This configuration page is for legacy "Google sync" users or those in need for the "Stealth" sync mode. New and upgraded users should prefer the newer "Trello card comments" instead of the "Google sync" methods.
Before enabling "Google sync" you need to sign-into Chrome. If you haven't already done so, click the top-right Chrome menu and sign in to Chrome.
The note above is one of the disadvantages of "Google sync". If your team has no problem being all signed-in to Chrome (really Chrome is much better when you are signed-in), and for some reason you don't like the newer "Trello card comments" sync method, use "Google sync".
Google Sync uses a Google spreadsheet to store sync data. Plus can create the spreadsheet or you can use the one created by your team administrator.
If you choose to create the spreadsheet, Plus will name it "Plus for Trello sync spreadsheet" in your Google Drive with you as the owner and without ever consuming any space quota since its a native Google format.
In "legacy Google sync", Plus will rename card titles to include S/E in them. This is useful because that mode is not supported by the mobile apps or from other browsers.
Advantages of "Google sync":
- All sync data is kept in sync in the Google spreadsheet.
- All users see the same s/e data regardless of board memberships.
- In "Stealth" sync mode, Plus does not make any changes to Trello. Other board members wont see your Points / Spent / Estimates or any other Plus data unless you share them the Google spreadsheet as well.
Disadvantages:
- Requires chrome sign-in and access to your Google Drive. The newer "Trello card comments" sync method doesn't need this.
- In team mode, all team users need write access to the same spreadsheet and all can see all rows reported by the team. This is in contrast with the newer "Trello card comments" sync where users see s/e based on board membership.
- Not yet supported by the Plus mobile app.
- Does not support multiple keywords.
- All s/e must be entered using the Plus s/e card bar. The newer "Trello card comments" sync lets you also enter s/e directly as a card comment thus can be done from anywhere without having the Plus extension installed, like Firefox or the native Trello mobile app.
- Holds up to 170,000 team history rows per spreadsheet, while "card comments sync" has no limit. This limit is not too important because Plus supports archiving old spreadsheet data.
Team-mode or single-mode?
Team mode is when all team members use the same spreadsheet URL. Single-mode is when each user creates their own spreadsheet URL.
You can go back and forth between team-mode and single-mode though it requires manipulating the spreadsheet manually:
- single-mode to team-mode: a manager should use its own sync spreadsheet to be the team spreadsheet and manually append all rows from the other spreadsheets, then sort by date ascending. All team users then switch to this new sync spreadsheet.
- team-mode to single-mode: sort the spreadsheet by user and date ascending. Then each team user should clear its sync url, press OK, then create a new sync spreadsheet from Plus, open it and paste there their part of the data from the team spreadsheet.
In both cases all team users should not be using Plus during migration to prevent the spreadsheets from having new rows added during the conversion process.
How to modify or restore a spreadsheet
You can open a different spreadsheet by placing the URL to that spreadsheet's Trello data sheet in the "Google Sync" setup dialog inside the Plus help pane.
You can also "Reset sync" (from Utilities) to re-read your current spreadsheet (in case you modified it).
Please note that we cannot provide support for errors caused by modifying the spreadsheet.
Please note that we cannot provide support for errors caused by modifying the spreadsheet.
If you must modify it, first make sure no-one is reporting new S/E while you modify the sync spreadsheet (you can remove sharing permissions and put them back later).
Then, leave the original spreadsheet alone and make a copy to work on the new one. Once you finish, simply put the new URL in the Google Sync configuration. If you ignored this advice and modified the original spreadsheet directly instead of making a copy, press "Reset sync" (from Utilities), to remove all data and re-read the spreadsheet.
Then, leave the original spreadsheet alone and make a copy to work on the new one. Once you finish, simply put the new URL in the Google Sync configuration. If you ignored this advice and modified the original spreadsheet directly instead of making a copy, press "Reset sync" (from Utilities), to remove all data and re-read the spreadsheet.
Note that this only modifies Plus data. Your cards will still have the old S/E in its comments and title. If you actually modified the total S/E for a card in the spreadsheet (sum for all users), you have to also manually rename the cards from Trello to correct their title's "(S/E)".
Programmatic access to your data
Note that its much easier to access your data if you instead use the "trello card comments" sync mode instead of Google spreadsheets.
If you want an external program to integrate with your S/E historical data, read it from the sync spreadsheet following these rules:
- In rare cases there might be duplicate rows in the spreadsheet. This does not cause duplicate accounting in Plus. You can tell a duplicate row because its 'idtrello' will be the same as another row's id.
- All columns use a fixed format and are self-explanatory except for column 'idtrello' with format X-shortLinkCard-shortLinkBoard. X is a unique string without dashes but could contain a dot. See https://trello.com/docs/ for shortLink help.
- Dates are always formatted as m/d/yyyy h:m:s in the user's local time.
- You may not change, insert or delete rows. You can only append rows to the bottom of the spreadsheet using Google's "appendRow" operation row-by-row (use a row feed not a cell feed to prevent consistency problems).
- All cells always begin with ' to prevent the spreadsheet from interpreting the string as something else and reformatting it (like datetime, number, etc). If you ever search-replace the spreadsheet be aware that Google removes the ' unless you include it in both search and replace boxes.
Size and performance notes
Plus can handle millions of S/E rows without performance issues. Its been designed to scale to unlimited users without any modifications.
Plus has permission to use unlimited storage in each of your chrome devices (PC, Mac, Chromebook, Linux etc). Internally all historical data is stored in Chrome's web-sql (sqlite) and is well indexed meaning common reports are fast.
Plus will never miss or double-count data even if you have no internet connection while clicking 'Enter' in the S/E card bar.
The only size limitation is on the Google sync spreadsheet when using the spreadsheet "Google sync" mode. Google sheets can handle about 170,000.rows. Plus supports loading multiple spreadsheets (one after another) to support archiving scenarios if the spreadsheet gets too big. Simply change to the new URL and pick the "merge" option when prompted to merge or start from scratch.
Enjoy!
