In this article:
1. Introduction
2. How to create an Arrival/Departure rule?
3. How to Preview/Enable/Disable a specific Arrival/Departure Rule?
4. Specifics and Limitations of the Arrival/Departure Rules
5. Practical Examples of Arrival and Departure Rules
1. Introduction to Arrival and Departure Rules
Arrival and Departure Rules enable you to define what criteria must work items (cards/initiatives) meet in order to enter or exit a given area inside your process/workflow.
Arrival rules control whether a card can be created in or moved to a particular location while Departure rules control whether a card can move out of a specific location (or get archived from there).
Note: When unarchiving a card, the arrival rule(s) of the location (where the card will be restored) will not apply.
Arrival and Departure Rules allow for endless possibilities and can suit most teams' needs and use cases.
2. How to Create an Arrival/Departure Rule?
To access the Arrival and Departure rules, open the “Board Policies” section from your board’s sidebar menu. You can configure these rules per:
- board
- workflow
- column
- lane
- cell
Navigate to the location where you'd like to create the rule. For example, if you're setting a rule for a specific workflow, locate the Workflow Policies section.
Important: To create arrival/departure rules on a given board, users must have the Edit Workflow permission included in their custom board role, or must be added to the board as an Account Owner or a Workspace Manager.
To create a new Arrival or Departure rule, simply click on the corresponding pencil icon.
If you do not have any rules configured yet, you will be prompted to create your first one.
When you open the setup window, you will have to give your rule a Name, and then configure all necessary conditions for the rule.
In the dropdown that lists all the available conditions, you will find many of the default card fields (e.g. Title, Description, Deadline, Priority), as well as any custom fields available on the board (where the rule is being created).
Note: The Role is/is not condition lets you narrow down the users that can move cards to or from a specified location. If you are an Account Owner or a Workspace Manager, you may not be able to trigger the rule if you have not selected the “Owner” or “Workspace manager” role from the dropdown list.
Planned start/end conditions
Keep in mind that the Planned start date and Planned end date conditions can only be used when configuring arrival and departure rules in a Portfolio Initiative Workflow. This means that you cannot select these fields on a Timeline or Cards Workflow.
For example, if you have an Arrival Rule on a board level with Planned start date = Today and you move a card from a portfolio workflow to a cards workflow, the rule will not activate. However, if you want to move the card to another board's portfolio workflow, the rule will activate and the card will be moved successfully.
IMPORTANT! When configuring the Arrival/Departure rule conditions, keep in mind that conditions within the same rule are treated as mutually inclusive (with the ‘and’ operator).
If the same location has 2 (or more) individual Arrival/Departure rules, the conditions inside those rules are not mutually exclusive (‘or’ operator) so only one of the conditions will need to be met before a card can enter/exit the location.
3. How to Preview/Enable/Disable a Specific Arrival/Departure Rule?
Once you have defined your Arrival/Departure Rules, you can preview/enable/disable them by clicking on the corresponding icons where the rules are configured:
The departing airplane icon indicates that the location has Departure Rules configured and the landing airplane icon indicates there are Arrival Rules present.
Arrival and Departure rules can also be managed from the Board Policies section.
Users working on the board (where Arrival and Departure Rules are present) can also preview the conditions from inside the Card Details:
4. Specifics and Limitations of the Arrival/Departure Rules
4.1. Specifics
- Arrival and Departure rules stack in different ways
If there are two separate rules for the same location. (e.g., an arrival rule for the entire board, with one rule stating that only red cards are allowed, and another stating that only cards of size 5 are allowed), then red cards of a different size than 5 and non-red cards of size 5 can enter. However, if the two conditions are combined into a single rule, the card must meet both criteria to enter, i.e., it must be red and size 5. - If rules are set at multiple levels, the card must meet all conditions
For example, an arrival rule for the board allows only red cards, an arrival rule for the workflow allows only cards of size 5, an arrival rule for the lane allows cards with attachments, and an arrival rule for the column allows only cards with stickers). In order to move a card from another board to the specified workflow, column, and lane, the card must meet all criteria - it must be red, size 5, have an attachment, and have a sticker. -
Separate Arrival/Departure rules at the same level are treated with an ‘or’ operator
For example, a cell has two arrival rules. Arrival rule 1 demands a work item must have an attachment, while Arrival rule 2 demands a custom field to be filled in. A card that has an attachment but does not have the custom field filled in will be allowed to enter, and vice versa.
- Conditions inside the same rule are treated with an ‘and’ operator
For example, the arrival rule has 2 conditions: have an attachment, and a custom field should be filled in - the card must meet both conditions in order to enter the designated area.
Note: In the following fields Custom ID, Deadline, Planned start date, Planned end date, Owner, Size, Type, and every Custom Field, there is an additional 'Ignore if empty' checkbox. If values are not set for those properties and the option is enabled, the rule will not be executed and will allow the card to move in/out.
For example, if there is a departure rule with the condition "Size” is equal to 5 and the 'Ignore if empty' option is selected, all cards that do not have any size will be able to leave the area. Conversely, if the option is not selected, all cards that do not have a size 5, including those without a Size, will not be able to move in/out.
4.2. Limitations
There is a limit when it comes to the number of Arrival/Departure rules - you can have a total of 50 rules for a board, and 5 rules for each location (workflow/column/lane/merged cell).
Notes on limitations:
- If you disable a workflow that has arrival/departure rules, these rules will also be disabled and will therefore be excluded from the rule limits. If you then enable this workflow, the rules will remain disabled.
- If you copy a workflow with arrival/departure rules, the rules will be disabled in the new workflow if the board's limit (50 rules) is reached.
5. Practical Examples of Arrival and Departure Rules
5.1. Arrival Rule Examples
In a workflow where items need to be reviewed before they can move forward or be completed, you can set up an arrival rule requiring that all cards must have a description and/or a specific custom field filled in before they can be moved to the “For Review” column. The configuration of the rule can look like this:
This will ensure that all cards moved to that column have the necessary elements to proceed in the workflow.
Building on that example, you may want only specific users to be able to review those cards. In that case, you will need an arrival rule in the Review column of the workflow that lists the users ("Authors") who can move those cards and work on them. The rule may look like this:
5.2. Departure Rule Examples
A common departure rule example is requiring cards to have an owner before moving out of the Requested section (e.g., a “Ready to Start” column) and into In Progress. This ensures task ownership for each work item that is actively being worked on. The rule setup may look like this:
Another practical application of departure rules is creating a rule that prevents users from moving cards from In Progress to Done if they have unfinished subtasks. The configuration of the rule can look like this:
5.3. Make card's fields mandatory:
A common use case example is requiring cards to have certain standard fields, such as deadline, size, title, etc. present or filled, when creating a new card on your board. The board arrival rule setup may look like this: