Trello
Cardscape runs inside Trello as a Power-Up. Once it's added to a board, you get Cardscape canvases right where your work already lives — and you can drop live Trello cards onto those canvases.
Inside Trello, canvases are surfaced as "Scenes." A scene is a Cardscape canvas — the label just fits Trello's vocabulary. Everything in the Canvases section applies to scenes.
Add and authorize the Power-Up
- Open the board you want to use, go to the board's Power-Ups, and add Cardscape.
- The first time you open it, Cardscape asks you to authorize it with your Trello account.
Authorization scopes
Cardscape requests three Trello scopes, and needs all three:
| Scope | What it grants | Why Cardscape needs it |
|---|---|---|
| read | See your boards, lists, cards, and members | Show your cards on canvases and keep them in sync |
| write | Update cards, checklists, and comments; create cards | Let you edit and create cards from a canvas (write-back) |
| account | Confirm your Trello identity | Tie your session, canvases, and comments to you |
The authorization is tied to your own Trello account, so Cardscape only ever sees what you can already see in Trello. Without the write scope, cards are read-only. You can revoke Cardscape's access at any time from your Trello account settings.
Where Cardscape appears
The Power-Up adds several surfaces to Trello:
- Board button ("Cardscape") — opens the full-screen Scenes view for the board.
- Card button ("Scenes") — opens the Scenes view scoped to that specific card.
- Card-back section — a compact list of the scenes attached to a card, shown on the card's back.
- Card badge — shows how many scenes are attached to a card, right on the board.
- Pop-out — a header icon in the Scenes modal opens the canvas in a standalone browser tab for more room. Your session travels with you, so there's no second sign-in, and cards and write-back keep working.
Scenes and their scopes
Every scene is stored against your Trello identity at one of three scopes. The scope decides which board or card a scene is filed under — and therefore where you reach it:
| Scope | Attached to | Where you open it | Good for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Workspace | the Trello workspace (organization) — no board | the standalone app / workspace switcher | org-wide canvases that don't belong to one board |
| Board | a board in the workspace | the board's Cardscape button | a board's working canvases |
| Card | a single card (always within its board) | the card's Scenes button or card-back section | canvases about one specific card |
A few details worth knowing:
- Board scenes belong to a board. Each board gets a default scene the first time you open Cardscape on it, and you can add as many more as you like.
- Card scenes always live inside their board — a card scene implies a board. The card badge tells you at a glance how many a card has.
- Workspace scenes aren't tied to any board; they span the whole organization and are most visible in the standalone app and the workspace switcher.
The same three scopes apply across every provider (Jira and native accounts included) — see Canvas scopes for the provider-neutral model.
The board or card a scene is filed under organizes it — it does not decide who can open it. Access is governed entirely by your Trello workspace membership (below). Anyone who can reach the workspace can reach all of its scenes, no matter which board or card they're attached to. Filing a scene under a card does not make it private to people who can see that card.
How access works
You can reach a Trello workspace in Cardscape when either of these is true:
- You're a member of the organization (workspace), or
- You're a guest on a board that belongs to that organization.
Beyond that:
- Access is resolved live from Trello and re-checked on every action — opening a scene, joining the real-time session, and every card read or write.
- What you can see is scoped to the workspaces you can reach. You never see scenes in a workspace you're not a member of, and list views are filtered to your reachable workspaces.
- Membership changes take effect in seconds: Cardscape listens to Trello's organization webhooks, so being added to — or removed from — an org or board updates your access almost immediately, with no action on your part.
Cards on your canvases
Placing Trello cards is the heart of the integration:
- Place a card and it renders as a live embed that stays in sync with Trello — see Placing cards on a canvas.
- Edit a card's name, description, checklist items, and comments, or create a new card, without leaving the canvas — see Working with card details. These writes go back to Trello and require the write scope.
Real-time and pop-out
Scenes are fully collaborative inside Trello — everyone with access to the workspace who opens the same scene edits together live, exactly as in the standalone app (see Real-time collaboration). Use the pop-out icon whenever you want the whole browser window; your Cardscape session hands off automatically, so you land already signed in.
Have a Cardscape account of your own? You can connect your Trello identity to it and use both in one session. See Connecting a Trello account.