Best strategy to manage board changes by user groups.
Asked by milynnus:

Under this scenario will free plan be adequate? {#toc-hId--1329534997}
----------------------------------------------------------------------

related to my earlier question what would be the best strategies if one needs to limit prevent changes to critical parts of the board that is currently used for automation... like list names.... I understand one is to use the ID. Is there any options on the user permission side? This probably relates to the plan. Thanks.


Answers:
author: Iain Dooley
body: [@milynnus](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/3947182) there are no "intra board" access controls in Trello. I once did a setup for someone where a template board had the correct list names with a card in each list that contained the list ID in the user board, that way I was able to reset the list name to the correct name based on ID with every list change, it was pretty solid, but it's easier to just tell people not to mess with the lists :)

comments: author: milynnus
body: Thanks [@Iain Dooley](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/1416112) I am doing what you have suggested to tell people not to mess with the list and post notice on the board - use --- on the card.name and a single custom field.

On the backend scripting, I keep watch of changes to the few important list names before my time triggered updates to the cards.


author: Iain Dooley
body: [@milynnus](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/3947182) the trouble I had with detecting name changes only is that if the name changes twice in quick succession, then the latest event will reset the list name to the incorrect name.

<https://gist.github.com/iaindooley/447488bdd7a13cc8f2e69d9e4b3f2b09>

So basically you have a "private board" where the only member is your Trellinator bot, and it has a bunch of lists with your correct list names, and one card in each list which has the ID of the list to be protected in your main board.

When you change a list name, if a card exists with that list ID, the list name will be reset to the name of the list containing the card.

The second part of the protection is to stop those lists from being archived with this function:

<https://gist.github.com/iaindooley/cc21317cce608f0964d34b4003ff07d8>


author: milynnus
body: [@Iain Dooley](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/1416112) now I must really learn and use Trellinator. It compliments what I am doing.


author: milynnus
body: By the way, can the bot co-exist with real human users on that "private" board in the above scenario?


author: Iain Dooley
body: [@milynnus](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/3947182) not with the upcoming changes, the board would have to be a member of a team, but it's pretty easy to manage that in Trellinator:

<https://gist.github.com/iaindooley/976fb82454755a05539353d33e8234a9>

The Trellinator docs are here:

<http://docs.trellinator.com/>

there's also a quick start guide here:

<https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Marketplace-Apps-Integrations/Introducing-Trellinator-Automate-Trello-with-Google-Apps-Script/ba-p/925271>

However I'm also working on an exciting new product which will make it way easier to use which is BenkoBot: a hosted Trellinator service (a bit like wayscript). So basically you just paste in code and run it, you don't have to do all the Google Sheet setup.

I'm hoping to launch the first version as part of the CodeGeist hackathon by 13 July, stay tuned!


author: milynnus
body: Wow that is fantastic. To be honest, I was also thinking of doing something similar having been inspired by you but I don't understand enough to overcome what it meant to have a cloud service and how it can operate on Trello boards that I am not the owner. Working on my board where I have the keys and token is easy.

i started on Trellinator and I got stuck on what the alias account :) sad isn't it.


author: Iain Dooley
body: [@milynnus](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/3947182) haha the Trellinator setup is pretty diabolical, you're certainly not alone. Every day I see failed setups on the queue and have to block/purge the notifications. That's one of the things that convinced me that creating a hosted version was a good idea.

You can use your own api/key token of course, or you can create a dedicated "bot" user. The BenkoBot product will just streamline the whole setup and make it easier to add new functionality and write ad-hoc little scripts to do one off commands. The big challenge was creating a secure way to execute user submitted code without people being able to just hack my server or use it to mine crypto or whatever ;)

I'm thinking of charging $10 for 1,000 minutes of function execution time, billable in $10 blocks and a minimum monthly charge of $10. So unlike Butler where you can't just buy more quota, if you use lots and lots of minutes you'll be able to just add another block of 1,000 minutes.

Also, if you hold an account you'll be able to add multiple credentials to it and your minutes quota will be able to be pooled between those key/token pairs. So for example someone who wanted to start a BenkoBot consulting business would be able to add multiple clients' key/token pairs and easily write code for each client, and bill their clients whatever they wanted, whereas they would just pay for the aggregated minutes used by all their clients.

The next step after that will be distribution so you can write features (for example a "card synching" package) that can be installed sort of like wordpress plugins, but rather than being ongoing SaaS costs, these are just one off per package costs. Unlike powerups where the incentive is for companies to create their own recurring saas subscription models because they have to host the code, BenkoBot will allow you to pay once for a feature and just add it into your system. Your costs would only increase if the feature used more minutes. That way devs can write packages and sell them in a "marketplace" type setup, just like wordpress but for the backoffice.

The minutes will "rollover" at the end of each month, but my plan is to allow you to donate your leftover minutes at the end of each month to charity, which will then be made available for free to any non-profits or educational institutions that are approved non-profit or education Trello Business Class or Enterprise users.

I've got a bit of a roadmap going here and I've started working on the interfaces and stuff with a friend of mine, I've already got the "secure code execution" bit done, so not far off a beta release!

<https://trello.com/b/4SEU3lqj/benkobot-roadmap>


author: milynnus
body: I realised that when a company added me to their production board even as an observer, my script with my own API keys / token was able to see work with the data. What I have not tried to do is to move Or update any of the card A human observer would have those restricts. Would that be consider a bot?

In fact, I am already capturing the card moment and sending formatted SMTP mails to myself.

if so I would image the next challenge would be import codes.


author: Iain Dooley
body: [@milynnus](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/3947182) what I mean by bot user is just a Trello user account that you create specifically for the purpose of running your automations, just like butlerbot used to be. The advantage of that is that you can use it to generate notifications for yourself. If you use your own api key/token to post a comment, even if you mention yourself by username, you won't receive a notification.

An easy way to do it is just to alias a Gmail account like yourname+youralias@yourdomain.com, I'm not sure if other email services have the same ability. You then use that email address to sign up for a new Trello account, and you can then use the api key to get a token for that account, then your Trellinator bot will act as that user, rather than as your own user. You would have to have that member as a member of any board where you want to run automations.


author: milynnus
body: I got it. I went to google account thinking that that is the place to get the alias created. Should have been more attentive.