Automation: When a card moves to a list add a specific member
Asked by Andre Santos:

Hi! I've just started building using trello as our company workflow system but we can't find a solution for this automation. We have a board for each process and each list is a step of one process. Each step has one person reponsible for it. How can I automate trello so when a card moves to a list the automation gets the responsible for that step (list) and add to the card?  

I thought about having a specific card with custom fields of each step (list) and its reponsbile member or something like this, but didn't work. :(

Thanks!!


Answers:
author: Vongsawat
body: So the simplest solution was already mentioned, where you have a separate rule for each list+member combo.  

This solution uses [wildcards](https://support.atlassian.com/trello/docs/pattern-matching-and-wildcards/), [lookup](https://support.atlassian.com/trello/docs/finding-or-looking-up-cards-butler-advanced-topic/) boards, and the {found} [variable](https://support.atlassian.com/trello/docs/butler-variables/) prefix.  

First step is to make a lookup board and give it a proper name. Populate it with a separate card for each List you want it triggering on. Each card must have the exact same name as the List, and the description must have the plain text username of the person responsible for that List (and nothing else, not even additional spaces).  

Then add the following rule to your board (replace ListOwnerLookupBoard with whatever you named your lookup board). Make sure its a Lookup command and not a Find command:  
![image.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/239919i6440C285927BCA4F/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "image.png")  

If these lists exist on multiple boards, you can "+Add To Another Board" the rule. Any changes you make to the rule and you will be prompted on save to Apply to Other Boards.  

That should work.  

For an explanation of what it does: When a card is moved in to any list, it will try to look up a card with that list name on your lookup board. Then attach the username it finds in the description to the original triggering card.  

If you moved it to a list without a matching card, the command will safely self-terminate, but will send you an annoying notification that the command failed. Last I checked, no way to turn off that notification sadly.  

((Note: You may tinker to try and find a better solution than using the description. But for whatever reason the {found} prefix doesn't work with Card Member variables, even though it explicitly but incorrectly states that it does. And last I checked, you can't directly reference another card's custom fields, not without doing some weird shenanigans anyways.))  

((Extra step: to bypass the awkwardness of having to type the username of each person and potentially fat-fingering it. You could set up another rule on the lookup board, such that when you attach a member to a card, it automatically sets the description to {cardfirstmemberusername}. And just make sure to always remove a member before you add a new one.))


author: Nathan Smith
body: Hey [@Andre Santos](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/5138717)

This is something you could do in Automation in Trello:

* You could use the **When a card is added to list** trigger to make the rule run anytime a card is added to a particular list
* You could then use the **add member to the card** action to add the person you need to add

You'll need to create a different rule for each list to add the different people responsible for each list.

Here's a link with more information on Trello's automation tool - <https://support.atlassian.com/trello/docs/butler-overview/>

comments: author: Andre Santos
body: Thanks [@Nathan Smith](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4510456) but that's the point: once we have a lot of boards (one for each process) and each board has some lists, I would like to make a rule for each list. I would like to have a single rule that uses somewhere eles information of the member for each list, such as an auxiliar card.


author: Nathan Smith
body: Hi [@Andre Santos](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/5138717)

Right now there wouldn't be a way for you to set up one rule in Butler that was able to run across all the lists and add different members to cards depending on the list you're moving the card into, the only way to do this currently would be to set up a different rule for each list you're moving a card into.


Tags: automation

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