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Using Trello Variables (or other) to schedule command runs on a specific day

Aric Rhue

Hello Everyone!

I've created a Trello for board for tracking our customer accounts and deliveries. With each card being a separate account.

The accounts, delivery days and times are static and we do the same companies every other day, three days week.

There is a total of two routes each with approximately 10 deliveries each/per delivery day. Total of about 60+ deliveries a week.

I put a due date on each one of the cards to know when they get delivered.

Since they are not one-time deliveries I need to go in each card and manually set the due date for the correct delivery day next week.

My initial solution to automate this (which works great!) was to have Butler do the following command run:

---

"when the due date is marked as complete in a card by anyone, move the due date to the same day next week, and mark the due date as incomplete"

---

But using that method eats up all my operations and command runs.

It would be great if the day after delivery Butler went by list and determined if a due date was completed and then ran the command I pasted above and not have it check every single time a due date is marked complete.

Does anyone know of a better way to get this done?

Let me know if you need more info or if my main limitation is just my limit of operations and commands.

Thanks all!

Aric

Accepted answers

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Iain Dooley

@Aric Rhue are you already on a paid Trello plan? ie. gold, business class or enterprise? I don't think you're going to save any commands by having it execute the day after the due date is due ...

Aric Rhue

Hi @Iain Dooley

I am a paid gold member.

I guess the day after doesn't really matter.

The main thing is finding another way to do what I need it too without taking so many commands.

I've explored pretty extensively (I think) the abilities of Trello and Butler. I just can't imagine there is not a more efficient way to do what I need it to do with a system that is so customizable. But I'm open to be proven wrong.

Thanks!

Katrin Anger

@Aric Rhue

You can check yourself if this command is eating up all your budget of commands and operations.

Simply open the command log and count how many times this command was executed this month.

Then, open your account log and have a look if your command & operations limit is exhausted in some way.

- Does that help?

Aric Rhue

I will check this, it will take a day or so. I will comment again if that helped at all.

Iain Dooley

@Aric Rhue You might find that you get more command runs if you create a business class team, even if it's just you in the team. It seems as though Trello are phasing out the Gold plan altogether, and they don't have published Butler quotas for it:

https://help.trello.com/article/1181-butler-features-and-quotas

Ultimately I've always found that I run up against Butler's command limitations and have been unable to purchase more in the past, which is partly why I created Trellinator:

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Marketplace-Apps-Integrations/Introducing-Trellinator-Automate-Trello-with-Google-Apps-Script/ba-p/925271

For example here's the Trellinator command that does what your Butler command does:

https://gist.github.com/iaindooley/e3d203331f6da22588798b12911a0d3e

Katrin Anger

@Iain Dooley

May I ask you Iain, where you are taking the assumption from that Trello is phasing out the Gold plan? - That would be alarming news, but I've never seen anything mentioned ever that this is going to take place.

In fact, the page you are referring to does have Butler quotas published for the Gold plan. It is just listed under a different name => Personal plan.

Aric Rhue

Thank you both very much, apologies for not keeping up with this, my to-do list got a bit out of hand.

@Katrin Anger , I've done what you suggested and I actually turned off all other commands on my boards and it is the function I created above that is eating up all of the commands. I just ran out of all 200 command runs a couple days ago.

@Iain Dooley , Thanks for posting that code! Unfortunately I am not a programmer, I taught myself a lot on own, but that kind of code is beyond my abilities right now.

What I am hearing though is that there aren't many options besides that code or upgrading to a higher tier in Trello?

It takes me about 10-15 minutes to do it manually right now, so it would probably be fine for a while until our company gets bigger.

Thanks again!

Katrin Anger

@Aric Rhue

Since you seem to have a minimum of 240+ deliveries a month, this command with the current operation limits for Gold accounts will always cause you to exhaust your quota.

As much as I know, Butler cannot check lists. With such a command, Butler always checks the conditions in the cards.

What I would try in your situation, is to check if one of the automation platforms (Zapier, Integromat) can help you with this command. They both have some free plans.

Since the command mentioned above seems to work for your purposes and the only problem is your quota right now, I would see if such a command could be set up with one of these automation platforms. And there I would let it run only (let's say) Monday and Tuesday. And the other days you keep using Butler.

This way, you could circumnavigate the limits Butler imposes onto you. - Just an idea.

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