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Butler to tag only selected people basing on the advanced check list

Malwina "NANA" Galicka

Hi!

I've started to automatize my Trello board with Buttler. As I'm working in a team, we started to use an advanced checklist, once someone assigns the card to their name it appears automatically.

I want to add a rule that will make an automatic comment once one of the things from the checklist is marked, but I want the comment to mention the people that are assigned to other things from the checklist.

Example:

Once a person finishes their task, I want the comment to be posted and mention 3 next people that need to take the action now (let's say these are 3 people out of 10 that are assigned in total, to other stuff).

I've tried to do something with the Variables, but I couldn't find anything about the new advanced checklist.

Is there any way to make such a rule work?

Thanks!

Accepted answers

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milynnus

@Malwina "NANA" Galicka Take a look at this. If Butler can do it, you should use it. https://www.loom.com/share/67c10b64313f4ef0aa0c7602251b125a
I have this concept of a master key so that when subtasks are completed and archived aka move to Completed the card that sets out the sub-task remains and you can assign the next 3 person. The difference here is that it was not on the task that was just completed. But I can imagine that it can be done fairly easily.
More challenging will be how to figure out who to assign or @ I.e. business rules if is a simple list that would be easy.

Malwina "NANA" Galicka

Thanks!

My goal is to have a rule that will do the following:

when task A on checklist X is completed, post a comment saying: TEXT [mention user B assigned to task Z, mention user C assigned to task Y, etc) - something like this would be ideal. But it might be a bit too complex right now maybe.

milynnus

@Malwina "NANA" Galicka Perhaps for Butler, but I don’t see a problem. In the learning platform I created, I am able to populate a card based on student’s self certification from a course /topic repository. In my case, it was self learning content aka attachment but I added a checklist after the video was done. In your case will be item list based on the current item and creating a comment somewhere probably on the card. So based definitely doable.
https://youtu.be/5I19sLRY2Os It really depends on how much automation you want to do. Forget to mention, you probably need to watch for item changes from anywhere on the board, or a list.

Esme Crutchley

Hi @Malwina "NANA" Galicka

Thank you for your question.

You're right, currently it's not possible to @mention the next 3 people assigned to advanced checklists when the first person checks their task, because Advanced Checklists are still very new.

However, if the staff are always in the same order, you could have Butler to trigger on a checklist item being ticked by Bob, to let Charlie, Dave & Edward know that they were the next ones up. But in order to do this, the sorting of the assignments would have to be the same so that the command would run the same each time. E.g. if you have a process like "Bob deals with the initial enquiries" then "Charlie follows up with the potential client to find out what they specifically want" then "Dave needs to get a quote together" then "Edward calls them to seal the deal" and it always happens in that order, you could set up multiple Butler rules for each scenario.

However, if the people change, then at the moment, Advanced Checklists won't do this within Butler. Cross fingers that they add this functionality in a future update!

Sorry it's not better news! If you want more help with which Butler rules to create, please come back to us!

Esme

Vongsawat

Are the tasks in the checklists just text, or links? ie. each task is its own card with members attached etc.

That way you could ignore advanced checklists entirely and just grab the members on the cards.

Sadly, {foundcardmemberusernames} did not work, which is where everything stalled for me... I would have gone through the incomplete items in the list, for each item looking up the link, appending the found member usernames in to a temporary text custom field (as that doesn't count as a mention) before... somehow posting it into a comment at the end.. never got around to trying to figure out how to do that only once and not in ever iteration of the foreach loop though....

Getting 3 people would have probably required some shenanigans. Each loop adding one to a number custom field counter, and then attempting a lookup of a card with its name equaling the number, on a different board, as an ad-hoc IF-Conditional (opening post), that'd effectively cancel out of the for-each loop if it didn't find it. (you'd need to have made a bunch of cards pre-made called 0, 1, 2, 3 on another board)

But alas. Foiled by {foundcardmemberusernames}

Iain Dooley

@Malwina "NANA" Galicka If you sub-task using linked checklist items then you could use something like this to notify card members on each linked sub-task:

2020-07-12 at 11.52 pm.png

Here's some information I wrote about sub-tasking with Butler:

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Trello-articles/Trello-Subtasks-with-Butler/ba-p/1060392

Malwina "NANA" Galicka

Thanks Iain! Sadly, it's not much of help for me as I'm not using the links in the checklist.

Malwina "NANA" Galicka

For me, it's always a text, never a link, so I think it's making things complicated.

milynnus

@Malwina "NANA" Galicka here’s my reply to Paul

You are currently the second person who wanted this in recent days. It is an interesting for a generic custom PU that various people can deploy individually but served from a common code base. Built one last Sunday as I need the ability to execute code on other users boards with reusable pre-tested code “as a service”. Code can be written in such a way that user provide details of a board, listor even a checklist and the code will run and deliver the results.
{'board_name' : 'string in quotes' , 'card_id' : 'string in quotes' , 'list_name' : '["string1", "string2", "string3"]' , 'custom_fields' : {'key1' : 'value1', 'key2' : 'value2'} }

Malwina "NANA" Galicka

Hello @Esme Crutchley

Yes, the items in my checklist [and the people] are always in the same order. I was trying to create the rule, that when a person is checking an item, it's posting a comment and mentioning 4 people with their Trello IDs. Sadly, it was not working at all. The comment was posted always as me (not sure why, maybe because I was the first-mentioned person?) so I removed this rule.

In my case, that's the thing: when a writer finishes his article, there must be a trigger for the people that review the piece, to let them know it's ready to check (so they no need to write the comment manually). All of these people need to be notified at the same time. The thing is, sometimes these writers, are also the people who review the articles of the others, so they are always part of the advanced checklist. For now, if the writer and the reviewer is the same person, we remove manually his item from the checklist that is about the "reviewing the draft".

Will your recommendation work in this case? If yes, how can I make it work?

milynnus

@Malwina "NANA" Galicka Here's what I created. Instead of checklist become a link it remains as text. Nothing prevents me from updated it to append a link.

https://www.loom.com/share/c562846b031148f5afc706b618d0ba2e

New version has now card link in re-named checklist it. Screen Shot 2020-07-16 at 11.19.06 AM.png

Vongsawat

Here a different solution, but it only works if the checklist is always the same, a member doesn't show up twice, and every one is checking off their own items.

It's a pretty narrow/fragile solution, but might fit according to the additional context in seeing?

Then you could hardcoded rules like, when person A checks an item in thisChecklist, mention B C D in a comment. When B does, C D E. Etc.

The first mention might have to be handled with a card button, as the trigger person will always be different

Esme Crutchley

Hi @Malwina "NANA" Galicka

Thank you for the additional information.

So, first things first!

The reason that Butler always acts like you is that you're the one who set up the rule.

Butler does what you tell it to do, it acts essentially on your behalf, so any Butler command that you've set will always be posted as you.

There are ways around this, but it can get expensive if you have Business Class. Basically, you have to create a separate email account just for Butler, if you add this 'person' to more than 1 board it becomes billable, which is where it creates an extra cost. But if you created a new account and ran all your Butler rules from that, you'd know which were yours and your team's actions, and which were rules.

The Butler rule will always post as the person who set up the rule.

Let me sort out the rule and I'll post again! Stay tuned!

Esme

Esme Crutchley

Ok, so because everyone is always in the same order, you could have a rule that looks like this.

Screenshot 2020-07-20 at 10.24.59.png

You'd need to set it up for each person and each workflow, and unless you introduce a 'new' person, these rules will always be posted/carried out & notified as you.

Does that make sense? Do you think that this is something that would work? Let me know!

Esme

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