How to automatically assign a due date from an email with multiple dates?

[McSpadden_ Noah]

I use mail to board to get work assignments from my email to my board, but I would like to start automatically adding due dates to cards as they appear (in conjunction with an outlook automation that forwards these assignments to the mail-to-board address as they appear).

I am trying to use the "when I enter a card description containing a date, set due on the date" rule; however, the emails always contain two dates: the date the assignment was opened (always on or before the day the email is received) and the date the assignment is due. I thought it would be trivial to use the "...after (date)" addition to the rule to only look for dates after today, but I am having trouble getting that to work. I have entered "today", "{today}", "now", and "{now}" into the field, but no luck. Any guidance? It should be noted that I am on a free plan and therefore have no access to custom fields. 

UPDATE: I have read some tutorials, and have tried "{cardlastactivitydate}", "{cardcreationisodatetime}",  and "{cardcreationdate}". Still no results.

Thanks!

[Hannah Humbert - Simpla Workflows · Accepted solution]

@McSpadden_ Noah have a look into wildcards. You can match a word or phrase in the description and use it elsewhere. 

So to clarify, do you want to set the due date field in the card with the assignment due date? Is there any unique identifier for the due date so Trello knows which date to pull?

For example, you could have a trigger that says:

When a card description contains "Due: {* }" 

When it comes to taking this information and populating the due date, it gets a bit tricky since Trello doesn't allow you to use a variable in the default due date field.

Here's a workaround to achieve this without the use of custom fields (two separate rules):

when the description of a card contains "due: {* }", rename the card to "{cardname} {wildcard1}"

this is appending the due date to the card name

when I enter a card name containing a date, set due on the date and remove the matched text

[McSpadden_ Noah]

Hannah,

This worked perfectly. Thanks for your help!

[Hannah Humbert - Simpla Workflows]

You're welcome! 😊