Converting a Checklist item automatically to a card

[Maarten Bal]

Hi Everybody!

Can you help me by either A. point me in the right direction how to automatically convert an item from a checklist to a card, when a certain card is moved to done ( trigger)? Or  B. show me how you can find a checklist item with butler?

My current setup is such that I have a list for projects, and every project has a checklist with items ( with due dates). 
When I am ready for the next thing to do, I now manually convert an item to a card which automatically is moved to list 'To Do'. ( also automatically an item is added to the original checklist with the same name to keep the list of steps intact there).

I would love it if 'the next checklist item' would be converted into a new card when I complete the above mentioned card ( by moving it to Done). 

Thanks guys!

[Maarten Bal · Accepted solution]

@everybody!

It is done :)...with a bit of Butler& Zapier automation I managed to get this done:

1. Convert items to cards with due date and label 

2. link the cards to the checklist item and the project card

3. Link to every card the follow up next card

Thus now I have a project card with checklist which provides me overview of the entire project with all its cards, and I have cards which when they are 'done' will be replaced with the next item of the project.

Here it is in action :): https://www.loom.com/share/b71a2d3168be4258a7c10ca854ed2c27

[milynnus]

@Maarten Bal congrats. It is always to see it on a video to fully understand what was described in words. I like the fact that you have an overview project card and each created card carries the cardlinks to the preceding and next item and to the originating card. The duplication of cardlinks in the originating card does mean a very crowded card.

More importantly, from perspective of a project manager, I know that things do not, often, happen in sequence as in next item on a checklist. I am trained to define WBS centred around work products and I do agree as things move further downstream that work will be done fairly sequentially. I will use your example to see if I should enhance my custom power up to facilitate sequential work. https://youtu.be/TE1jPfkwako

As it is always the case, not every thing can be done natively with Butler and in this case you used Zapier. Congrats again.

[Mary Lawrence]

this video is private. :(

[milynnus]

@Mary Lawrence 

Sorry, I do not do very well to maintain my videos. Is the a specific use case you are looking for? This post was 2 years ago and cannot quite remember what the video shows. 

[Josh Porter]

@Maarten Bal Would you be able to share how you achieved this? I'd like to be able to copy this to use myself

[Robert Talbert]

Seconding the requests to share the process you used to get to this. The video doesn't mention it. 

[Erin]

I wanted to have each step of a project on a card, and only view one of those cards at a time on my planner to avoid overwhelm. 

Setting up these buttons and rules will allow you to do the following;

- Convert your checklist into individual cards which are linked to the original project card.

This means as you mark the card complete, the item on your original card checklist will also be marked complete 

**** PLEASE NOTE **** I could not figure out how to automate this, so in order for this to work, you need to begin each checklist item with the step number. Ex: I would write "1 Print Spreadsheet, 2 Highlight Names" NOT "Print spreadsheet, highlight names"

- By dragging your first step card over to the "send to schedule" list, it will send the card to your other specified board. As you mark that card complete, the next step card will appear on the board and the completed card will archive

My board is organized as follows;

Specialized board lists; "Send to Schedule", "Breakdown", "Brain Dump", "Project Cards"

Planner board lists; "To schedule" 

Settings you need: 

CARD BUTTON : (I called it Create Next Steps) for each checklist item, convert the item to a linked card at the top of list "Brain Dump", and rename the card to "{checklistname} Step {checklistitemname}" , and move the card to the top of list "BREAKDOWN"

(note; you need to name the checklist what you want the prefix to Step X to be. So your step cards will be titled like this "Thank You Cards Step 1 Print Spreadsheet"

RULES : 

(1) when the due date is marked as complete in a card with a name containing "Step", find the first card linked in the attachments, and check item "{triggercardlink}"

(2) when a card is moved into list "SEND TO SCHEDULE", move the card to the bottom of list "TO SCHEDULE" on board "Everything"

(3) when the due date is marked as complete in a card with a name containing "Step", archive the card, find the last card linked in the attachments, and move the card to the bottom of list "TO SCHEDULE" on board "Everything"

(4) when a card with a name containing "{?} step 1 {?}" is added to list "BREAKDOWN", find a card titled "{?} step 2 {?}" in list "BREAKDOWN", and link the cards together

(5) when a card with a name containing "{?} step 2 {?}" is added to list "BREAKDOWN", find a card titled "{?} step 3 {?}" in list "BREAKDOWN", and link the cards together

(6) when a card with a name containing "{?} step 3 {?}" is added to list "BREAKDOWN", find a card titled "{?} step 4 {?}" in list "BREAKDOWN", and link the cards together 

- etc etc, copy that command and change the step numbers as many times as you need

TO AVOID linking projects to one another on accident, before running the button again on a checklist, you need to either manually move the cards from Breakdown after all the commands have been processed, or you can add this rule; 

when a card is moved out of list "BREAKDOWN", find a card titled "{?} Step {?}" in list "BREAKDOWN", and move the card to the top of list "BABY STEPS" 

[milynnus]

@Vongsawat as I mentioned I am working on a simple "next item" challenge for Butler using Http Request. Spent most of my time trying to get Butler Find and Lookup work as publisheed. There appears to be a bug in lookup when then next command has a mixed of {found...} {...} and {trigger...}

For you other concern about not being able to get custom fields the way you can {foundcardname}, I have create this 

`post to url "https://25368.wayscript.io/bulter/?registry=5f216.............ade5c6&module=5f27b..............67e" with payload "{\"card_id\" : \"{cardidlong}\"}", and post comment "card name {httpresponse.cardname} CF1 {httpresponse.Name} CF2 {httpresponse.Number} CF3 {httpresponse.Dropdown} CF4 {httpresponse.Checkbox} CF5 {httpresponse.Date} CF6 {httpresponse.Name Blank}"`

Essentially you can get any CF on a card.

@Maarten Bal here's the demo. Minimum requirement is Gold since Http Request is not available for free.

https://youtu.be/Lhl34MXpsxo

[Maarten Bal]

Thank you for the active discussion!

 I am sort of on a path like Vongswat describes. The endresult so far is I manage to  Build the  rule with Butler, to add the name of every following task into the previous one ( with the previous one having noted down its name in the description of the original card with the checklist.

when an item is added to checklist "{checklistname}" in a card in list "Projects", convert the item to a linked card, add the "Hide" label to the card, link the cards together, find a card titled "{triggercarddescription}" in list "Projects", set the card's description to "{triggercarddescription}", find the last card linked in the attachments, lookup the last card linked in the attachments, and set the card's description to "{foundcardname}"

This works for every following item, but I still need to fix it for the first one ( which stops because it fails to find 'the previous one). I am 'solving that' by having one additional (permanent) card on the list called 'first'. 

[Maarten Bal]

Right now I use the cardescirption to drop the names of the cards, I want to change that with a vustomer field, but I have not cracked the code yet how you use a customfield, when you have just lookedup a card and wnat to use the customfield of that one.
My attempt was"{{found%NextCheckP}}"...but that didn work :)

[Vongsawat]

yea, getting another card's custom field is also one of those annoying limitations..

[milynnus]

Agree. 
Any idea how to use board {{...}} and user variables {{#...}}. I am on Gold (free) but cannot find where to set it. Used them a bit in custom power up. 

[Maarten Bal]

Hi!

This article got me through it to understand variables: https://help.trello.com/article/1157-variables

This one is on lookup and find cards:
https://help.trello.com/article/1193-butler-card-lookups

And this one is when you want to use custom fields:
https://help.atrello.com/article/1160-custom-field-variables

Little disclaimer on customer fields, you can not access them through lookup actions, so onlyy when you are 'on the card' can you access that info.

[Vongsawat]

Under the Butler Cascade tab, there are commands related to Conversion. If you convert in to a linked item, the checklist item is also retained, replaced with a link.

Converting everything in one go is easy, getting it to do it sequentially on the other hand.. is much more difficult. The problem is two-fold: Butler is not aware of checklist item ordering, and you cannot interact with a specific item except in specific predefined ways.

If your ordering is fixed, you could perhaps hard-code a separate rule for each task (or create some kind of lookup board) so by moving ItemA to Done, it will already know the name of ItemB.

Then to convert ONLY ItemB: Remove ItemB, Add ItemB, Convert the item to a Linked Card

Adding the item again is my current workaround for searching for and acting on a specific checklist item. Hopefully you can successfully mangle that somehow in to your use-case?

[milynnus]

@Vongsawat  Just recently I learned about about Butler Http Request. You have worked with Butler a bit and know about it’s limitations when handling a series of use cases, what would be one thing that perhaps can be handled by some asynchronous processing that can help make a difference. I would want to investigate to see there is a solution using the http request. Thanks. 

[Vongsawat]

Probably deserves its own question /discussion? But also not formally trained as a coder, so don't really know the capabilities of http or webhooks or API etc.

[milynnus]

@Vongsawat  Ok. I am looking at a Butler user’s perspective. In reading your replies, I noted (1) something to do with if (2) not able to identify specific items and for (3)  there seems to remember variables beyond {trigger...} or {found...} and probably not beyond more 1 lookup or find (I started to learn about Bulter)....anyway trying to tackle (2) at the moment. 

[milynnus]

@Maarten Bal Am I correct what you wanted in to work progressive down a checklist, send created card over to another list, completed that task represented by the new card and have the next item on the checklist activated... and so forth. The problem you face is because when a conversion from item to card the item is removed (native trello) and hence you have to reinstate that deleted item.

I used a system for checklist app I created and because I can decide to leave item just a "name" and I can move card created from checked or unchecked item over to a new list without disturbing the checklist. For your case, I will checked an item and do a SuperRun. Since it is unchecked, it serves as a marker of where I left off.

First video is shows the entire app while the 2nd unlisted video is to try to show you the what is explained in para 2

https://youtu.be/TE1jPfkwako

https://youtu.be/b7-Nq7yhDX4