Hello, I'm fairly new to Trello.
When I add automations to one board, they automatically get added to all the other boards on my account. And if I delete an automation, it gets deleted from all the boards.
Is there a way to make independent automations only for a single board rather than for all boards in an account?
I'm planning to use Trello in a somewhat unique way. I want to create individual boards for clients of mine, so it's important that the boards be completely independent of one another.
I know you can enable and disable automations, but it still would cause problems and be confusing and unprofessional if one client can see a bunch of automations that are meant for different clients.
I emailed customer support and they said this is a normal feature. Why would that be? What is the point of the "add to another board" button then? They're already added! Or what are automation libraries for then?
I'm really hoping there is some way around this. Because otherwise I'm going to have to switch to a different program.
Does anyone out there know if there is another kanban style program out there that has robust automations but doesn't link automations in this way across all boards?
Rather annoying to have to shop around...but it is what it is.
Thanks!
Hola!
I totally get your frustration — what you're describing sounds confusing, and you're not the first person to be tripped up by this behavior. Let's break it down:
It sounds like you're creating workspace-level automations, not board-level automations. Workspace automations (aka “shared automations”) will apply to all boards within that workspace by default, which explains why they appear everywhere and get deleted everywhere too.
What you want is to create automations that are tied only to a single board. Here's how:
Open the board you want to customize.
Go to Automation > Rules (or Buttons, Calendar, etc.).
Create your automation directly from within that board — not from the workspace view.
This ensures that your automation is scoped to that board only, and won’t affect others.
One gotcha: if you start an automation from the workspace-level screen, it becomes “global” by default — which is what you're running into.
About the "Add to another board" button:
Great question — that button is for manually duplicating a board-level automation to other boards, not for creating global rules. It’s useful when you want to reuse a rule, but still keep it independent.
If you're creating client boards and need strict isolation, I'd also suggest creating each board in a separate workspace. That adds another layer of separation and avoids accidental cross-board automation.
I really hope this helps clear things up — Trello can absolutely support what you want to do, but yeah, the UX could be more intuitive.
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