Automation find duplicate description

[Erik Klavebäck]

I'm looking for a way to find cards with matching Description and delete duplicates. Currently I can only find a way to find cards with matching Title.

Background:

We have a board with "email to board" feature, we receive emails from subscriptions into different lists. Sometimes they are duplicates with only the "added by" differing due to the "email to list/board" only supports one email per board per user.

The emails are formatted in a few different ways (we cannot control the formatting unfortunately since they are essentially subscriptions from different sources).

These subscriptions are set up to try to categorize incoming emails into different lists. The issue is that some of these subscriptions with their filters are overlapping and causes duplicate cards to be sent in.

The cards from some sources have a static title / the same title, this results in cards that are duplicates in every sense except the "added by" field.

The need:

I need a way to find duplicate cards based on the description and to archive or move or delete the duplicates.

[Josh_Unito]

@Erik Klavebäck You can sync cards based on label, list, or member assigned to it with Unito's Board Sync Power-Up. It's not free (though it does include a 2-week trial) but it is a lot easier to use than the alternatives. There are plans made for 200-400 cards per month that would make sense for your use case.

It supports real-time 2-way sync (which no other platform does to the same extent without a lot of scripting + configuring and/or paying consultants) with 50+ other apps. 

Here's a guide on connecting two Trello boards perpetually.

[Dreamsuite Mike]

@Josh_Unito As a community leader, I don't have an issue with people plugging their product, so long as the original posters question is read, understood and attempted to be answered...

Your answer is a plug without context to the original question.

If you plan to put answers in the future, can you actually do so with a solution to the actual problem?  

So with this question...

What is the solution using Unito that will handle duplicate detection based on card description?

[Josh_Unito]

Yep! To answer that I'd probably need to write a full article, but if it were me putting together that workflow, my first thought would be: how can I re-direct these emails into a different space that's easier to clean up? Instead of sending the emails directly into Trello, I'd probably send them to a spreadsheet instead and remove the duplicates (using description as the filter) from there since it's much easier to perform data cleanup meanually or automatically if you're handy with spreadsheet formulas. 

Then the question would be: how do you get spreadsheet rows into Trello? 

For that, you could set up a Unito flow that turns some or all spreadsheet rows into Trello cards synced to the specific Trello board(s) you're working in.

Each time a new row is added to that sheet, a Trello card would automatically appear in the same destination board. 

This is a step-by-step guide on how to sync Google Sheets and Trello with Unito for that purpose.

Alternative solution:

If getting the emails sent to a spreadsheet isn't possible, you could still do all of the above with more tinkering in Unito. 

First I'd set up flows to send all Trello cards from boards receiving those emails into a Google Sheet. Then I'd set up my automation to clean up duplicates based on description.

Then I'd copy my original flow and reverse the direction so that rows in my sheet (now containing only unique entries) send cards back into Trello (either into new boards entirely, or re-organize the receiving boards with additional lists to separate my inbox and outbox).

[Dreamsuite Mike]

Hi @Erik Klavebäck 

I have done a fair bit with duplicate detection and basically ended up using make.com for this (Zapier and other automation tools are available).  I can't find a way of doing this that would be clean within Trello automation...

[Erik Klavebäck]

Hi @Dreamsuite Mike 

I did find some automation tools in my reasearch, make.com is new to me, thanks!

But the issue is that I can't really argue that it would be worth signing up for a monthly paid service for a single "simple" automation. So I'm really hoping there are free alternatives / power-ups that could be the solution.

[Dreamsuite Mike]

How many cards are you adding a month (roughly)?

You could possibly do something using Trello automation and the Trello API but its a bit of an advanced topic...

[Erik Klavebäck]

Roughly 70 cards/ day, so maybe 200-400 per month is my best guess. About 10% are duplicates.

[Dreamsuite Mike]

You may be able to do that with the free version of make.com

I don't think the API will work within Trello automation because it is quite limited.  

[Erik Klavebäck]

Okay, thanks! I will take a look and see if I can make it work! :D

[Dreamsuite Mike]

Give me a shout if you need some advice