Getting Started With Asana and Trello Setup
Let’s just say this right up front: if you’ve tried to use both Trello and Asana in the same week to manage content calendars, you’ve probably ended up confusing due dates with editorial deadlines, and had your template cards end up published by accident. This section digs into what actually works when setting them up from scratch — as if you’re making these boards today, not tweaking ones from five years ago.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!In Asana, I always start with a blank project. I know they offer a Content Calendar template, but it includes weird sections like “Needs Review” and “Blocked,” which are more useful for bug fixes than editorial work. I prefer setting up custom sections like “Assigned,” “Writing,” “In Proof,” and “Scheduled,” and then using custom fields like “Topic Type” (Feature, Listicle, Interview), “Status”, and an actual publication target like “Website,” “Newsletter,” or “Social Media.”
Meanwhile, Trello starts faster — you just need a new board. I use lists instead of sections, so each phase of your content process becomes a list: Blog Pitches, Assigned, In Drafts, Editing, Scheduled. The magic in Trello comes from labels. You can color-code by platform, content type, or campaigns. I’ve personally stuck with color-overload for platform tagging: red for Main Blog, green for Email, blue for YouTube. It looks like a rainbow, but visually scrollable content is way faster to manage when you’re glancing through ten cards at once just looking for “what’s launching this week.”
One thing Asana does better here: Timeline View. I can drag tasks horizontally on a calendar-like chart, and it forces everyone on the team to see a real sequence. No more three articles scheduled for the same hour. Trello can’t match that clean focus unless you attach a Power-Up like Planyway. I tried doing this and it corrupted the dates when syncing back to Google Calendar — it showed the wrong timezone. Like, I’d schedule a post for Thursday morning and it’d appear on my calendar for Wednesday evening. Not okay 🫠.
In short: Trello is faster to prototype, but Asana is better for actual deadlines over time.
Assigning Roles and Managing Workflow Visibility
Role clarity gets fuzzy fast in collaborative tools, especially when everyone thinks they’re looking at the single source of truth — yet they’re in separate views. In Asana, roles are pretty explicit. You assign a task, and it’s obvious who’s responsible. But if you forget to assign it? The task just floats in “Unassigned” limbo — which honestly caused us to completely miss two feature posts in November 😩. Now I always create an automation rule that flags any new task without an assignee as high priority.
In Trello, there’s no real concept of task ownership unless you consistently assign members to every card. That sounds manageable until you duplicate a card template, and your member assignment doesn’t carry over — unless you’re using Butler automation. The first two times I set this up, it didn’t work at all. Turns out, Butler doesn’t run on card duplication unless the original action is triggered manually. You have to create a rule that listens for: when a card is added to a list, and not just when a template is copied. It’s a subtle detail, but it changes everything.
The workaround? I made a label called “Needs Assignment,” and any card that hits a workflow phase like “In Drafts” with that tag sends a Slack reminder via Zapier. It’s extra steps, but it’s saved actual launch delays.
Now, in terms of visibility: Asana lets me create custom views. So I have one that only shows content scheduled for this week — filtered by Assigned + Status = Scheduled. Very clean. Trello can kind of do this with filters, but only one user at a time. So if I set a filter to view only cards with my name + label “Main Blog,” another team member won’t see that filtered view unless they do the same manually.
In short: Use Asana for team clarity in assignments. Trello needs automation workarounds or you’ll miss tasks.
Tagging Content by Platform and Format Types
This is where Trello shines — and Asana kind of fumbles unless you build a naming convention religion around your tags. When you’re managing digital publishing across multiple outputs — blog, newsletter, YouTube, socials — you need to know what’s going where. You also need to track whether that content was a video, how-to tutorial, Q&A, or infographic.
In Trello, I use two separate sets of colored labels for this, and I never combine them. The first set (for channels) is: Blog, Instagram, Email, Podcast. The second set (for format) is: Guide, Interview, Announcement. Mixing them in one label set gets confusing — especially if someone uses 3 labels on one card and calls it a day. So this visual system helps at a glance.
In contrast, Asana tries to solve this with custom fields. But custom fields can only be seen clearly when you’re in “List” view or “Timeline.” If you’re looking at the Board view (which mimics Trello), you’ll need to hover or expand each task to spot the fields — not very scannable. And there’s no color coding to speak of. This slows down weekly editorial meetings, because context isn’t immediate.
In both tools, I recommend templating these tags/fields from day one. Seriously — I once had freelancers invent “Newsletter” vs “Email Campaign” as separate items, and posts got double-scheduled. Use dropdowns or curated label lists, and name your categories exactly once. Never let a team free-type platform names like it’s a Google Doc.
In short: Trello is way better for visual tagging and content-type spotting. Asana is fine, but only if your views are rigidly structured.
Calendaring and Publication Visualization
I desperately wanted Trello to have a visual layout view like a grid or calendar that just says: Here’s what’s going live tomorrow. The built-in Calendar Power-Up does this a bit, but you get one calendar per board. Meaning: if you split boards by platform (one for YouTube, one for Blog), good luck tracking what’s happening on the same day across all outputs. I tried Crmble CRM’s calendar view hacked into a content board once, but syncing dates across boards ended up duplicating events multiple times 🙄.
In Asana, this is usually the dealbreaker in its favor. Their Calendar View and Timeline let us see content stacked by due date — and it’s real editorial dates, not just tasks to write. Every piece has a “Launch Day” field, and if we drag it around, everything connected (copywriting, approval, graphics) adjusts accordingly. There’s even dependency rules, so the graphics task can’t start until the copy has entered “Ready For Design.”
Another key win in Asana: you can create multiple calendar views using different filter combos. So I have one calendar that only shows IG Reels being published this week, another that’s only Feature Blog Posts in the next two weeks. This lets our social and content leads have their own lens, without overlapping confusion.
If you use Google Calendar, Asana lets you sync — but it’s one-way. Moving it in Google doesn’t move in Asana. In Trello (if you use the Calendar Power-Up plus 3rd party sync tools), you can kinda push and pull live dates. But those integrations break all the time. I once edited a recurring content slot via a synced Trello event, and it deleted all future instances 😨. Never again.
In short: Use Asana if publication day visualization is core to your process. Trello’s calendar tools are patchy and flaky beyond occasional use.
Templating and Cloning Editorial Timelines
It’s wild how similar these tools look when you just create a new task, but how different they act when you try to build templates that teams consistently reuse. Trello got this wrong for me five straight weeks. I’d set up a content card with detailed subtasks for drafting, copyediting, imagery, scheduling — and someone would duplicate it and miss half the checklists, because Trello doesn’t automatically show all checklist items unless you hit expand. Also, the due dates reset unless duplicated properly.
We fixed this with card templates — but only after discovering the setting buried under Menu > More > Templates. Creating cards from a true template keeps checklist steps, labels, and assignees. But it doesn’t keep due dates, so we added Butler automation: if a card enters the “Assigned” list, then it adds subtasks with specific due offsets like: Draft due in 2 days, Art due in 5 days, Publish in 7 days.
Asana is far ahead here. You create a template task that serves like a master seed. You can even prebuild dependencies inside the task, so if Draft is moved to tomorrow, Edit phase auto-shifts to 2 days later. Templates support multi-assignee fields too, and unlike Trello, these don’t need to be edited manually.
Issue? If you change the master template later in Asana, it doesn’t retroactively update tasks made from it 😑. So when we updated our process to include YouTube snippets for every blog post, old templates didn’t reflect that step unless we reloaded all of them. Very annoying.
In short: Asana is powerful for editorial templates, Trello’s usable only with automation patchwork.
Notifications and Update Feedback Loops
There’s a weird irony in collaboration tools: the more notification options they offer, the more likely someone misses the only alert that matters. In Trello, the notifications feel tee-shirt-sized: either none, or too much. You only get alerts for cards you’re a member of. So if you forget to “Join” a new card, you’ll never hear about edits or checklists being completed. We had one designer not Join the template card, which then duplicated into multiple posts, and they missed every deadline ping because of it 😠.
Asana fixes this with built-in follower roles. Even if you’re not assigned, you can “Follow” a task and get updates. The Inbox in Asana is way more centralized — changes, comments, due dates, all land there. We’ve trained our editors to check Asana Inbox like it’s email. Best setup we applied: auto-assign reviewer as follower once a task enters “Ready For Proof.”
Slack integrations are where things really tip. Trello’s Power-Up gives you a pretty flexible way to link cards to Slack messages, but the real-time stuff requires Zapier at this point. That means potential duplicate pings or skipped ones when data doesn’t flow properly. We had a case where a Slack thread was created automatically each time a new card hit “Scheduled,” but Trello didn’t fire the event for half our batch because we hit a rate limit.
Asana + Slack is heavier, but much more reliable. You get direct action notifications (e.g., task assigned to you) and channel-based ones (e.g., anything entering “Launch Week”). The even better part? If someone replies inside the Slack message from Asana, it logs that back into the task. That kind of two-way log is gold for editorial trail mapping.
In short: Asana has smarter, more reliable notifications. Trello notifications need way too much active card babysitting.
