Wouldn't it be great if you could do one action within Trello, and then a multiple number of actions could be applied? For example, what if I could take this task, right here, and drag it over into this new list, and then have it automatically apply a due date, a checklist, and myself, just like it did right there?
Well, in today's video, I'm gonna show you how to do exactly that. I wanna show you everything you need to know about Butler automation.
Now, earlier this year, Trello gave Butler to absolutely everyone, including free users, or those just using the basic version of Trello. The great thing about this is that it actually doesn't count as one of your Power-Ups, so you can use Butler in conjunction with a number of other Power-Ups, including Custom Fields.
So let's jump right in and get comfortable with the Butler interface.
Automation Tips
In order to do so, you just need to select the Butler button, which appears in the top right-hand corner of all of your Trello boards.
Now the very first screen that you're gonna see is called Automation Tips, and Butler is going to try and give a few suggestions, based on your behavior as to the types of things that you might want to include.
But I'm gonna go directly to Rules, because Rules is gonna be the most important area, and probably the area that you most frequent when creating automated actions here within Trello.
Now, a little later on, I'm gonna show you the differences between the five different automation categories here within Butler, but Rules is at the top for a reason, because Rules are gonna be things that are applied based on other actions.
Creating a New Rule
So here you see a rule that I just performed. It says, "When a card is added to the list 'In Progress' by anyone, set the due date to 48 hours, add the 'Follow Up' checklist to the card, and join the card." And you saw that happen in real time.
But let me walk you through creating a new rule from scratch. I want you to be comfortable with this interface, and not be intimidated by all of the many options that are available to you.
So first things first, we need to start with a trigger. This is gonna be the cue that other actions, or other things should be applied.
So we're gonna select Add Trigger, and here we are given a number of different options. Now they're categorized in a few different groups. Movement, as in card movement, or adding a card to a board or list. Card Changes, this would include things like adding or removing labels, attachments, members, et cetera. Date-based, whether that's a due date, or entering in information on a card that already has a due date. Maybe if a checklist is added, or if a checklist is completed. Card Content would include things like adding a comment within a particular card. And Fields is all about Custom Fields. Remember I mentioned, you can use this with your own Custom Fields, which makes it that much more powerful.
But in this case, let's start with Card Movement. And just to give you a bit of an idea of how this interface works, you can see they have tried to list it in such a way that you can just sort of read it out.
So, "when a card is added to the board by me," that could be the trigger, and then we would hit the green plus button over here. But we have so many more options than that. If you hover over almost any one of these fields, you can see I can change "added to" to "created in," "emailed into," "moved into," "moved out of." And instead of me, it could be "by anyone," or "by anyone except me." In some cases, you may need to even click on some of these fields just to show you the other options available to you, but I don't want you to be intimidated by this. There's a lot of options, but that gives you that much more power as to what you want it to do.
So let's create a simple one here together. Let's recreate something similar to what I showed you at the beginning. So, "when a card is added to," and added does mean created, copied, emailed, or moved into. If you wanna be more specific, I can choose one of those other options. But I'm gonna leave it at added.
So I'm gonna say when a card is added to a particular list, in this case I'm gonna choose "Ideas," and I really don't care if it's added by me. Actually, you know what, I'm gonna stick this one with me, 'cause I wanna make sure that I get added to this card. So I'm gonna say added by me. Now, I have to go over to the right and hit the green plus button. That's actually gonna add the trigger.
If I scroll up to the top, you can see the Trigger, there is the trigger that we just created. Now step two is to perform an action. Now one or more, and the great thing about Butler is that you can layer action upon action upon action.
So let's add three actions in this case. First things first, I wanna add a due date, so I'm gonna select the Dates option here, and you sometimes may have to read through a number of the options to find exactly what you are looking for. But I'm gonna choose this second one, I wanna set the due date.
I don't want it to set to now, so I'm gonna click on this, and wow, I've got a lot of options available to me here. But it looks like this second one is what I'm looking for. I wanna set it to 48 hours from right now. If I click on this clock, I could be really specific and actually say what time of day. But I'm gonna click off that, I'm gonna leave it at 48 hours from when that card is moved, and I'm gonna select the plus button.
Now it should be noted, we actually have not added that action yet, we've just specified the time. Set due date to 48 hours. I still need to come over here and hit the green plus button.
If we scroll up, you can see that action has now been applied, but let's don't stop there. Remember, we can add as many actions as we like. Next up, I'm gonna go to Members, because I want to join this card. I don't wanna waste my time going into the card, and adding myself, and having to remember every time.
So I'm gonna choose this first one, join the card. I'm gonna go all the way over here to the right, hit the plus button, and now you can see, that's another action which has been added.
And maybe the last thing that I'm gonna do in this particular case, is I'm gonna click on Content. So I wanna let my team know that I've got this, or I'm gonna look into this.
So I'm gonna scroll down to this option, which says post comment, and I'm gonna say, "I will look into this." All right, so that is the comment that's gonna be added each time as a part of this rule. Again, I need to hit that plus green button.
And you can see that that has been added as an action.
Testing the New Rule
Now what's really important, don't forget to hit Save at this point, because if I was to hit X, all of this is going to go away. Don't hit Cancel, unless you don't want this rule anymore, but make sure you remember to hit Save.
So after hitting Save, you can see that we have this new rule. It tries to spell it out for us, so we can come back and review it, and edit it if we need to. But this is the rule that we've just created.
Let's close this and see if it actually works. So here I am in the Ideas list, that's where we set up the rule. I'm gonna say add another card, and I'm gonna say, "Create a new product." All right, so I'm gonna hit Enter on my keyboard, and what's gonna happen? There we go! We've got the new due date, that's 48 hours from today. We've got the comment, we'll go look at that in a second. And, it has attached myself to the card. I haven't done anything else. I haven't even clicked within the card yet, and it's automatically applied those three actions. If I open up the card and I scroll down, there's that comment we specified. "I will look into this." So we've added three actions just by adding a card to this particular list.
There are so many possibilities here within Butler. That was just a quick example to get you comfortable with the interface. Now, choosing the different options is going to be very similar for the other four ways in which you can apply Butler to your Trello boards.
So let's just go through how you might use some of these different options.
Under Card Buttons, Butler gives you the opportunity to actually add a custom button within the card that can perform, well, almost any action or multiple actions that you want. So in this case, I've added a card button that's called Move Up, and it will move the card to the top of this list, the To Do list.
So let's see if it works, and where you will find it. So here's my To Do list, I'm gonna click on the bottom card here, the one that is last in this list, and you will see under the Power-Ups menu, here is my custom Butler button. If I select Move Up, you're probably not gonna notice much of anything here, because we're already within the card, but if I close it, you can see it automatically moved that card to the very top of the list. Great stuff!
Now one thing you should know is that when it comes to Card Buttons, you cannot specify them to a particular list. A Card Button, if I go anywhere, you're gonna see this Move Up button. So if I was to click this right now, it's gonna also move it, it's not just gonna bring it up to the top of this list, because we said move it to the top of the To Do list. So that's how Card Buttons work.
Now the Board Button is somewhat similar, but you will see that the Board Button applies to everything on the board. Here right beside the Butler button is a board button, which I have previously created. It's called Move Approved. And here's how this button works, or how I've created this particular button. "Move each card with the green 'New project' label in the list 'Ideas' to the list 'Projects'."
So you might wanna use a board button when it's something you want to initiate at a given time. I'll show you in a minute how you can initiate things based on a calendar date. But let's say over here, I'm gonna add a label to just a couple of these. Let's add a label to the first and last one here. So maybe, this is where the ideas start, and after a while, anything that gets this green new project label, I wanna move it up over here.
But what if I have a long list of these? I don't wanna do it one at a time. That's why I've got my Move Approved button. So let me click that button here. You'll see it down below. Sometimes it'll be a quick screen, Butler telling you what's happening. (gasps) Oh, they're gone. Those cards have been moved from the Ideas list, and here they are at the bottom of my Projects list. Exactly what I wanted it to happen by using that board button.
Let's go back into Butler and look at the last two options here. Now it's hard to give them an example because they're both date-related.
The first one is a Calendar Command, and what this has to do with is when you want something to perform on a particular day of the week, or day of the month, something that's gonna happen on a regular basis. So in this example, I've created a calendar event that says, "Every month on the 1st, archive all the cards in the list 'Complete'." And this is probably a pretty good example, because for many of us, often we will have a complete, or a finished, or a done list, and this just accumulates a large number of cards. So maybe once in a while, you want Butler to automatically archive those cards. Well, on the first of the month, that's exactly what's gonna happen here. Everything in this list is going to be archived. And of course, you choose the timeframe, you create the buttons, you create how you want to customize that rule.
Last but not least, we have Due Date. And this is different than Calendar because it's basing everything on the due date of the card. So in this example rule, I've created something that says, "On the Sunday before a card is due, add the red 'Urgent' label to the card." So that means every weekend, before a card is due, it's gonna add this red Urgent label, only to those cards that have a due date in that coming week.
I'd love to hear from you next. What types of automation will you be creating, and how much time is this gonna be saving you? Because ever since I've started using Butler, I have saved so much time working with others and working within my Trello boards. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
