How can I make a list that contains a card that links to all of my other lists?
Asked by James Merante:

I'd like to get a "table of contents" for my Trello's lists. I have several boards and I have many, many lists.

I'd like to have a list that contains cards that link to each of my other lists. This way I can look at that Master list to see what needs done and nothing can slip through the cracks.

When I create a new list, I'd like a card added to my "table of contents" list.

What do you think?


Answers:
author: Iain Dooley
body: There's no such thing as a "link to a list".

One thing I do sometimes, is have a card which has checklists based on list content in another board.

For example I have a project board with a ToDo list, then I have another board which has a card with a link to that board attached, and every day an automation runs that grabs all the cards in the checklist "ToDo" and adds them to the checklist on the card.

I sometimes add in automations like automatically checking off the checklist items when a linked card is moved to "Done" and vice versa when a checklist item is marked complete on the overview card, the corresponding card is moved to the list "Done".

It sounds like what you could do is have a "ToC" list at the top position of every board and every time a list is created, a card gets created in that "ToC" list with a checklist on it, and every time a card is added to the corresponding list, an item linked to that card is added to the checklist.

When a card is archived the corresponding checklist item could be completed or removed. You could periodically rename the list to archive it or delete the list to get a fresh one (even though you can also just hide completed items).

If you wanted to automate this using Trellinator it would look like this:

<http://york.workingsoftware.com.au/shortly/#rVLBaoQwEL37FYOnCIsf0OKh9VQo9tJ7SeOIYdekxKxLWfz3ZpLoqmW3LRQkwsy8N++9pDkqYaVWIAxyixWenmVvS25qprSVjRSc2llyTgAGbsBXoQCFJ6gWE+vx+zh9cGRvwrE5BJHmYU0Yzt817clymmLpqy7TbBc6vK6xJiWuq3iHLPOU7vveJ/re/ZGLljXRD6Nq5uZJN1x0ELJsUezDzlIri8r26W4GUiPzoACd4IR8sth5ZidZ7aMogNH/6RyTZCICg50e8N/ivBqZDyAmyo1o5bCNbiqzjUJBQbw0zUNEXdH5V6W/1CpCVxyNcVewUeylUdyPnxWVVpA5/KWZ6NFfLtbO1U030lH/aCYXuvs4oMXLk/EvILr0h2wYcd1yA0UBwf78oGiv13cmL3ewpAjuxvWtfQE=1>

comments: author: carolyn french
body: [@Iain Dooley](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/1416112)the link you provided doesn't go anywhere- can you redo please?


author: Iain Dooley
body: [@carolyn french](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/664664) oh that's strange, maybe it's freaking out because the URL is so long. Here it is shortened:

<https://goo.gl/yJ2SQs>

It just shows some sample code for achieving this using the Trellinator API wrapper. Thanks for the heads up! [@James Merante](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/2151871) if you were unable to load the original link you can see what I posted in the above link.

Carolyn, I'll make sure to shorten links before I post them in future.


author: carolyn french
body: Hmmm it still goes to a page that says "File not found." Can you copy and paste the code here?


author: Iain Dooley
body: [@carolyn french](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/664664) strange! I can't even imagine what would be giving you that error message on that domain :)

Here it is as a gist, I'll just use this from now on instead of the shortly install on my server:

<https://gist.github.com/iaindooley/3b5098e08fa2d92cbee6a1e1541de61a>

If I paste the code here it will be all messy.

I'm going to contribute an article on how to setup a Trellinator install and send it to Bridget hopefully later today so people will be able to get started using this to create automations using these code snippets.


author: carolyn french
body: Now I can see the code- hooray! That article sounds great, looking forward to it.


author: James Merante
body: Thanks Iain - both for the clarity and the code!


author: Iain Dooley
body: [@James Merante](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/2151871) [@carolyn french](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/664664) hey team, I wrote the first draft of my "Quick Start" guide last night:

<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ogu7244KwPwI_cYqymeIhy260ebLw0IrKlUROTKH4ZE/edit?usp=sharing>

I thought it might be fun to test this out by actually creating and testing the functions to achieve what James wants so I worked on the code a little bit.

James, if you follow the Quick Start instructions above, then copy and paste the code from this gist into your Commands.gs file in the Script editor:

<https://gist.github.com/iaindooley/3b5098e08fa2d92cbee6a1e1541de61a>

Then put the following values in the "Function Call" column (column C) in the "Global Commands" sheet:

createNewListCard  
addCardToList  
removeListCard  
checkOffArchivedToCItem  
archiveCheckedOffToCItem

If you do this successfully then any board you add your Trellinator user to will do the following:

1) When you create a list called "ToC" it will index all the existing lists in the board

2) When you create a new list or move one from another board, a card will be added indexing the cards in that list

3) When you add a new card to a list, it will be added to the relevant ToC card

4) When you archive a card, that checklist item on the ToC card will be checked off

5) When you check off an item on a ToC card, it will archive the card that the item links to

Let me know how you go!