Automations

What it does

An automation watches the records in a context and acts when they change — or when their due date comes near or passes. Three common ones:

• Clear tags when a record is resolved. Resolve a task and its Urgent, Bug and p1 tags come off by themselves — no more removing them one by one afterwards.
• Tagging WIP moves it to In Progress. Add the WIP tag to a task in Backlog and it moves to the In Progress list of the same project — whichever project it's in.
• Overdue records become Urgent. When a task's due date passes and it's still open, its priority goes up to Urgent and it's pinned to the top of its list.

Every rule has three parts:

There are two kinds of rule:

• My rules — your own, for one context. They run only when you change a record there, and nobody else sees them. Anyone except a guest can make them.
• Organisation rules — set by owners and admins for everyone. They run whenever anyone changes a record they cover, either in one context or in every context. Everyone can see them (read-only) on the Organisation tab, so nothing happens to your work without you being able to find out why.

Where to find it

• On a context's board: the Automations button in the toolbar, next to Group by. The rules open inside the board's frame — the toolbar, the breadcrumb and the rail on the left stay on screen, so clicking a rail, a crumb, Back to the board or Automations again takes you straight back to where you were. Switching context with the tabs at the top shows that context's rules.
• Directly: /dashboard/automations opens them for your current context (add ?ctx= for a particular one).
• From Settings → Team: the note under Reports links here (the old Clear tags when a record is resolved switch now lives here as an organisation rule).

Step by step

Make a rule by dragging blocks

1. Open Automations from the context's toolbar and click New rule.
2. On the left are the blocks, in three groups: When, If and Then. Drag a When block (for example Tag is added) onto the When lane of the canvas.
3. Fill in its blank — for Tag is added, choose the tag (or leave Any tag).
4. Optionally drag one or more If blocks onto the If lane to narrow it down.
5. Drag one or more Then blocks onto the Then lane — for example Move to list, then type In Progress.
6. Check the Reads as sentence under the canvas — it says the rule back in plain English.
7. Give it a Name (or leave it blank for one made from its blocks), choose Who it runs for, and click Create rule.

No mouse? Click (or tap) any block in the palette to add it to its lane. Use the ⋮⋮ handle on a placed condition or action to drag it into a different order, and × to remove it.

Act on due dates (due soon and overdue)

1. Make a rule and drag Due date is near or Record becomes overdue onto the When lane.
2. For Due date is near, choose the window — from Due within 1 hour to Due within 1 week (1 day to start with).
3. Add If and Then blocks as usual — for example Then: Set priority → Urgent and Then: Pin or unpin → Pin it.

How they run:

• Threadwork checks every hour, so a rule can act up to an hour after the moment passes.
• Only open records count — resolved and archived ones are left alone.
• Each rule acts once per record for each due date. If the due date moves, the rule can act again for the new date.
• Record becomes overdue acts on records whose due date passes after you made the rule — it doesn't sweep up everything that was already late.
• Your own due-date rules look only at open records assigned to you. An organisation rule looks at every open record it covers.
• Nobody "did" anything when the check runs, so the toast doesn't appear — look on the Activity tab, where these runs say On the hourly due-date check. A Then: Assign → Whoever did it step is skipped on these rules.

Start from a ready-made rule

At the top of a new rule, under Start from a ready-made rule, click one of:

• Clear tags when a record is resolved
• Tagging WIP moves it to In Progress — picks your organisation's WIP tag if it has one
• Overdue records become Urgent
• Moving to Done resolves it
• Urgent records stay pinned

The blocks fill in for you; change anything you like before creating it.

Move a record to a list "by name" or to one exact list

Move to list, Is in list and Record is moved let you choose a list two ways:

• By name — the list with that name next to the record's own list (under the same project). This is what makes one rule work in every project: In Progress means PM Tool's In Progress for a PM Tool task and Tracker's In Progress for a Tracker task.
• One exact list — a particular list in this context. Not available for a rule that runs in every context.

Pause, reorder, edit or delete a rule

• The switch at the left of a rule pauses it or turns it back on.
• ↑ / ↓ change the order rules run in (top first). Organisation rules always run before personal ones.
• The pencil opens the rule in the builder; the bin asks you to confirm, then deletes it.

See what your rules have done

Open the Activity tab. Each line says which rule ran, on which record (click to open it), what it changed, and whose change set it off — or On the hourly due-date check for due-soon and overdue rules.

What each screen shows

• My rules — your rules for the context picked at the top. Each card shows its name, the rule as a sentence, how many times it has run and when it last did.
• Organisation — the rules that apply in this context (including those for every context, marked Every context), and below them, rules limited to other contexts. Owners and admins can edit them; everyone else sees them read-only.
• Activity — the latest runs you're allowed to see: your own rules', and organisation rules' on records you can see.
• The message when a rule runs — a toast at the top right: Rule “Clear tags when a record is resolved” ran — On “Venue not appearing on search” — Removed “Urgent”, “Bug” and “p1”. If a step couldn't happen it says why (for example there's no list called “In Progress” next to “Backlog”). Rules in the toast opens this page.

Tips and good to know

• Rules can set each other off: a Moving to Done resolves it rule followed by Clear tags when a record is resolved both run when you drop a card in Done. A rule runs at most once per record each time you change something, so two rules that undo each other can't loop.
• A rule acts on the record that changed, and nothing else.
• Your own rules can't do more than you can. Moving records between lists is for owners and admins, and choosing a record's assignee (yourself included) is for the people who manage it — so a rule of yours skips those steps unless you could take them by hand, and the toast says why. Organisation rules act for the organisation — except that a guest's change only sets off their tag steps (guests can't resolve, move, reprioritise, pin or assign records by hand, so a rule they set off can't either), and no rule ever makes a guest the assignee.
• Person tags (such as Requires-Response): a rule that looks for the base tag also matches each person's version of it. A rule can remove a person tag but can't add one, because it wouldn't know who to tag.
• Guests can see the organisation's rules but can't make their own.
• Changes to organisation rules are recorded in the Audit log.

Troubleshooting

Related guides

• Contexts
• Tags, reactions, kudos & flags
• Settings