How can I consolidate items from multiple cards?

[John McQuiggan]

I use a separate Trello card for each of 10 one-on-one meetings I have regularly. Besides my notes of each meeting, each card contains a checklist of agenda items and a checklist for follow-ups from the discussion. Unfortunately, that gives me 10 separate cards with follow-up checklists on them. Any suggestions for consolidating those follow-up items on one list that I could call up to see the items I need to follow up on from all my meetings?

Some thoughts I've had:

1) Create a new card with the follow-up item without closing the "meeting card" I'm working in.  Is there a way or a power-up to do that?

2) Automatically generate new cards from each follow-up item I put on the checklist. Is that possible?

3) Re-think my scheme of using a separate card for each person I meet with. 

4) Suck it up and keep using the consolidated follow-ups list that I've been manually updating.

Any suggestions appreciated. 

[Katrin Anger · Accepted solution]

@John McQuiggan 

Hi John,

with the Butler Power-Up you can do a lot of automations in Trello, and certainly the kind of automations you are thinking of.

The workflow you are describing contains a number of steps, so it is too much to describe here. But if you want an experts opinion on this task and advice how to implement it, feel free to get in touch with me. Contact info in my profile.

[Iain Dooley]

@John McQuigganButler would allow you to do something like:

When a card is moved to the "Create Action Items" list convert all items in list "Action Items" into linked cards in list "{triggercardname} Action Items {date}" and move the card to the "Pending Meeting" list and rename checklist "Action Items" to "Action Items Processed {date}"

So each week you have the meeting the move the card to Create Action Items, it will create a fresh list with cards linked back to the original.

You can then do something like:

When a card is archived find the first card linked in the description and check item "{triggercardlink}"

This means that each time you archive one of the created linked cards, the corresponding checklist item will get checked off in your meeting card

You could also have a scheduled command like:

Every Monday at 7am for each card in list "Pending Meeting" add checklist "Action Items"

so that you have a fresh checklist each item. These commands are written in "Butler Bot" language, you may find implementation details slightly different in the power up.

The same 3 functions in Trellinator would look like this:

https://gist.github.com/iaindooley/6f4bae7a58ecd15acb10b47729fce571

You can see how to set up Trellinator here:

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