on Trello for individual boards, for simplicity, privacy and easy communication.

When you set up your Trello account, you associated an email address with it. That’s great, because it ensures that you stay up to date with things and can receive notifications for content on your boards.

However, when you have multiple boards, each one is given a random, unique email address that allows you to create cards by sending an email to that address. Those addresses come in the form of [email protected], where USERNAME is your Trello username. Now, you can’t customize that email address, but you can generate new ones. Why would you want to do that? I’ll explain.

SEE: Hiring kit: Project manager (TechRepublic Premium)

What purpose do these email addresses serve in Trello?

Remember, that email address allows you to create board cards from an email. To create a card from an email, you compose it as such:

• The email subject is the card’s title.
• The body of the email is the card’s description.
• Attachments in the email will be added to the card.
• To add labels, use hashtags in the subject, such as #projectx and #projecty.
• To add members use the @ symbol in the subject, such as @jack.

When you add members via the @ symbol in the subject, those members will be automatically added to the card and alerted. The subject will also be stripped of the member’s name, so the title will be cleaned up. Keep in mind that you can’t create a card on a specific column via email. Those cards will show up in the left-most column. Because of that, if you know you’ll be creating a lot of cards via email, you might even consider creating a special column for email cards that you would then move to the proper columns.

With this feature, you can do things like:

• Add bug reports as cards from users
• Get community feedback and feature requests
• Capture sales leads and demo requests
• Manage orders
• Manage your hiring funnel
• Add client feedback
• Allow for guest content submissions

How to locate your random Trello board email address and how it can simplify your workflow

Now that your interest is piqued, let me show you how to locate that email address and generate a new one, should you find yourself in a situation where the board email address found its way into the wrong hands, such as spam.

To access a board email address, you must log in to your Trello account and then navigate to the board you want to work with. Once on the board, click the three-dot menu button near the top right and then click Email-To-Board Settings (Figure A).

Figure A

In the resulting pop-up (Figure B), you’ll see the email address associated with the board.

Figure B

You have two options to take care of here. First, you can generate a new email address. It’s important to understand that if you generate a new email address, the original will no longer work. If you have legitimate members who use that address, make sure they are aware of the change.

You can also email the address to yourself, which could make it easier to add it to your address book, instead of having to copy and paste the address every time.

And that’s all there is to know about using and managing your Trello board email address. Use this feature wisely and it will go a long way to simplifying your workflow.

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