Form to Card and Email reply to Card Comment
Asked by Benjamin:

Hi Guys   

I've spend from friday until now, trying to solve this in my current Zendesk installation, which I have been using for soon 7 years, but I think that Trello is the place. Just need help to get it confirmed.   

Here are my case:   

I run a transport-return-loads-platform, where 90% of all tasks, i.e. quotation requests, are handled automatically by the platform. However, we have a task-type that require customer support hand ons in a very early stage. I hope it's okay to come with examples, just to make it as clear as possible...   

1.  
Customer "Joe" need a transport quote on his task: "Transport of a garden house"   

2.  
Joe submit a form on our landingpage regarding "crane transport"   

3. Trigger A  
A Card is created in Trello, named "Transport of a garden house" where the task details are included along with Joe's contact information   

4. Trigger B   
Email notifications are sent out to 25 different "crane transport companies" including the task description except Joe's contact informations  

5.   
Transporter Tom reply the email asking for some additional informations   

6. Trigger C   
Toms reply are added as a comment in the Card, notifying my Customer Support  

7.  
My customer support contact Joe, the customer, by adding a reply in the card (perhaps thrugh Email for Trello i.e.)   

8.  
Joe reply back to my Customer Support  

9.   
My Customer Support reply to Tom's, the transporter, comment in the Card, which send a email to Tom with the content of the reply  

10.   
Tom reply the email with a offer/price for doing the task with his crane truck  

11.   
My Customer Support send this offer, added our fee, to Joe directly from the Card  

12.   
Joe accept the offer and my customer support ask Joe to place a booking thourgh a custom link  

The rest we can handle from there manually.   

Currently the 12 steps above are done by one specific ticket for EACH conversation, so if 25 transporters reply the notifications email of ONE request, there is being created 25 different tickets, which are killing the Custumer Support :-D   

<br />

I really hope someone can help telling me if above workflow are possible to do through Trello.   

Thanks  

Best,  
Benjamin   


Answers:
author: milynnus
body: [@Benjamin](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4574144)

[@Iain Dooley](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/1416112) 's opening comment about power up and automation should not be ignored especially if when you have a process like the kind you described. I have tried his BenkoBoard/ desk and the constraints from an automation perspective minimal.   

Having said that, I tried to build a process using Contalist. The plus point is that any card can be used to communicate with an external party or group like 25 contractors. This can be changed on the fly or you can associated different type of contacts for a single card (internal and external). With a set of templates, email is via a button selection. They have added at my request to email via comment (and coming up comment and template combination). Maintain a thread conversation is a challenge but doable using a card reference. There's a lot more.


author: Iain Dooley
body: [@Benjamin](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4574144) since the other Email plugins for Trello are powerups you'll find it tricky to automate them. I have one called BenkoDesk:

<http://www.benkodesk.com/>

which runs as a "bot" user rather than a power up, so you can automate emails by simply posting comments.

If you combine this with our BenkoBot automation platform you could do what you need:

<http://www.benkobot.com/>

So for example you might have a list in your board called "Transporters" with one card per transport contact and the email address in the description, then you could have a command like this that would automate out the emails to them when a new card was created:

<https://gist.github.com/iaindooley/62b1b99fc73d6b039f1ba68752c97edd>

When the Transporter replied the reply would come back into the card for that Transporter, you could have that move to a new list or receive a label, notify the team and so on.

The automations will require some coding to set up, but we can put you in touch with a developer to go through that with you and get it all working.


author: Benjamin
body: Thanks for your exellent replys [@Iain Dooley](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/1416112) and [@milynnus](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/3947182) ?

I deeply appreciate that you took time to look my task.

I will look into both solutions, and see if/which one fits my needs best.