Central management of team wide butler rules
Asked by Alexander Rusa:

We have worked out an advanced workflow using automatic butler rules.

Our problem now is, that all those rules are living in my account and others always depend on me to change rules. What happens if I leave the company? Will others be able to take over my rules, or will they lose all rules managed by me?

In your marketing material you write "saving tons of time and bringing process to any team's workflow." ... to us it currently seems like the butler workflows are built for self-employed, single-user boards.

Is it possible to create team wide butler rules that can be edited/managed by multiple users? I hope it is not necessary to create and pay for a dummy user with a shared password to allow multiple users to manage the team wide workflow.


Answers:
author: Felix
body: Hey Alexander,

you might want to check out [Butler Command Libraries](https://help.trello.com/article/1139-command-libraries). That feature allows you to both group commands logically, and share them with your teammates.

Your teammates can import the commands into their own account and edit them as they see fit.

Hope that helps,

Felix

comments: author: Alexander Rusa
body: Hi Felix,

I have already read about Butler Command Libraries. But my problem is not, that I have a personal butler rule, that I wan't to share with others. I have configured the whole ruleset for our "trello business logic" that automates all our workflows. When someone completes specific checklists the card is automatically moved to another list. When a card get's moved to a specific list an automatic e-mail message get's triggered etc.

As far as I found out this is what butler is designed to do. To create global rules that automate workflows.

My problem is, that I have configured a lot of global rules that all together define the global workflows, but nobody except me can update or change those rules.

If I share these rules using command libraries, others could duplicate my rules and try to build the workflow again from all the single rules, but I think it is a design flaw, that global rules, affecting all team members, have to be assigned to a single team members account.


author: Bart
body: My team had an issue when I left the organization for 9 months and my Butler rules were not accessible to the team, so I understand some of the frustration. Came back recently and have made simple fixes that were annoying.

The command libraries seems like the best way to solve your issue. Yes people will need to import/copy the command library in order to edit rules. I think this protects you from creating new problems on current boards relying on those rules. They can turn on all their newly copied rules in the command library by clicking one checkbox after making whatever edits are needed from their end (e.g. managing a different board or emailing a different contact for the next phase of your work flow).


author: Iain Dooley
body: [@Alexander Rusa](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4061021) the best way to solve this is, as you suspect, to create a "bot" user that holds all the commands. It's a bit like recreating your own "Butler Bot" as Butler used to exist, with a dedicated account/user that those who need to edit rules etc. can have access to.

Trello has a new account switcher so it'll be pretty easy to have those people who want to edit/manage the rules have 2 accounts logged in simultaneously so they can easily switch over and make edits.

Even when I create sophisticated automations for clients using the API, this is how it works, ie. we create a separate "Trellinator" user that takes all the required actions. It actually kind of makes things clearer because people can tell when things are happening automatically versus you actually doing them. You can then create your own personal automations if you want to as well.


Tags: butler

jira-work-management