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Getting started with Trello Automations
Getting started with Trello Automations

Learn about what Trello Automation is and get inspired with a few high-level ideas for automating your email tasks.

Mark Fowles avatar
Written by Mark Fowles
Updated over a week ago

Trello Automation is super powerful and lets you set up automated rules to perform actions in Trello. This saves you time and helps to ensure important tasks don’t slip through the cracks. Without any programming knowledge, you can make magical things happen. e.g. Automatically add a checklist when a new card is added to your board, Archive cards after a certain amount of time passes, Assign team members to new cards in turn.

To create, edit and access your Trello Automation rules, click on Automation from the toolbar at the top of your board.

Access Trello Automations from the toolbar at the top of your Trello board

A new window will open where you can add/edit your triggers and actions. Setting up an automation requires 3 simple steps:

Steps to create a Trello automation rule: Select a trigger, then an action and then save.

To create a Trello automation rule, start with adding a trigger (event)

For more information on how to get started, check out Trello’s Introduction to Trello Automation and visit our Trello automation directory for ready-to-use rules.


Here are some automation ideas...

Move emails between lists

Sometimes, replies to your emails can get lost on a busy board. You could use Butler to move cards to the top of the ‘Inbox’ list when a reply comes in via email.

Here’s what the Trello Automation rule would look like:

What the Trello Automation rule would look like once set up

Add a checklist of tasks

You might have a checklist that needs to get done for certain emails. e.g. You could add the “Process Quotation” checklist when an email comes in from a customer requesting a quote.

A 'Process Quotation' checklist in Trello

Add a due date

To ensure that your team are responding timeously to email requests, automatically add a due date for new incoming emails. See detailed steps on how to set up this rule here.

A Trello automation rule to automatically add a due date when a card is added to the "Scheduled" Trello list
Example of due date on a Trello card

Use custom fields in your Trello Automations

Trello Automation lets you automate custom fields: you can set custom fields automatically and you can react to changes to their value. In the example below, a checklist item to call the client is added automatically. The details of the client (name and contact number) is pulled from the custom fields.

Example of using Trello custom fields in your Trello Automations

Send email with Trello Automations

Email for Trello supports a special syntax that can turn a Trello comment into an email. Trello comments can be added based on triggers, this means that Trello Automation can be used to automatically send out emails based on triggers - e.g.

Automatically send an email with Trello automation and the SendBoard Power-Up


Trello Automation is a game changer and is available on all Trello accounts. But automation quotas and limits do apply and vary across Trello plans. Have a look at this Tello article for details on Automation quotas and limits.

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