How can i create a detailed meeting report for my boss using board button?

[Paul Tierney]

Each week me and my boss have a run through our operations board. We look at new task cards, and tasks in progress. I have them automating with labels and are all in correct lists.

Each week we go through each card and discuss them, i will add a comment into the card for what the discussion point was. If the card then becomes "in progress" i move it over.

What id like to do is have a board button called "email report" the idea is to click the button and it will send a summary of what weve changed during that meeting. Eg left a comment on particular card, created a new card, moved a card and finally an overview of how many remain to start and sit in the "in progress list".

Maybe its an activity report of anything in the last hour and a summary of the total cards etc.

Any help would be really appreciated.

Paul

[Carolina Lopez · Accepted solution]

Hi Paul!

There isn't a way to create a report with the cards modified in the last hour. However, I found a workaround that may help you achieve a similar result.

First, create a Custom Field to store the date of your weekly meeting. Then, create a card button to fill that Custom Field with the current date. Here's an example:

set date custom field "Weekly meeting" to now

When you discuss a card during the meeting, press that button.

After that, you can create a board button to create a report with the cards with the Custom Field set to a date this week. Add an action to create another report with the cards in the "In progress" list without that Custom Field set. Then, add an action to send the reports to your email address. You can use this automation as an example:

create a report in variable "weekly" with all cards with custom field "Weekly meeting" set to a date in this week using pattern "{cardname} - {cardlink} \n", create a report in variable "remaining" with all cards in list "List 1" without custom field "Weekly meeting" set using pattern "{cardname} - {cardlink} \n", and send an email notification to "email@email.com" with subject "Weekly meeting" and message "Discussed during meeting:\n\n{$weekly}\n\nRemaining cards in progress:\n\n{$remaining}"

I used these documents to create the reports:
Create and manage automations | Card Buttons
Create and manage automations | Board Buttons
Create email reports with Automation
Automation variables

Let me know if this helps!

[Paul Tierney]

Hi Carolina.

Thank you so much for your time answering my question. I will try this. Much appreciated 

[Paul Tierney]

Hi I have followed your steps to make a board button. I’m really struggling though, the email comes through but it has no details. It just says “go to Trello to find out more”

im obviously missing a key part of the code/formula but not sure what it is. 

thankyou

[Paul Tierney]

Hi Brittany I have followed your steps to make a board button. I’m really struggling though, the email comes through but it has no details. It just says “go to Trello to find out more”

im obviously missing a key part of the code/formula but not sure what it is. 

thankyou

[Carolina Lopez]

Hi @Paul Tierney 

I checked your screenshots and it seems like the report is blank because the variable for the report needs to be the same as in the email body. For example, if your rule says "create a report in variable Meeting_Activity" the variable in the message must be {$Meeting_Activity} instead of {$lastActivity}.
Let me know if changing the message to {$Meeting_Activity} works.

[Brittany Joiner · Accepted solution]

@Paul Tierney you could potentially create your own "last activity" automation that sets a custom field "LastActivity" to "now" when you do certain actions on a card, like you mentioned. 

Something like this for each type of trigger, like moving a list, adding a comment, etc:

And then you could create a board button like this, which would create a report of cards with LastActivity set to a date less than 1 day from now. (But unfortunately you can't do less than 1 hour, just less than 1 day... but maybe that would get you close enough?)

Maybe simpler, but you could also just add a label to cards as you talk about them and then send a report of cards with that label, and then add another action to remove that label from cards? 

[Paul Tierney]

Hi Brittany. Thank you so much for your time answering my question. I will try this. Much appreciated 

[Brittany Joiner]

You're welcome! Glad it helped!

Also, you might be interested in joining the Trello Trailblazers Atlassian Community Events chapter! We have events each month talking about how to do cool things in Trello: https://ace.atlassian.com/trello-trailblazers/

[Brittany Joiner]

@Paul Tierney just saw your comment above - can you show me a screenshot of your automation? 

you should have some code for the variable creating the report, and then reference that in the email message body

[Paul Tierney]

[Paul Tierney]

Thanks Brittany, I’m new to this part of Trello 

[Brittany Joiner]

@Paul Tierney yep as @Carolina Lopez mentioned - you are referencing a different variable in your message. 

Change message to {$Meeting_Activity} and it should work!

[Paul Tierney]

Hi both. 

it didn’t work unfortunately 😭😭

any further help will be appreciated 

[Brittany Joiner]

@Paul Tierney can you show screenshots of your updated rule? 

[Carolina Lopez]

@Paul Tierney , in addition to Brittany's question, please confirm the following:

- Was the "Last Activity" custom field created?
- Were the rules to fill that custom field created as shown in the first screenshot of this thread?
- In case the previous ones are positive, did you change one of the cards to have the Last Activity custom field filled before testing the automation?
- Was the email field changed from "My email.com" to your valid email address?

[Paul Tierney]

[Carolina Lopez]

Thanks for sending the screenshots @Paul Tierney!
I blurred the email address because it's a public thread, I'm sorry I wasn't clear when I asked if the email address was filled correctly.

The variable for the report shouldn't contain any blank space. When we create a report with a space in the name, it'll replace the space with an underscore (_). This should be the reason why you're not receiving the report.
If you check the automation log, you'll probably see a log like this one:


Using the variable that appears on the logs will allow you to receive the report.

Let us know if it helps!

[Paul Tierney]

Hi Carolina.

I have managed to get this to work and send an email. The last activity bit seemed to work but all it has done is put the name of the card.

I want it to read this way. and have a tile at the top.

Discussions this week.

(Card 1)

(Card 2)

(Card 3)

Ideally i would also like it to show on the email what the activity was. For example

(Card 1) (show the activity such as the comments and any checklist items added)

The whole idea is to create notes from the meeting that has just taken place.

When i have a meeting i either add a checklist item or write a comment which was the discussion point.

There could be say 10 cards that have activity in the meeting either through checklist item added or comment. Id like the report to show what that activity was.

Sorry and thanks for all your help so far. The email is now coming through which is great.

[Carolina Lopez]

Hi Paul,

I'm glad that you're receiving the reports! To change the way you view the cards, you can modify the pattern. Here’s one you can use:

[{cardname}]({cardlink})\n

To add a title or any other messages to your email body, you can include formatted text before or after the report variable. Here's an example of how the message might look:

**Discussions this week**\n\n{$Meeting_Activity}

This is how the automation will look like:
 

There isn't an easy way to add a comment or checklist item to the report, because we're limited to this list of variables, but I'll see if I can find a workaround.
In the meantime, let me know if the report looks better by changing the pattern and the message.

[Brittany Joiner]

@Carolina Lopez fantastic support here!! 

[Carolina Lopez]

Thank you, @Brittany Joiner!

@Paul Tierney I found a rule that may help you receive the report similar to what you want. These are the steps to create it:

• Create a text Custom Field called "Meeting notes".
• If you created the rules like Brittany mentioned in the beginning, you can change them to fill the "Meeting notes" Custom Field with the comment or checklist item value. It should look like this:

when a comment is posted to a card, set custom field "Meeting notes" to "{commenttext}", and set date custom field "Last Activity" to now

when an item is added to a checklist, set custom field "Meeting notes" to "{checklistitemname}", and set date custom field "Last Activity" to now

• Change the report's pattern to add the "Meeting notes" Custom Field variable. The automation button should look like the one below:
  

create a report in variable "Meeting_Activity" with all cards with custom field "Last Activity" set to a date less than 1 days ago using pattern "[{cardname}]({cardlink}) - {{%Meeting notes}}\n", and send an email notification to "email@email.com" with subject "Operations Meeting Report Week {weeknumber}" and message "**Discussions this week** \n{$Meeting_Activity}"

 Let me know if this works for you!

[Paul Tierney]

Hi  Carolina.

This didn’t work unfortunately. Really appreciate your time though.

the custom field automation works and brings up the comment etc into the field. But it does then show up on the email and I copied the line pattern exactly. 

[Carolina Lopez]

Hi @Paul Tierney !

Do you receive the report in your email without the pattern formatting? If so, could you please confirm if you're using you report variable with _html at the end? As html reports have their own formatting, it may cause the pattern not to work.