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Comment by dhruvkar | Hacker News Reader

Tracking shipping containers as they progress from supplier -> port -> ship(s)/port(s) -> port of discharge -> rail -> depot -> our warehouse and then returned to the depot.

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Interesting use case! Any reason you didn't consider something like Trello for this? It seems like it would fit it nicely and give you a nice visual overview of where each shipping container is.

It has other data that I need to store, bunch of relevant dates and locations of pickup/dropoffs.

I have an script that updates our ERP from that spreadsheet.

I also have a google apps script that sends out an email with all the relevant containers. e.g. container ABCD needs to be picked up by 5/12/2020 and container UVWX needs to be returned by 5/17/2020.

This allows our logistics guy to allocate resources.

Aside from draggable cards and swimlanes, Trello doesn't make for a great solution where you need to store structured data, especially if you need to additionally query or filter on that data.

Probably far easier to just build out a visualization and keep the data in the spreadsheet.

I tend to store status in a dropdown in the spreadsheet, and color-code the row based on status.

I see. I haven't used it myself, but I know Trello has a custom fields feature to add structured data to each card (https://help.trello.com/article/1067-using-the-custom-fields...).

Are you the only one working out of this spreadsheet or do you share it with others?

In this instance, it's just me, but I've used shared spreadsheets on Google with no issues.

Got it. Transparently, I've been working on a tool called Flowdash (https://flowdash.com) that helps bring structured data to workflows like this. I'd love to get your feedback since it sounds like you're pretty familiar with the problem.

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