Hello ? Atlassian Team ? Are you hearing us ? No to the new Board switcher

[Michael Stephenson]

Hi folks ... just want to know if you are hearing us about RETAINING the Left Hand Board switching menu ? We seem to be getting silence over there.

The new board switcher is a PROCESS . The Left Hand Board Menu is a THOUGHT. Please do not remove access to the current board menu. I've no use for the INBOX or PLANNER ... but I do use the Board menu as it currently sits.

I tried integrating the new Pop Up Beta Switcher .... it is simply a terrible experience.

[Michel R R Kurokawa · Accepted solution]

This is the reason I'm not using the Beta.

[Michael Stephenson]

Yeah, I bailed on it after discovering the new board siwtcher debacle.

[Sam Szuchan]

Same here

[PJRanson · Accepted solution]

I agree - I feel the board switcher could be provided as an toggleable option - ditto with the default (non beta) view.

I really like the inbox FWIW - I had setup multiple inboxes on all my boards and emailed in to them  - so to have a dedicated inbox, for me, is a godsend.

But I do wholeheartedly agree, the beta board switcher needs work for it to be useful.

I've actually used the inbox as a means to hold all my boards (copy the urls for the boards into it) - it's not ideal, but it works in a pinch.

[Alexandros Mathopoulos]

👋🏻 Hi @Michael Stephenson

Lex here from the Trello Product Management team! First, I wanted to say thank you to you and others for all of the feedback! I can assure you that our entire Product and Engineering team is monitoring all feedback coming from our millions of users very closely to ensure we are building the best product we can for the vast majority of our users. With any major change to a product there are a lot of tradeoffs that we have to consider (for example, introducing Planner & Inbox in a side by side experience view which is being very well received by a large proportion of our beta users) while also making switching between boards not difficult. 

Is there anything we can do to make the new board switcher better? For example, we have heard from some users that one of the things the liked about the old left hand nav is being able to see a list of boards vs the tiles/boxes we currently have in the board switcher. 

I know the new board switcher has a learning curve and is very different than what we used to have. One tip (just in case you have not discovered it yet) is the ability to quickly find any board across all your workspaces with never even touching your mouse. For example, try hitting b on your keyboard from anywhere in Trello, immediately start typing the name of the board, and then hitting the enter key to open that board. 

[Sam Szuchan]

Did you know that Slack did the exact same thing Trello is doing with their side bar, faced a mass revolt, and was forced to change it back?

[Maula]

I like the new board switcher. I'm still getting used to it. I use it when I want to go to another board from a different workspace or search for a board within the same workspace. The core approach of the board switcher is to look up boards by typing.

However, the Left-Hand Board switching menu is still very useful for a key thing the new board switcher doesn’t replace:

It gives an instant overview of only the boards within the current workspace. In the new board switcher, if you type the name of the workspace to get all the boards from that workspace, it doesn’t search for it and for good reason. Searching both boards and workspaces through the same bar would probably get messy, I think. So, you have to click the little tab instead.

Why not keep both? And why not assign a hotkey to the Left-Hand Board overview, like the letter "V"?

That way, you’d have "V" for the Left-Hand Board overview of the current workspace, and "B" for the new board switcher, which I also really like.

[Michael Stephenson]

@Alexandros Mathopoulos 

Ironically, a lot of people seem to be essentially remaking the Left Hand Board Switcher in the new Inbox to restore the current functionailty.

Did anyone not consider simply adding the INBOX & PLANNER side by sides to the current layout? That would seem like a much better UI update.

[PJRanson]

Yeah... this makes the most sense to me - keeps the 'column' based gestalt and just feels like the right thing to do. Nice job. :)