Common Automation Actions

It’s now time to talk about what happens after you create triggers. Since you know your options for starting an automation workflow, let’s talk about the types of actions you can actually automate! We’ll start by covering the most used and basic ones.

In this chapter, you’ll learn how to automate activities such as the following:

• Moving cards to other boards or lists
• Adding members or labels
• Adjusting due dates
• Creating checklists or comments

That’s just a few... let’s dive in so you can see what I mean. We’ll start with where to find these actions.

Accessing automation actions

You access actions in the same way you do triggers—through the Automation button that appears at the top toolbar of any Trello board. Click it, then select Buttons from the menu that appears.

Figure 7.1 – Automation modal

We’ll talk more about buttons in Chapter 9, but for now, just know that this is a manual way to start an automation, so it’s the quickest way to view all the available actions.

From the Card Buttons modal, click the blue Create custom button option in the top-right corner. Click the + Add Action button.

Figure 7.2 – Card button automation options

This brings up a menu of actions that we can automate. Feel free to follow along from here for the rest of the chapter as we go through the different actions available in each section.

I’ve organized all this info so you can have access to it and quickly find it when you need it, but no...

Move

The first type of action you see relates to moving a card around the board, or even to another board. If you want to change the location of a card, the move set of actions is most helpful.

Figure 7.3 – Move actions

These kinds of automation actions make it seamless to have your cards in the right place on the board for your workflows. Rather than manually dragging a card around, you can set the criteria for when a card moves to the next stage, such as a checklist being completed, and have it occur instantly.

If you’re operating out of multiple boards, this is incredibly useful. You might have one board that collects tasks before assigning them to specific teams or projects, so being able to quickly go from one board to another is essential.

There are only a few options here but there are some nuances to each one, so read closely.

Move/copy the card to the top/bottom of the list

This one is sneaky—if you’re looking...

Add/Remove

These actions are for making changes to cards, specifically adding/removing all sorts of elements, such as labels, stickers, links, and event text. A lot of automation tends to fall into this category, so keep an eye out!

Figure 7.4 – Add/Remove actions

If you’re making changes to cards that don’t necessarily have their own sections (such as due dates, members, or links), you’ll find this section most helpful. It’s also a great place to go when you want to create a specific kind of card with checklists, dates, members, and more. For example, maybe you have a board for request ads. You could create a button that uses the create a new card action to create a templated card with all the fields set to your preferences, all with the click of a button!

Let’s start from the top and work our way down.

Create a new/unique card

Don’t get this confused with copying or moving—this creates...

Dates

Let’s make some automation happen with dates!

Figure 7.6 – Date actions

If you have a process that involves setting, changing, or completing due dates, this is the section you want to pay attention to. Well, of course you do, because many of us use due dates in Trello to surface the most time-sensitive tasks and make sure we’re moving through our projects at the right pace.

However, dates are never static. When was the last time you had a project or task that actually stuck to its intended schedule? Even as I write this book, we’ve had to adjust the deadlines for drafts and edits throughout this whole process. These automations make setting and shifting due dates easy and allow you to focus on doing the work.

Let’s dive in.

Mark a due date as complete/incomplete

You can check off a due date as done, or uncheck it if it’s already checked off.

Real-world example

When a card is moved to Done...

Checklist actions

The next set of elements that you can automate are checklists, which are subtasks inside of your Trello cards.

Figure 7.8 – Checklist actions

We learned about checklists in Chapter 3, and they’re one of my favorite parts of Trello. As someone recently diagnosed with ADHD, I’ve learned that breaking tasks into smaller bites and making clear action items make it easier for me to get started on something, and easier to finish. Plus, it helps me ensure I don’t forget any important steps along the way.

While that’s all good and well, it means nothing if it becomes another thing to do to manage those subtasks. That’s why checklist automation is helpful, whether it’s automatically adding a checklist for standard tasks that I have, such as cleaning my kitchen, or moving the due date when life happens and things get delayed.

There are a lot of options here. Instead of feeling overwhelmed,...

Member actions

Member actions are incredibly helpful because assigning a person to a card makes it easy to filter cards and determine who gets notifications about a card. It’s also a great way to track capacity and workload management.

Figure 7.10 – Member actions

Since card members are tied to so many other aspects of Trello, such as filters, views, and, perhaps most importantly, notifications, it’s important to make sure the right people are on the right cards at all times. If you think about it, you probably have a pretty systematic way of adding people to your cards, no matter how you use Trello.

For instance, you might have your designer take over the card when it moves to a certain stage in your marketing board, or you might have your product manager assigned to any newly added cards to evaluate their importance. Once you determine a system for who gets what, you can save yourself time each week by avoiding the manual...

Content actions

Content actions are all about changing the text you interact with inside cards, such as the card title, description, and comments. You can even send emails to yourself, which is a great way to customize notifications.

Figure 7.13 – Content actions

I don’t use these sections every day, but when I do, they’re extremely useful. The power behind these actions is that you can complete your workflow based entirely on context from the item itself.

Instead of stringing automations together based on other actions, you can make Trello perform specific actions that are relevant to what’s happening in the details of a card, such as the name, description, or comments, and carry on those actions to the text of the card, altering the meaning behind it and creating a log of information.

Let’s dive into some examples to see what I mean.

Rename the card to ___

This allows you to rename a card, which is helpful...

Summary

We’ve covered so much ground, and these are just the “basic” actions you can automate with Trello. You can now move cards around, add or remove attributes such as labels or links, adjust due dates, create checklists, add members, and more.

You’ll never remember all of these off the top of your head, and that’s totally okay. Even I have to open up the Automation section sometimes to remember everything that is possible. At first, it’s also not always intuitive which sections you’ll find the actions in, but the more you use them, the more familiar they’ll become.

But if you thought that was all, we’re only getting started. You can still automate even more actions in Trello, so in the next chapter, we’ll talk through some advanced automation actions.