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Integrate Trello on Pantheon with Quicksilver Hooks

Learn how to integrate Trello with your dev workflow on Pantheon.


This section provides information on how to integrate Trello with Pantheon using Quicksilver.

Trello is a project management tool which helps teams to collaborate on projects in an agile framework.

The sections below provide steps on how to use Quicksilver to connect your Trello instance to a website project on Pantheon. You can push changes that include a Trello card's unique ID to Pantheon, and the commit message will appear in the card.

Before You Begin

Be sure that you:

Create a Machine User in Trello

Create a new machine user in your Trello instance. This user is referred to as a "machine user" because the account is used to automatically create comments out of commit messages on Pantheon using a PHP script.

  1. Login to your Trello instance, click in the upper panel, and then select Create Personal Team or Create Business Team, depending on your plan. Add a team name and click Create to create a team if you haven't done so already.

    Create a team

    If you already have a team, select it from your dashboard.

  2. Click Add Members, and then select Add by name or email.

  3. Enter a name and email address for the machine user, which acts as the intermediary between Trello and the Pantheon Site Dashboard.

    We suggest naming machine users relative to their function, in this example we name our new user Automation User. The email needs to be an account you have access to:

    Create an automation user

  4. Login as the new "Automation User" and make sure you're a team member on the relevant board:

    Add a team

  5. Copy the machine user's API key from here, then click the link to manually generate a Token:

    Copy developer api key

  6. Save your key and token for use in the next section.

Securely Store User Credentials on Pantheon

You must provide Pantheon with the credentials for our new machine user. These credentials are securely stored in the private path of Pantheon's filesystem.

We use the filesystem private path in this section because we don't want to track sensitive data like passwords in the codebase with git.

  1. Check for existing secrets using Terminus (replace <site> with your site name):

    SITE=<site>
    terminus secrets:list $SITE.dev

    If no existing keys are found, execute the following to create a new secrets.json file and upload it to Pantheon:

    $ echo '{}' > secrets.json
    $ `terminus connection:info $SITE.dev --field=sftp_command`
    sftp> put ./files/private secrets.json
    sftp> bye
    $ rm secrets.json

    Otherwise, continue to the next step.

  2. Use Terminus to store the Automation User's API key in the the private secrets.json file (replace <API key>):

    terminus secrets:set $SITE.dev trello_key '<API key>'
  3. Use Terminus to store the Automation User's token in the the private secrets.json file (replace <Token>):

    terminus secrets:set $SITE.dev trello_token '<Token>'
Info:
Note

When it comes to keeping production keys secure, the best solution is to use a key management service like Lockr to automatically encrypt and secure keys on distributed platforms such as Pantheon.

Configure Quicksilver Integration

You must add Pantheon's example Quicksilver integration script for Trello to the private path of your site's codebase. The private path within the codebase is tracked in version control and is accessible by PHP, but not the web.

  1. Clone your Pantheon site repository if you haven't done so already, and navigate to the project's root directory:

    terminus connection:info $SITE.dev --fields='Git Command' --format=string`
    cd $SITE
  2. Set the connection mode to Git:

    terminus connection:set $SITE.dev git
  3. Create a copy of Pantheon's trello_integration.php in the project's private path:

    mkdir private
    mkdir private/scripts
    curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pantheon-systems/quicksilver-examples/master/trello_integration/trello_integration.php --output ./private/scripts/trello_integration.php
  4. Create a pantheon.yml file if one doesn't already exist in your root directory.

  5. Paste the following workflow into your pantheon.yml file to hook into the platform when code is pushed to trigger the Trello integration script:

    pantheon.yml
    #always include the api version
    api_version: 1
    
    workflows:
      sync_code:
        after:
          - type: webphp
            description: Trello Integration
            script: private/scripts/trello_integration.php
    Info:
    Note

    api_version should be set once in pantheon.yml. If you have an existing pantheon.yml with this line, don't add it again.

  6. Commit and push changes to the Dev environment:

    git add .
    git commit -m "Create private/scripts/trello_integration.php and configure platform hooks"
    git push origin master

Test Trello Integration on Pantheon

  1. Create a test issue in an existing or new Trello project. Copy the issue ID, which is located in the Trello card's URL:

    Trello card ID

  2. Optional: Run terminus workflow:watch $SITE in a separate Terminal window to see the process unfold in real time.

  3. Push a code change to Pantheon containing the Trello card ID in the commit message in brackets (e.g., [4K2zqr1A]). This workflow will trigger trello_integration.php script, which will search commits for possible issue IDs and comment in Trello when found.

    git commit -m "[4K2zqr1A]: Require wp-redis as dropin via Composer"
  4. Return to the issue in Trello to see a message from our machine user:

    Trello card

External Repositories

You can also connect your Trello and Pantheon-integrated site to an external repository such as GitHub. This integration allows you to attach pull requests, issues, and commits directly to your Trello cards from within the Trello dashboard.

More Resources