Butler Calendar to Create New Card with New (Empty) Checklist?

Question

As part of a broader automation, every Monday, I would like to create a new card "Bugs for Sprint #{weeknumber}."

I would like to:

* set the description;
* add an empty checklist called "Bugs for this Sprint";
* add a 2nd empty checklist called "Call to this list";
* set the due date to the following Monday.

All of this seemed straightforward, until the script ran on the 2nd week: instead of creating a new empty checklist "Bugs for this Sprint," it copied the existing checklist from last week's card...

Undaunted, based on the functionality of other scripts, where adding an item to a non-existent checklist simply created the checklist, I figured if I gave the checklist a unique name, it would solve the problem, so I changed it to "Bugs for Sprint #{weeknumber}" but Butler returned an error "Could not find checklist named 'Bugs for Sprint #39" (because, as was the point, there isn't one, yet). Unfortunately, instead of creating a new checklist with that name, it just stopped running the rule.

My next thought was to simply stick to the generic name "Bugs for this Sprint" and add an action to delete all the checklist items; however, it seems that "Calendar"-triggered rules do not have the option of performing checklist-related actions.

After verifying the "new card" options, it appears one can only add an *existing* checklist to a card, when the rule is calendar-triggered (though I have no idea why they would impose this limitation, when the functionality already exists).

I imagine it is possible to work around this by creating a new rule that is triggered by the addition of a card containing a checklist named "Bugs for this Sprint" that renames the checklist and deletes the checklist items, but I'm hoping there's a cleaner solution, as the number of rules I'm having to implement to achieve relatively straightforward automations is quickly getting unwieldy... Any suggestions would be very much welcome.

All the best,

RA

Iain Dooley · Answer

@rax adaam i don't get why the checklist was copied from the previous card in the first place. Can you post the command?

rax adaam · Answer

N.B. because it is actually possible to specify the card from which the checklist is taken, there is no need to create unique names for the checklists (this is helpful in my case, as it means I don't have to update all the other rules that interact with that checklist, later on).

rax adaam · Answer

Just occurred to me that one way to implement this without having to resort to multiple rules would be to create a template card with an empty "Bugs for this Sprint" checklist.

Then I can use the option to rename the checklist to "Bugs for Sprint #{weeknumber}" to ensure that the original, empty, checklist remains unique.

It's not the pretties solution, as it means leaving a card on the board, permanently, but at least it allows me to implement the automation with a single rule.

If you have a more efficient solution, I'd love to hear it!