Adding Members from Directory Cards Custom Fields' Values

Question

Our team uses a custom dropdown field called 'Currently Assigned to' to determine which person actually has next steps on a card. I'd like to have a rule that looks through to a Directory board, grabs the Trello username based on the Currently Assigned to Value (because it's human readable and not their actual user name), and add them to the card so assignment is cleaner.

Unfortunately, when I'm trying to do this via lookup it's not working. It IS working for the find a card function, but that just updates the card on the Directory which isn't what I want. When i look at the log in Butler it tells me the user can't be found on the original board even though they are clearly a member.

Tearing my hair out a bit, and hoping for some help. Automation logic is below.

when custom field "Currently Assigned to" is set, remove all the members from the card, lookup a card titled "{{%Currently Assigned to}}" in list "Directory" on board "Directory", and add member @{{%TrelloUsername}} to the card

Vongsawat · Answer

These are just known (annoying) limitations with Butler. The capability just isn't there.

It might be that there are costs associated with opening up automation entirely to the entire Trello userbase that makes the Trello team careful in adding capabilities. Or its a matter of where Trello is putting its money and what they want the devs to work on. Or an issue with making sure that any updates they make to Butler don't completely futz up the workflow of their existing customers. Maybe the ButlerBot acquisition in 2018  and integration of the codebase was more bumpy than we know. Or the Atlassian acquisition in 2017 set their direction to more align with the rest of the conglomerate's products.

I can come up with more guesses, but they're all uninformed so who knows! Maybe a little of each?

I can kinda understand if they don't want to mess around with Butler too proactively. If a fix breaks someone's rubegoldberg Butler script, because they were relying on a feature not working. That could be the backbone of someone's small business. Even if, on the surface, there doesn't seem to be any downsides to allowing access to another card's custom fields...

But my guess is usually with company direction and resource allocation. Trello is pretty darn good with its automation capabilities and the associated price point, But that was an acquisition and never their main bread and butter. So it doesn't get prioritized as highly as the smaller circle of power-users think it should be haha.

Or that's just me rationalizing whilst coming up with ever more wonky and torturous workarounds.

Kevin Shiflet · Answer

Thanks for the suggestions! I'm curious, do you know if there's a reason you can't lookup this information from custom fields? It's actually one of Trello's examples in their custom fields documentation (though looking up from a card on the same board, not another one).

https://support.atlassian.com/trello/docs/working-with-custom-fields/

Or is this a known issue?

Vongsawat · Answer

There are some wonky workarounds. But they may not fit your use-case.

Such as just keeping their TrelloUsername in the {carddescription}. Or have them assigned to their directory cards and {cardfirstmemberusername}. Or if the Directory board is private, daisy-chain another look-up to a board that isn't. etc.

Basically keeping the data anywhere except in a custom field.. which may not be what you're looking for.