Trello, Gaming & Charity (Oh My!) - featuring butler automation!

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How did this all start?

Many of you are aware that I am equally passionate about video games and everything Atlassian.  What you may not know is that I'm also very involved in either donating or volunteering for charity. One that has married my desire to help with my love for video games is Extra Life. This charity is all about gamers pledging to raise funds for local children's hospitals by doing what they do best, playing games.

Last year, I decided to go from being a donor to a participant.  I had a lot of fun, but I also learn a number of new things in the process.  One of the key things I learned is that leveraging multiple social media platforms is one of the best to spread the news. What I also learned is that task can be quite daunting to keep track of.

What's going to be done differently this year?

You know as well as I do that a fantastic tool for managing and organizing your work, with the freedom and flexibility to do just about anything is Trello!

I wanted to give you all a quick showcase of what I have been working on to manage this year's Extra Life campaign.  Learning from my mistakes last year, I'm now planning on leveraging Trello to keep me organized and informed of the tasks I need to do and when I need to complete them by.

First, I laid out the board with static information in the first column. I may experiment with the Trello APIs later, so I have some information here that will be useful for that.  The remaining columns are split out based on social media platform that I plan to use to spread the news. The headers contain template information that is used by a series of Butler Automation rules that do all the heavy lifting on the board.

We have a layout, now how do we automate it?

I started by having a scheduled rule that runs every Monday and creates a series of cards for Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.  Which does the follow set of operations:

• Sets the due date for the next Friday
• Adds a label
• Copies a checklist from the template header
• Sets a description with a starting set of content for the social media post

Next, I can complete the content for each post in the description. As I complete each item in the checklist,  I can check them off and use that as a visual indicator if a post is ready to be published on social media. Because I'm using a different card and different criteria in the checklist, I can tailor each post for the social media platform it will be shared with.

From here, I added a Card Button that as I complete and post the content from a social media card in Trello, the "Complete Card" button will:

• Post a comment that this task is complete
• Complete the due date
• Remove the label

Lastly, I have an automation rule that will trigger on the removal of the label to archive the card.

Is this the finished board?

No, this board is far from being in its final iteration.  But, I felt I had put enough pieces to share. I also hope this might inspire others to have some creative ideas of their own.  I would love to hear thoughts and opinions from anyone about how this could be improved or expanded upon.

Please feel free to share in the comments!

[Taranjeet Singh]

Great article, @Jimmy Seddon !

[Fadoua]

I love this kind of posts as we not only learn about technical features, we get to know better the person as well. Great article @Jimmy Seddon !

[Jimmy Seddon]

@Taranjeet Singh @Fadoua thank you both very much!  I love sharing these types of things for that very reason!