Checklist Automation Help!

Question

**EDIT**

My automation is now broken ... I haven't changed anything and now it no longer creates the checklist or anything in the automation after. It doesn't add the designated user or set the due date. What happened??

I have created a scheduled automation: every day at 7:00 am, create a new card with title "Card Name" and description "description" in list "List" and add the "Specific Checklist" checklist to the card and add member @username to the card, and set due today.

It works perfectly!! The problem is, I have no idea how I created the Specific Checklist or how to do it again. It's not another card on the board, it's just a floating checklist that populates automatically in that card and no where else. I want to do this again for another card with a different checklist ... but how?!?!

Help!!

Meagan Williams · Answer

Do you see in my automation that it does not say to add the checklist from a specific card? It just says to add the checklist. I never created a template card, nor did I run any automation to copy a checklist from a card. That's where I'm confused. I've found all the help videos and articles of how to copy from a template card, but that's not the steps I initially used. It was honestly by accident.

Oleksandr · Answer

Hi!
Your "Specific Checklist" isn't some Trello magic — it lives on a template card somewhere on your board (possibly archived). When the automation runs, it just copies the checklist from that card. That's how the "add checklist to card" action works.

To do it again for a new card, just create a card somewhere on the board (a hidden "Templates" list works great) and add your new checklist to it. Then in your scheduled automation, add the action "Add the [checklist name] from card [template card name] to the card" — and that's it.

One thing to watch: the card name and checklist name need to match exactly, it's case-sensitive.

As for finding your existing template card — search archived cards (Menu → Search Cards → Archived), it's almost certainly hiding there.

Docs if you want to dig deeper:

* https://support.atlassian.com/trello/docs/adding-checklists-to-cards/
* https://support.atlassian.com/trello/docs/automation-overview/