A list of Jira issues in Trello with the Trello and Jira logos

Discover how Email for Trello and the Jira Power-Up can help your Trello sales and support teams collaborate more effectively with dev teams working in Jira.

At Email for Trello, we're super passionate about leveraging Trello's powerful standard features to add superpowers to your email workflow. And one of Trello's biggest benefits is how embedded it is in the wider Atlassian ecosystem.

Managing customer communication often means your team is juggling multiple tools. Your development team might be managing bugs and other technical issues in Jira. But your support or sales teams need to field email requests and queries in another tool. Without a smooth handoff between teams, things can easily slip through the cracks!

Your customer-facing teams need tools that integrate cleanly with Jira, and the best integration is always going to be with a tool in the same ecosystem. But, what if something like Jira Service Desk is a bit too technical for your needs? We have the answer: Trello!

In this article, we show you how to combine Email for Trello with the Jira Power-Up, so that you can create a seamless workflow that keeps everybody in sync and your customer service and sales team tools simple and user friendly.

Turn Trello into your team’s shared inbox

Trello isn’t just for task management – with the Email for Trello Power-Up, you can turn your team’s board into a fully-functional shared inbox. For example:

Keep your sales pipeline organized in Trello, and email your leads directly from each card.
Create an email support desk to manage help requests and tickets from customers.

Every incoming customer email becomes a card where your team can reply, mention team members, add notes and discuss to-dos – without ever leaving Trello.

💡 TIP Find out more about getting started with your team in Trello and how to build a shared inbox for the teams in your business (even if you use Gmail or Outlook).

Email for Trello testimonial – Thousands of teams use Email for Trello to organize and automate their emails

Next-level cross-team visibility

Once your team is set up to manage customer emails in Trello, the next piece of the puzzle is making sure that:

Customer requests can be quickly and easily communicated to teams working in Jira
Your customer-facing teams have visibility of Jira issues related to open customer queries

That’s where the Jira Power-Up comes in!

💡 TIP Discover how to improve cross-team collaboration with handovers in Trello.

Create and link Jira issues to your Trello cards

Email for Trello transforms your Trello board into a shared inbox, where each incoming email is turned into a card. Because you can reply to emails directly from the card, it's the perfect place to attach all other information and to-dos for that customer issue.

With the Jira Power-Up, you can attach an existing Jira issue to that Trello card, or create a new Jira issue straight from Trello if you need to raise awareness of a new issue.

A screenshot of the Jira Power-Up options menu on the back of a Trello card — *Create or attach Jira issues directly from Trello*

Your teams are able to:

Quickly escalate technical or dev-related requests.
Track issue progress from Trello. No need to ping the dev team! Sales and support can see Jira issues on each Trello card and access up to date information for customers.
Improve collaboration. Integrating Trello and Jira helps to keep lines of communication open between teams, so that everyone is aware of in-progress requests or bugs that could affect their pipeline.

Add a Jira list to a board

The Jira Power-Up also allows you to add a Jira list directly to your board, and customize what the list contains using custom search queries, keywords, and project, type, status, or assignee filters.

For example, you could create a custom filter in Jira for sales enablement dev and then add a Jira list with all related tasks to your Sales Pipeline board in Trello, so that your sales team is kept informed of progress on development that affects them.

💡 NOTE Jira lists are best for information only, as dragging a card out of a Jira list will copy that card instead of moving it.

Alternatively, support or sales teams working in Trello can organize Jira-linked cards into custom lists that fit their workflow (like ‘Escalated to Dev’ or ‘In Progress in Jira’).

Automate emails about Jira issues from Trello

As we’ve seen, combining Email for Trello with the Jira Power-Up helps teams stay in sync across tools – but you can also use them to keep your customer informed via email.

For example, lets imagine that your support team runs their email help desk in Trello with the following lists:

Inbox: Incoming emails land here as new cards.
Responded/Scheduled: If there’s any work to be done to get a help ticket resolved (like raising a Jira issue), this is where the planning happens.
In Progress: Once work has started, this list acts as a backlog of tasks for the team to work through.
Waiting for Dev: If any dev work is needed, email cards are dragged into this list so that team members can get on with other tasks while they wait.
Resolved: Well done! Completed tickets can be archived and the team can start the workflow once more.

Using this workflow, here’s how to automatically notify customers on the progress of issues they raised for development.

1. Set up a Saved Reply template

Saved Replies are template emails that help you respond to common queries quickly. You can also use variables to personalize your reply, and add information from your Trello card.

For example, your team sets up the following Saved Reply with the keyword #escalatetodev.

Hi {%contactFirstname || 'there'%},

Your ticket number {%referenceNumber%} has been escalated to our dev team. 

It's assigned to {%card.firstmemberfullname%} and is due for review by {%card.duedate%}.

If you have any questions, please reach out. 

Kind regards, 
{%userFullname%}

2. Create your email automation

Once you have your Saved Reply, you can use Trello automation to send it.

First, select your trigger (when a card is moved to the list ‘Waiting for Dev’), then select your action (post comment @reply ##escalatetodev).

When a card is moved to the list 'Waiting for Dev', post comment @reply ##escalatetodev

Now, when a card is moved into your selected list, Trello automatically adds a comment to the card, and the Email for Trello Power-Up converts the comment into an email. Here’s how:

@reply is the special keyword that lets the Power-Up know to convert the comment into an email.
##escalatetodev is the keyword set up in the Saved Reply during the previous step. The ## part lets Email for Trello know that this is a Saved Reply. The Power-Up will replace the keyword with the full email content at the time of sending.

An illustration of the Saved Reply in Trello, and how it looks in the customer's inbox once the email is sent

💡 TIP Take a look at our list of handy automation templates for more ways to automate emails in Trello.

Bridge the gap between Trello and Jira

With Email for Trello and the Jira Power-Up, your support, sales and dev teams can focus on what they do best. Customer issues get handled faster, updates stay visible, and your teams’ internal and external communication is streamlined.

Bridge the gap: How to use Email for Trello and the Jira Power-Up for smoother collaboration