Board Button Automation - Failing to run

[Danny Foreman]

I have 2 Board Automations that I run almost every day. 
Occassionaly I get an error like this.  
It states I should contact support, but I don't believe that is an option.

What is the solution?

ERROR MESSAGE

This action took too l
ong to process, and it may not have finished. If an error occurred, please contact support at trello.com/contact with the reference below and we will look into it promptly.

---

Error reference: 56cbe70ad3bd5ff7b7e7aa94-1657801699841

Is this a known issue?
Are there server issues causing this error?

Any help would be appreciated.

If I have to do these automations manually, it takes too much time to be a sustainable process.

[Rishabh S]

Hi Danny, :)
Hope you are doing well,
Welcome to the community!!

After taking a look at your most recently used board, I can see it currently has over 6,500 checklists. Trello's API has a hard limit of 5,000 checklists per board per API request. Since your board exceeds that threshold, it's very likely the root cause of the automation issue you're experiencing.

To help narrow this down further, could you let me know:

1. Is your automation related to checklists? If so, reducing the number of checklists on the board would be the most direct fix. You can do this by permanently deleting checklists on archived cards or moving cards with checklists to a separate board. You could also set up a Butler rule to automatically delete a checklist once it's marked complete, to keep the count manageable going forward. Just a heads-up: deleted checklists can't be recovered, so it's worth double-checking before removing anything.

2. If your automation isn't checklist-related, could you share a direct link to the automation rule? You can grab it by opening the Automation menu, clicking on the rule in question, and copying the URL from your browser's address bar.

That'll help me take a closer look and get you sorted!
Thanks.

[Alexander Patuk]

First check Automation -> Activity and identify the exact action where the run stops. If the button contains several commands, try splitting it into smaller rules. That can reveal whether a lookup, cross-board operation, or another individual step is timing out. Keep the error reference for Atlassian support.

If running the operation manually on demand would work, I develop BoardPilot. It converts a plain-English request into a reviewable Trello action plan and executes it only after approval. It supports common card, list, checklist, label, and member actions, but it does not replace scheduled Butler rules:

https://www.trello-plugins.com/boardpilot

[sylvia klink]

Danny, can you tell me more about the board automations? What do they do?