Updatable log within cards

[Greg Smith]

I've designed a board to track company assets. It's really useful, but I need some help with one final function.

On my board, each card represents a machine asset. When we move that asset from one location to the next we update the card to reflect its location in the location field. These machines cycle routinely between the same handful of locations depending on the time of year and I'd like to create a running log of those movements that we can update within the card.

It would simply need to "April 2020, moved from location A to location B", "May 2020, moved from location B to location C"...and so on. 

This needs to be updateable within the card, not through a linked spreadsheet that has to be opened up. We have over 200 pieces of machinery, so I don't want to create 200 new files if I can help it.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

[Esme Crutchley]

Hi @Gregory Smith 

Welcome to the Community!

Are you using custom fields to record the location change?

If so, are they text-based or a dropdown?

This can be achieved with Butler, but it would be handy to know how you're recording the locations so that I can mimic the card and show you how I would set up the Butler rule :)

And you won't have to touch a spreadsheet - promise!

Esme :)

[Greg Smith]

Esme,

Thanks for the help. I am using lots of custom fields for many other machine related information on the card, but I'm not using them to log locations. My concern was that I'd end up with 30 custom fields over time, but maybe I should go assess it again.

I appreciate it.

[Esme Crutchley]

Hi Gregory,

No problem at all.

You could have 1 custom field with drop downs for all the possible locations, then whenever there's a change you could have a comment created. That way you'd only use 1 custom field.

How are you logging the location at the moment?

Esme :)

[Greg Smith]

That's a really good idea. I guess the only time intensive part will be loading in all of the locations, but if I do it on my template card it'll only be a one-time thing.

Currently, the only way I've been able to log the locations reasonably is in the description box. I've yet to find a better was thus far. Your suggestion might be the best possible way. I just wish there was a table that I could update within the card.

[Esme Crutchley]

Oh to have tables in Trello!

Alas, it's not to be. It used to be a thing in markdown, but it doesn't work any more, believe me, I tried (multiple times!).

A custom field drop down will apply to all cards the minute you start adding locations, so it does only have to be done once, and will automatically get added to all the cards.

If you did it this way, you could then have a Butler rule based on a change in the custom field. That's what's going to take the time, setting up the rules for each location. Again, once you've set up one, you'd just have to go back into the rules, click on copy and change the details.

This is what the rule could look like:

I use the Butler variables, that way, you'll always get the right {date}, here is a link to the variables, you could have the date format set to whatever you like, you could even have a string; 

{weekdayname} {monthdaynumberlong} {monthname} {year} @ {time24} 

Just remember to put spaces in between the } and { otherwise it'll all jumble up together (speaking from experience here!).

Hopefully that's a little bit helpful!

Esme :)

[Greg Smith]

Esme,

Thanks once again. This is probably going to be the way I do it going forward. It's the safest way to ensure that previous movements are not accidentally lost in the description section.

I really do appreciate the help!