Automation to change due date to tomorrow at 9am for cards that are overdue - at 4pm every day

[Katja]

trying to set up an automation that at the end of the day (4pm) checks if any cards are overdue and then changes their due date to tomorrow at 9am, so I don't miss any cards - please help, tried and partly succeeded but just end up with random times assigned

[Vongsawat]

So a bunch of those actions can't be directly accessed on a Scheduled Automation. Which means you'll have to chain two automations together: A Scheduled Automation that triggers a regular automation.

I'll run you through how I would do it, but after the fact you can change what the trigger is, and all that.

Step 1: Create a new Card that just exists on your board all the time called Deadline Automations, and a new clear label called Extending Deadlines.

Step 2: Create a Scheduled Automation that triggers at 4pm everyday, that merely adds the Extending Deadline label to the card named Deadline Automations.

Step 3: Create a regular automation, be careful to use the drops downs / filters to get the details right as below

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Helpfully, every day this also gets you a list of all the overdue cards from the day before in a nifty checklist. Of only the latest day though, as the list gets overwritten every day.

As for additional options/alternatives you can play around with:

Option 1: if you already have a static card that always exists on your board, you can use that instead of creating this new card specifically to hold the list. The checklist then just appears on that card.

Option 2: If you don't like using a label on a specific card as the trigger, you can replace it with say the creation of a card with a specific name. And then in the Scheduled Automation, just have it delete that card before recreating it every day. Or any other trigger, these were just my go-to.

Option 3: If you don't want to see this card or the Overdue checklist at all, you can get around that by just having a second Scheduled Automation some 10 minutes after the first that deletes that specific card as cleanup. (though this ups automation runs from 60 to 90 runs per month, which can be a chunk for heavy users of automation on free workspaces (they give you 250 runs a month))

[Katja]

Thanks for this :) I  am struggling at step 2;

If I choose Scheduled automation to trigger at 4pm every day, where do I find the action to add the label to the  Deadline Automations card? I can add / move / lists / sort / other but none of them seem to have the "add label"?

Really appreciate your help

[Vongsawat]

Sorry, got busy. Also, my bad. Didn't realize Add Label wasn't available for Scheduled Automations either. 

The immediate solution would be to go with Option 2, and use the creation of a card as the trigger instead.

The regular Rule then triggers off of it, and has to do a little shuffle with the card name so that it can archive the previous version of the card without getting confused between two cards being named the same

Hopefully that should work. didn't get around to testing it

[Katja]

Thanks very much for this, I followed it to the T but wasn't successful, no errors in log - I give up for now

[Jovin]

Hey Katja,

Automation can be a frustrating beast at times! Try giving the below a shot:

1. Trigger: Scheduled
   1. Run rule every: 1 days
   2. At: 4pm (Your Timezone)
   3. Check the box for "Run a JQL search and execute actions for each issue in the query"
   4. Set your JQL as below, this looks for anything due before midnight tonight in the duedate field (change the fieldname as required), you could also just use {{now}} if you're sure all required tickets have a due date before 4pm.
      duedate <= {{now.plusDays(1).withHour(0).withMinute(1)}}
2. Action: Edit issue
   1. Select the fields as "Due Date"
   2. Set the value to: {{now.plusDays(1).withHour(9).withMinute(0)}}

Let us know if this works!

[Hannah Humbert - Simpla Workflows]

This looks like Jira. I think the OP is using Trello :)