Thanks to Zapier + Trello, these workflows will improve our communication, keep things running smoothly, and make eeeeverybody happy.

I haven’t shared much about the tools that Indy Hall uses, and has used, over the years. Many of the tools we use now either didn’t exist when we were getting started or wouldn’t have made sense to use when we were started.

So in many cases, my answer for what we use now isn’t all that helpful for most of the coworking spaces inquiring (who are, of course, just getting started 🙂

But this morning I had an “ah-ha” moment that led to me talking through some of our workflows with the team, and before the day was done, I had whipped up a new solution that is going to improve at least a half dozen of our every day workflows related to the entire lifecycle of someone’s membership.

I’m so jazzed about this stuff I just had to share, and so I recorded a brief…okay not that brief overview of exactly how I built these workflows and how we’re going to use them.

Automation can be a tricky thing in a coworking space. Our success is very, very heavily correlated to our focus on thoughtful and intentional person-to-person communication. So it’s INCREDIBLY important to be careful about the things that we automate, and make sure that we’re not automating the humanity out of our work as so many people do.

In the case of these workflows, we’re making these improvements specifically so that we can have less things fall through the cracks and put MORE energy and effort into better communication.

The 6 workflows that I’ll show you how to automate in this video are:

1. Adding new tour sign-ups to a Trello board for better post-tour follow ups
2. Adding new drop-ins to a Trello board for better post drop-in follow ups
3. Adding new interested members to a Trello board to better prepare them for sign up
4. Connecting Trello to Trello (TRELLOCEPTION), creating a seamless connection between the 3 previous workflows into our Member Onboarding workflow
5. Adding cancelled members to a Trello board to make sure we remove people from GroupBuzz, Slack, etc.
6. Adding failed credit card charges (via Stripe) to a Trello board so we don’t lose track of reminding people to update their cards

Ready?! Let’s go!

Zapier + Trello = Coworking Loooooooove

This video is probably best watched in full screen. 🙂

Links to tools and stuff:

• Sign up for Zapier (referral link, earns me more zaps!)
• Sign up for Trello (referral link, earns me more Trello gold, whatever that is)
• Copy our Trello boards (these are all suuuuuper work in progress. Check back often for updates)
• Most of the Zaps I created are pretty “custom” because they’re dependent on the fields from Gravity Forms, but here’s the one that creates new Trello cards every time a Stripe charge fails.
• Oh, and here’s where you can buy Gravity Forms. You need the developer license ($199/year) to use some of the more advanced gravity forms add-ons, including the Zapier one.

If people really like this video, I’ll do another one soon about all of the stuff we’ve built into our WordPress powered member site. It’s a bit more work upfront than the “off the shelf” tools out there, but all of those tools focus on “renting desks” and “booking conference rooms”, meanwhile they don’t really do anything to make our community better.

If you have other questions or ideas for things I can share about software and workflows that we use, fire away in the comments so I know what you want to learn!