Moving your agency off Trello in an afternoon

Moving a live agency to a new project tool usually stalls on one worry: the work already in flight. Nobody wants to retype a board's worth of cards, lose the checklists or leave a client wondering where the project went.

If your work is on Trello today, you can migrate from Trello without starting again. Skybase imports a Trello board from its JSON export, and the move for one board fits comfortably into an afternoon. This guide covers the whole migration: what to prepare, how to export, what comes across, and what to tidy up before your team starts work on Monday.

Plan the move before you export anything#

A migration goes best when you decide a few things first.

1. Pick one board to start with. Choose a live client project with real work on it, so the team learns the new tool on something that matters. Move the rest once that one feels right.
2. Make sure you are an administrator in Skybase. Only administrators can run the import.
3. List the people on the board. For each one, note their email address and whether they are on your team or at the client. You will need both at the end of the import.
4. Tell the team the date. One day where the board stops changing makes the export clean.

Export the board from Trello#

Any member of a Trello board can export it as a JSON file. Open the board, open the board menu (the three dots), choose "Print, export, and share", and pick the JSON export. If your browser shows the JSON as a page, save it as a .json file.

Trello's own help page, exporting data from Trello, notes that a JSON export includes the board's 1,000 most recent actions, comments among them. On a long-running board, the oldest comments may not be in the file.

Import the board into Skybase#

The import takes a single board at a time, from a JSON file of up to 10 MB.

1. Open All projects in the sidebar.
2. Choose Import from Trello. It sits beside New Project, and only administrators see it. In a brand new workspace, the welcome screen offers the same option.
3. Choose your file with Choose .json file, then Upload & Preview.
4. Check the Import Summary. It counts the lists, cards, labels, checklists, comments and members Skybase found in the file.
5. Check the Project Name. It starts as the board's name, and you can change it here.
6. Choose Import.

When it finishes, a new project exists with the board's work in it. Nothing is changed on the Trello side.

What comes across, and where it lands#

The import maps each part of the board onto its closest Skybase equivalent.

A few details are worth knowing:

• A job has one status, so a card with several labels takes one of them.
• Labels with no name are left out.
• Archived lists, and the cards in them, are left out.
• Archived cards in open lists come across as archived jobs. You can find them under Archived Jobs in the project settings.
• Cards whose due date was marked complete come across as completed jobs.
• Attachments are not part of the import. Download anything you still need before you stop using the old board.

Invite the people who were on the board#

The last step of the import lists everyone from the board, with their Trello name. For each person, add an email address and pick a role: Team Member, Single Project Guest or Multi Project Guest. Then send the invitations, or choose Skip for now.

Inviting someone at this step also moves their cards and comments from the placeholder onto their real account. If you skip it, they stay as placeholders you can assign work to, but they cannot sign in. So have the email list from your planning step open before you press Import.

Pick the role with care for anyone at the client. A single-project guest is free, and can comment, upload and approve files on that one project. A multi-project guest counts as a paid user. The pricing page has the details.

Tidy up on day one#

An import copies the board as it was. A little tidying turns it into a board that works the way Skybase does.

Sort your labels into statuses and job types#

Every named label becomes a status, next to the project's own statuses (Not Started, In Progress, Stuck and Completed). Some labels were probably states, like "Waiting on client". Those make good statuses, so keep them.

Others were probably kinds of work, like "Design" or "Copy". In Skybase those are better as job types, which can carry custom fields. A job's type is chosen when it is created, so set up your job types under Job Types now and use them for new work. Leave the old label statuses on the imported jobs until those jobs are done, then delete them under Statuses. Deleting a status clears it from any job that still has it, so do it last.

Kanban for agencies explains why this split between columns, statuses and job types keeps a board readable.

Give every job one owner#

People on a card become collaborators on the job, not its assignee. Collaborators follow a job, but the assignee owns it. Switch to Table, group by Assignee, and use Assign to in the bulk bar to give each job an owner in a few passes.

Set priorities#

Imported jobs all come in as Normal priority. Group the table by Priority, select the few jobs that matter most, and use Set priority to raise them.

Decide what "done" means#

A job completes when someone chooses Mark complete, or sets a status that has Triggers job completion. If your final column should also complete a job, an administrator can add an automation for it under Automations in the project settings.

A worked example: Harbour Studio moves Northwind#

Take a small agency, say Harbour Studio, with its Northwind rebrand on a Trello board. Maya Chen, the studio lead, plans the move for a Friday afternoon.

On Friday morning Maya lists the people on the board: Leo Ortiz and Priya Shah, the designers; Sam Okafor, the strategist; Ava Lindqvist, the copywriter; and Tom Becker, the client at Northwind. After lunch Maya exports the board, opens Import from Trello, and checks the summary before choosing Import.

The lists Brief, In progress, Client review and Done become the four columns. The card for the homepage hero keeps Priya's checklist as tasks, and the comment thread on "Brand guidelines v3" is there with its original dates.

On the invite step, Maya adds four email addresses as Team Member and Tom's as Single Project Guest, so Tom joins free and sees only the Northwind project.

Three labels came across as statuses: "Design", "Copy" and "Needs client". Maya keeps "Needs client" as a status. "Design" and "Copy" become job types, with a Format field on Design, for every job the team creates from Monday. The two old statuses stay until the imported jobs are finished.

Last, Maya groups the table by assignee and gives every job an owner, then raises "Brand guidelines v3" to Important. By the end of the afternoon the team has a board they can start from on Monday.

One thing to know about reports#

Skybase measures lead time from the day a job was created in Skybase to the day it was completed. Imported jobs are created on the day of the import, and cards that were already done come across as completed that day. So the first weeks of reports mostly describe the move. Give it a month of new work before you read much into lead time or throughput.

Your migration checklist#

• Pick one live board to move first.
• Collect an email address and a role for everyone on it.
• Export the board as JSON and keep the file.
• Download any attachments you still need.
• Run Import from Trello and check the Import Summary.
• Invite everyone on the last step, with clients as single-project guests.
• Keep state labels as statuses; set up job types for kinds of work.
• Give every job one owner, and raise the priorities that matter.
• Decide what completes a job.

The getting started guide covers the rest of a new workspace, and the integrations page lists what else Skybase connects to.

Moving tools is never free of effort, but it doesn't have to mean starting again. Export one board, import it, invite the people on it and tidy for an hour. Then do the next board.