Starting point
Project leaders at a regional building-services company managed heat-pump projects through spreadsheets, emails and memory. Often only one person knew the next step in a project. Handovers and follow-ups depended on someone remembering.
Approach
- Model the processTogether with the project leaders I broke the path from enquiry to sign-off into eleven phases – including “on hold” and “lost”.
- Checklists per phaseEvery operational phase gets a standard checklist. The enquiry phase is split into seven topic groups, from technical basics to hot water.
- Generate cards automaticallyA Power Automate flow reads the project list from Excel, creates cards via the Trello REST API and builds the checklists with all items.
- Next task in the titleCard titles follow the pattern PL code | project number | customer | next task. The last part updates from the first open checklist item.
- Guard phase changesIf a card is moved while items are still open, the flow moves it back and comments the open items. Completed checklists stay on the card as history.
- Embed in TeamsThe board runs as a tab in Microsoft Teams. Once an order is placed, a Teams project space holds site photos, documents and coordination with installers.
Outcome
- Each project leader sees their projects with the next concrete step right in the title
- Management and office see every project at a glance
- No phase change without a completed checklist
- Rolled out as a pilot with one project leader first, then to the whole team
Technical details
Checklist templates live as JSON inside the flow and are posted in nested loops to /1/checklists and /checkItems. A daily sync flow reconciles Excel, Trello and the internal system.