Are there restrictions on how many actions I can do with Butler?

[Marie Havnen]

Hi!

I just started using the Butler to do some actions in my boards for my organization. Just wondering if there are restrictions on how many actions the Butler can do for us? (Dont want to introduce it to my team before I know it will work, so we dont start a new system and the get shut down).

Thanks for helping!

[Katrin Anger · Accepted solution]

@Marie Havnen 

Hi Marie,

yes and no.

Technically, you could include 100 actions into a command - I am just not sure if there is really an application for that.

But there is some kind of restriction that comes with the type of plan you are using with Butler.

With each plan, you can have "x" command runs and "y" operations. Let's say, one command uses 100 operations, and this command is executed 100 times in a week, that means you have 10'000 operations used ... for which you will need a special plan, because 10'000 operations are really a lot. 

Does that help?

[Marie Havnen]

I see.

For example I made the command: Every tuesday, move the cards with the red label, to the list "published". I made one rule på each day etc. The operation is easy, but in a year I guess its alot. Plus a number of other ones. Is this okay? or do I need to pay more or something?

[Katrin Anger]

What plan are you on?

You can check this, when you open the Butler Power-Up screen, and then click on the 3 dots in the right upper part. Click on "Account", and then on the bottom of the window you see how many commands and operations you can use in each month.

[Marie Havnen]

Your personal quota is 200 command runs and 2000 operations. You've used 18 command runs (9%) and 37 operations (2%) so far this period.

Is this per month? 

[Katrin Anger]

Yes, that's per month.

[Iain Dooley]

@Marie Havnen also, note that any actions you create with Butler can be replicated using the API, so if you find you've created quite a complex business system and it's using all of your commands, you can take that piece of functionality and get it coded directly using the API rather than executing as Butler commands.

I created Trellinator for this reason and ported ~1600 Butler commands over to it:

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Marketplace-Apps-articles/Introducing-Trellinator-Automate-Trello-with-Google-Apps-Script/ba-p/925271

But you could also just write this in any other programming language.

So if even if you get everything set up with Butler and find that you're hitting a hard limit on usage, there's still a path to scale that beyond Butler if required for business critical systems.

[Marie Havnen]

Thanks! Really not experienced in coding, but maybe ill have to try.

[Robert Campbell]

I recently went to Gold to get more powerups and a higher Butler quota but in 4 days I've eaten up 30% of my Butler quota with just some simple things like automatically adding today's date and a checklist to all new cards.  I'm the only one using Trello at my work so I hate to have to spend twice as much money to get a higher quota.  Is the Trellinator a possible help with this?

[Iain Dooley]

@Robert Campbell yep, Trellinator is limited only by Google Apps Script execution quotas (and you can add additional bots by just creating new G-Suite users for $5/month) and Trello's own rate limits which Trellinator doesn't exceed because it has a buffer that drip feeds notifications through to the script.

I consulted with Butler Bot for a year (ie. building business systems for clients using Butler and Trello), and found that when I built systems that were suitably complicated I would regularly exhaust the quota. Ultimately, I created Trellinator to replace Butler, which is why the syntax of Trellinator is so similar to the syntax of Butler Bot.

After creating Trellinator I ported about 1600 commands I had created for my clients in Butler Bot, over to Trellinator.

Butler is an amazing tool for self-service automation, possibly the best I've ever seen, however it's not suitable as a consulting platform and isn't all that well suited for creating systems beyond a certain level of complication, at which point using something like Trellinator to automate via the API directly starts to make more sense.

[Robert Campbell]

Thanks again for the speedy reply.  Unfortunately, I think Trellinator will be over my head and maybe a bit more that I can deal with at the moment.  It is frustrating because, having recently discovered Trello and working with it, I could see it helping me but somethings are frustrating.  I'm using up my Butler quota just to make sure each card has a couple things like dating and a checklist.  If the cards were more customizable I wouldn't have an issue but opening a new card is like 3 Butler commands.  Moving up to the next level (Business) would help but I'm a one man shop and it seems like I should be OK with Gold in every other aspect (no teams, no use for more than a couple boards).  I appreciate your help, I'll have to keep working on it I guess.