Butler (Power-Up) question: how to create cards from checklist items every month

[Hannie van der Spek]

Hi there everyone, I've been searching through a lot of other questions but I did not succeed in finding an anwser. So if I am asking something that's been asked before, please point me in the right direction. Tnx!

My questions (for Butler Power-Up of Butler Bot):
1) I have a card "Newsletter" and it contains a checklist Newsletter. I want Butler to create individual cards of the checklist items every 1st of the month and move them to the list "activities this month" and assign them to me. That would be great!

2) Can Butler add a due date to those automatically generated cards?
For instance there are 4 checklist actions for the newsletter: sending a reminder to client, receiving input, making newsletter and sending newsletter.
The sending has to get the due date every last friday of the month, the making 2 days before sending, receiving input 3 days before sending and the reminder 7 days before sending. If that is possible, it would be even greater!

So I hope there are some Butler Pros here. 

Thank you,
Hannie

[Iain Dooley · Accepted solution]

@Hannie van der Spek the Butler command for this would be something like this (I'm making some assumptions of your board/list structure but you get the point):

Every month on the 1st at 9am find card "Newsletter" in list "Whatever" on board "Whatever" and copy it to list "Current Newsletter" on board "Active Newsletters" and on the copy convert checklist "Newsletter Tasks" into linked cards at the bottom of list "Current Newsletter Tasks" and for each card in list "Current Newsletter Tasks" join the card and set due in 24 hours

I'm not sure if you can get access to all these features in the power up/command builder and haven't tested if that command is valid but that would be more or less correct. If those features can't be added in the Power Up you can always use the bot.

If you wanted the due date to be set differently for each card, then you could use a "match" to extract the date from the card title (which comes from the checklist item, so you would have your hours offset in each checklist item) and then set due based on a variable something like this:

Every month on the 1st at 9am find card "Newsletter" in list "Whatever" on board "Whatever" and copy it to list "Current Newsletter" on board "Active Newsletters" and on the copy convert checklist "Newsletter Tasks" into linked cards at the bottom of list "Current Newsletter Tasks" and for each card in list "Current Newsletter Tasks" join the card and match "{*} Due: {*}" against {multipliercardname} and set due in {wildcard2} hours

I'm not 100% sure on the syntax of that last bit (it's been a while since I wrote Butler code and I might be a little rusty ;) but that's certainly the gist of it.

[Hannie van der Spek]

Hi @Iain Dooley, I think I will have to use the Butler bot for this. I've been looking at the Power-Up over and over again but I don't see it. And yes I'm wearing my glasses but sometimes I'm kind of blind for what's staring me in the face :-)

I get your first suggestion. As far as the second one with the dates is concerned, I think you'll hear my brain cracking all the way from The Netherlands. I always read your comments with admiration for your IT skills. Being a management supporter/virtual assistant, my skills are in an entirely different area, so I'm always proud when I kinda grasp what you're saying, so funny. I had to google syntax! but I think you mean the programming language between the {....} and it's order, right? Ha, I'm sure I will learn how to do this automation thingy within Trello... someday.

Thank you very much for your time answering me and have a lovely day.
Cheers, Hannie

[Hannie van der Spek]

match "{*} Due: {*}" against {multipliercardname} and set due in {wildcard2} hours
So if I change the checklist item into "sending newsletter Due: last friday of the month" the quoted code above will do the trick and set the date on last friday of that month?

Or do I have to add other values where the * are? 
And where do {multipliercardname} and {wildcard2} refer to? I haven't the foggiest :-)

[Iain Dooley]

@Hannie van der Spek Something like that ... I haven't actually tested the code but yes the pattern I gave you is literally what you would include to match "sending newsletter Due: last friday of the month".

The multipliercardname is a variable in a for each loop referring to the card in the current iteration and wildcard2 will be the value matched in the second {*}, in this case the value of the date string that you had in the original checklist item.

You can see more about variables on the Butler Bot support site:

https://help.butlerfortrello.com/article/27-variables

And thanks for the kind words, yes Trello is a very powerful automation platform, the best API of any product in the market I think!

[Hannie van der Spek]

Thanks for the link@Iain Dooley, there is more interesting stuff there. Going to read it.

I've contacted Butler support to ask about the Power-Up possibilities, just to be sure. And they confirmed that this (converting checklists into (linked) cards) is not yet available in the Power-Up BUT... they offered to already add it to my clients account.

Now, that REALLY made my day because I'm kinda scared that the clients of my client will accidently change or delete something in the Butler Bot list. And now it will be in the Power-Up and they won't be able to see anything, HOORAY for Butler support!

Have a great day!

[Meg Holbrook · Accepted solution]

Hi Hannie,

I popped into the butler settings and set up a test for what it sounds like you're asking. Items you can change are in bold. Please let me know if I missed the mark:

Every First Monday of the month create a card called activity1 in list TO DO 1 on board TEST2 and add MEG HOLBROOK as a card member and set due date to LAST FRIDAY of the month. 

These cards actually wouldn't be tied to the 'Newsletter' card specifically, but will represent the tasks needed. You would create 4 calendar tasks - one for each activity to take place each month.

[Hannie van der Spek]

Hi @Meg Holbrook that would be a nice work around. Hoping that the Power-Up will develop the "turn checklist into cards" option really soon because checklists have a habit of changing.

Thanks so much for your effort and have a lovely day!

Hannie