How to Streamline VFD Facilities Management with Trello (Part 2)
In Part 1 of this series, we discussed how to use a Trello “Command Board” to keep your leadership team organized. Now, we’re going to take that concept to the next level. We’ll build a fully automated system to tackle one of the biggest operational headaches in any firehouse: tracking facilities issues.
Our station is a mix of old and new construction, with the oldest part dating back to 1950. With both career and volunteer staff using the building 24/7, something always needs attention—a leaky faucet, a flickering light, a broken bay door. The pain point was universal: it was incredibly difficult for everyone to know the status of an issue. Was it reported? Is someone working on it? Did we call a vendor?
We solved this with a dedicated Trello board and a clever automation that turns a simple email into a powerful tracking tool.
The Setup: Your Automated Facilities Board
This system is built on Trello’s “email-to-board” feature, which allows you to create cards by simply sending an email to a unique address.
Step 1: Create the Board and Lists First, we created a new Trello board named “Facilities.” We use the following lists to track an issue from report to resolution:
- Unactioned: The starting point for all new issues.
- Pending: We’ve contacted a vendor and are waiting for a response.
- Vendor Scheduled: A service call has been officially scheduled.
- Work In Progress: The vendor is actively on-site or working on the issue.
- Resolved: The issue is fixed and the card is complete.
- On Hold (Revisit Later): For non-urgent issues we want to track but defer, like a quote to paint a room next fiscal year.
Step 2: Activate the Email-to-Board Magic Every Trello board has a unique, secret email address. You can find this by going to your board’s menu and selecting the “Email-to-board” setting. We copied this unique address.
Step 3: Create a Simple Distribution List We created a simple email distribution list—something like facilities@yourvfd.org. This email address forwards to two places simultaneously:
- A group of key personnel (career shift leaders, volunteer officers, and a few dedicated facilities volunteers).
- The unique Trello board email address from Step 2.
Step 4: Configure the Automation In the Trello settings, we configured it so that any email sent to the board’s address automatically creates a new card in the “Unactioned” list. The subject of the email becomes the card’s title. The body of the email is added as the description, and—critically—any attachments to the email are automatically saved to the card. This is incredibly useful for things like photos of a broken part or PDF quotes from vendors.
The Workflow: How It Works in Practice
Now, when any member of the department finds an issue, they simply send an email to facilities@yourvfd.org. This instantly notifies all the key personnel and creates a trackable card on our Trello board.
To manage the incoming work, we created a facilities “on-call” rotation. A few dedicated volunteers take turns being the point person for one week at a time. When a new issue comes in, the on-call volunteer’s first action is to “Reply All” to the original email with a simple “Got it, working on it.”
This is where the real magic happens. Because the Trello board’s address is on the distribution list, every “Reply All” in the email thread is automatically added as a comment to the corresponding Trello card. This creates a complete, time-stamped log of all communication about the issue, attached directly to the task.
As the on-call volunteer works the issue—contacting vendors, scheduling repairs—they simply move the card through the lists, providing instant status visibility to the entire leadership team.
We also enabled Trello’s “Summarize with AI” feature. This uses Atlassian Intelligence to automatically create a clean summary of the entire email thread in the card’s description, making it even faster to get up to speed on an issue.
The result is a transparent, accountable, and incredibly efficient system for managing our station.
In the final part of our series, we’ll explore how we applied these same principles to streamline our financial workflows for invoices, receipts, and reimbursements.