Is it possible to apply a butler rule to all boards, by default?

[rax adaam]

I created a rule to allow any member of our team to "subscribe" another member of the team to a card by commenting "@team_member's_name watch" on the card, by having every member of the team create the following rule:

when a comment starting with "@my_user_name watch" is posted to a card, subscribe to the card

This works great; however, I just noticed that it didn't apply to every board, meaning each of us would have to go to every one of our team boards & activate the list manually. It's already kind of a drag that every new member will have to create the rule, but if we also have to remember to activate the rule on every new board, it's going to create a real weak point in the workflow. Is there an "apply to all boards" option for rules? Or can anyone suggest an easy work around? Bonus if you can suggest a hack that would allow us to create a single rule for subscribing any team member.

Thanks in advance for your help!

[Iain Dooley · Accepted solution]

@rax adaam The closest you can get to "apply to all boards" in Butler is command libraries:

https://help.butlerfortrello.com/article/50-command-libraries

You avoid the need to recreate the rule every time but you still have to enable it for each board.

[Iain Dooley]

@rax adaam also note that you might like my product BenkoBoard which centralises all notifications and kind of obviates the need for watching cards:

http://www.benkoboard.com/

it creates a linked card in your board whenever you're added to a card or mentioned in a comment, so rather than having to trigger someone to watch a card and then hope they see it in a sea of notifications you can mention a user by name in a comment and then know that they have a card in their personal board that links back to it, without having to add them to the card.

You could probably do the same with Butler:

But again you'd have the issue of having to enable that on every board, but at least you could be the one to enable it rather than everyone having to enable it on every board.

BenkoBoard would be more "set and forget": it works for a given user across all boards they're a member of.

[rax adaam]

so the idea here is that you have a list dedicated to notifications on one board, where all notifications for all boards (and members) would be collected? unless I also dedicate a label to each team member, wouldn't that also require a notification inbox list for each member of the team (unless colourless labels work)? Using labels to sort the list might not be an issue, depending on the board I chose for the notification list (haven't really figured out best practices for using labels vs. other features, yet), but it'd probably have to be a repository board.

You find this kind of centralized Inbox to be more functional than the native notifications (I guess you must if you built a product around it -- just surprises me, as I wouldn't've thought of this kind of a solution)? Anyhow, thanks for sharing, I've saved the link & will see what my team think :) 

distinguishing useful/ess notifications in Trello does seem to be a potential hazard, so I can see the potential appeal of a notification inbox; however, I'd have concerns about it getting chaotic or overwhelming. 

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edit: I just realized that because you're copying & linking the card, assigning the notification card to the individual obviates the need for labels or other filters. Any member can sort the list by assignee to see all notifications. Now I get why this would / could be nice :) Only issue I can imagine is that it only catches commented cards. Do you never run into issues with members missing notifications related to being assigned to a card? 

[Iain Dooley]

@rax adaam each person gets their own board, so everyone has their own inbox. You can also optionally use it as a Gmail client, so everyone's BenkoBoard becomes the spot where everything they're accountable for resides (they can create cards, they get a linked card for any comment they're mentioned in anywhere in Trello, they get a linked card for any card they're added to anywhere in Trello and all their personal email is there too). This is basically a replacement for Trello's native Cards view and Notification menu.