Is it possible to use the card position in a list in Automation?

[TJ Leising]

Hello,

I am wondering if I can use the card position in a list as part of the Automation features. I see it pop up if I try to copy a card, so presumably Trello has a record of where the card is in a list.

At a high level, I have a list with several cards as tasks. The cards at the top of the list have to be completed before the cards below. Position 2 has to be completed before position 3, position 3 before position 4 etc.

Each task has a start date and due date. The due date of Task 2 should dictate the start date of Task 3.

I'd like to use the card position to automatically find the previous card's due date, and set the start date on the current card based on that date. If the cards are reordered, The start and end dates need to be updated.

I've been able to achieve the end result, but it requires linking the cards together and setting dependencies via a "pre-requisites" checklist on each of the cards. It works well, but setting this up multiple times (multiple lists) and for 10+ tasks each list is time consuming.

Any insight and help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

[milynnus · Accepted solution]

@TJ Leising 

The pos attribute is not available as a variable. In any case I would be a reliable way to establish dependencies. If building the dependencies is an ongoing issue you are better of looking for a solution to construct that dependency like using http services. 

[TJ Leising]

Thank you for your answer. It's too bad it's not available. I feel like a lot of really cool automation could happen knowing the relative positions of cards in a list. I don't know much about http services, so I'll go ahead and look into that. Thanks again!

[Dreamsuite Mike]

Someone at Atlassian please bring this up with the automation team.  This would be a really great variable to have

[JLX-Jon]

I'd just like to chime in and add support for this and add my use case for consideration:

I have dedicated card(s) I used for status. For example PENDING. All the cards below the PENDING card are still under discussion. I want to automatically add a start date to cards that are moved above the PENDING card (MovedCard.Pos < PENDING.Pos).

Sometimes, I may have 2 status cards. For example PENDING and PRIORITY which divide the list into 3 sections: Top: Priority items, Mid: Started items, Btm: Pending items. The point here is being able to add more than one conditional based on card position would be helpful.

Thanks!