Automate a board with rules

Make the board move, assign or update a card, or tell people, when something happens to it or when time passes.

In short

A rule is one "when this happens to a card, do that", such as "when a card moves to Review, assign it to Ada". It runs right after the change that set it off, or as time passes. Ready recipes switch on common automations across modules with one switch, here and on the Recipes page of Templates (see /help/home/templates-and-recipes).

Before you start

Who: creating, changing and deleting rules needs "Create and manage boards". Anyone who can open the board sees them.
Plan: every plan. A board holds up to 25 rules.
First: know the column or person the rule names. A rule whose column or person is gone says "Could not run".

Steps

Open Board settings › "Automation" ("What should happen by itself?"); the automations marker beside the board's name goes straight there. Ready recipes come first, one switch each.
Open "Custom rules" and choose "New rule", or one of the examples under "Start from an example".
Name the rule (up to 120 characters), choose what happens under "When" and, if it is only for some cards, a card type or priority under "Only for".
Under "Then", choose what the board does with "Add an action". "Reads as" shows the rule as one sentence.
Choose "Create rule".

Result: the rule runs at once. Switch it off from the list with "Run this rule".

Example Tell the owner when work is overdue: choose It is overdue, then Tell someone, then Its owner. The owner hears about it once for each due day.

Ready recipes

What sets a rule off

What a rule can do

A rule uses each kind of action once, except checklist steps, telling someone and setting a field (each field once). It does all its actions or none, and its changes appear in the card's History, naming the rule.

Rules that watch the clock

Under "As time passes", a rule reacts to time. The board checks the clock every few minutes and runs the rule once for each card that gets there.

Each rule fires once for each card and reason. A card waiting in a column fires again only after it leaves and enters the column again. An overdue card fires once for that due day.
A clock rule runs as the person who created it. If that person leaves or can no longer open the board, the rule stops running; create it again as someone who can.
Nobody's change set a clock rule off, so a Tell someone action tells everyone it names.
A clock rule also works on hiring boards.

Good to know

A board holds up to 25 rules of up to five actions each. A rule touches only cards of its own board.
Anyone who can open the board sees its rules; changing them needs the manage permission.
Rules run in order, and one rule's change can set off another. See /help/boards/rule-order-and-history.
What happens next: a rule's changes appear in the card's History, naming the rule. "Tell someone" never tells the person who made the change.
To stop a rule: switch it off from the list with "Run this rule", or delete it.

If something goes wrong

"A board holds at most 25 rules.": delete or merge rules.
"A rule cannot move a card into the column that sets it off.": choose another column.
"A rule runs a card's tests only after a person's change or a merged pull request - not when a check changes or as time passes."
"A rule does each kind of thing once; only checklist steps, people to tell and fields to set can be several."
A rule did not run, or says it could not: see /help/boards/rule-order-and-history.
A rule that is not complete says "Choose what sets the rule off." or "Choose what the rule does.". An action without its value says, for example, "Choose the column to move the card to." or "Choose who the card is assigned to.".
"A rule cannot set and clear the same thing.", "A rule tells each person once." and "A rule sets each field once.": remove the repeated part.
"A due date is set between 0 and 365 days ahead.": choose a number in that range.
"A comment a rule wrote cannot be edited. Remove it instead."

/help/boards/rule-order-and-history
/help/boards/cards-follow-the-work
/help/boards/board-webhooks-and-repositories