In Businessmap, you can automate certain actions (e.g. create a card or subtask, update a card, copy the values of one card onto another, etc.) through Business Rules. To learn more about business rules and how they work, please read our business rules guide.
Introduction
Business rules are configured through three main control settings:
- WHEN — this is the trigger action that activates the rule execution.
- AND — it lets you define the conditions under which an action should be triggered.
- THEN — the action(s) that will be executed once the rule is triggered.
In this article, we will cover the ‘THEN’ options and what each of them means.
The ‘THEN’ Options in Business Rules
1) Create cards or subtasks — configure the type of cards you want to create or make a new subtask. The options include new, child, parent, predecessor, relative, and successor cards.
Note: You can use the Card is moved rule (1) to create a new card in another board for tasks that require multiple teams' involvement. Let's say you want to generate a new card in your Design team's board whenever the content for a new article is ready by the Content team. This is what the rule configuration would look like:
With this rule and the ‘create cards or subtasks’ option (2), whenever a new card in the Content team's board is moved to Approved, the rule will trigger the creation of a new linked card in the Design team's board in the Requested column. You can further configure the elements you want to copy (3) from the source card to the new one.
2) Update the card details — select the card elements that will be updated as a result of the business rule. You can choose from the options in the Regular fields and Custom fields.
Note: With the ‘Set deadline’ pill, you can establish a deadline in working days (you need to select the ‘Set deadline to a relative date’ (1) option and use the toggles under ‘Non-working days’ (2) to configure your work week). For example, if a card priority is changed to critical, you can set an automatic deadline of 3 working days using the ‘card is updated’ business rule and ‘set deadline’ pill.
3) Link the card — this option lets you link the card (1) as a child, parent, predecessor, relative, or successor to another card, initiative, and custom field of type Card Picker.
Note: With the Recurring create cards rule, for example, you can create cards for weekly progress checks of ongoing work and automatically link them to the respective project/initiative to keep better track of the process. You can use a card's id, custom id, or custom field name to create the link.
With the Link the card option, you can also choose to remove any pre-existing links (2) of the same type that were not created by the current rule. For example, if you are setting up a Card is updated rule, and you want to link the card as a child to another card, you can unlink all of its current parent cards.
4) Move the card (incl. ‘move its predecessor/successor/child/relative/parent cards to’ options) — use the Board Minimap window to choose the board (1) and workflow, column, lane, or cell (2) where to move a card that has been created or updated.
The location will appear in the respective field, displaying the workspace, board, workflow, column, lane, and/or cell you selected.
5) Send notifications — when a certain condition is met, you can create a template notification and choose which users to be notified about it via email. The system will prompt you to add the users' emails in the To and Cc fields. By default, the subject will include the name of the executed rule, board name, and card ID. To modify it, click on add card fields. The default body of the email will contain the different card elements (which you can easily edit) and a link to the card.
This is what an email notification triggered by the Card is moved rule would look like:
6) Invoke web service — business rules with this option let you add a call to an external web service. Select add new action to configure the parameters. To see the step-by-step configuration process, please check the dedicated article.
7) Execute at — this action applies to the three business rules of type ‘recurring’ and it lets you set the time when an action should be completed. You can choose an hour between 00:00 and 23:00.
Note: The system will display your default time zone, which you can change from the Time zone dropdown (2) in My Account (1).
8) Block parent — this action applies only to the Child card is blocked rule, and it serves to block a parent card if certain conditions are met. The default condition is to configure the results based on the Board where the child cards are. However, you can filter results based on many other regular fields, time unit measures, and custom fields:
9) Unblock parent — this action applies only to the All children are unblocked rule, where the parent card will be unblocked if all conditions are evaluated as true. Similar to the Block parent option (see image above), you can configure the unblock conditions through a range of regular and custom fields, as well as time units (days, hours, minutes, and seconds).
10) Convert subtasks to child cards — with this action, you can convert a card’s subtasks into separate child cards and preserve the same title and details.
Note: Similar to the create cards or subtasks option, you will again have to select the location where you want to create the converted subtasks from the Board Minimap.
11) Copy the values of these fields (from the child/relative/parent/predecessor/successor card into the parent/relative/child/successor/predecessor card) — this action lets you copy one card’s elements onto another if a certain condition is evaluated as true. The copy option is only available for the following rules:
- Child card is updated
- Relative card is updated
- Parent card is updated
- Predecessor card is updated
- Successor card is updated
Note: Copying custom fields between two cards on different boards may fail to execute. You can read more about it in the dedicated article. Keep in mind that if a rule fails to execute, the system will send an email to notify the rule’s owner and every user who can modify or delete it.
12) Archive cards — this action only applies to the Recurring archive cards rule (1), and it lets you automatically archive cards if the configured conditions are met.
Note: Through the Advanced schedule option (2), you can set a specific time to archive cards. The default configuration is Every day, but you can also choose between Every month, Every week, Every workday, and the Advanced schedule. The Advanced schedule lets you choose to archive cards every weekday (3) or every set number of days (e.g. every three days). You can further customize your schedule by using the custom cron expression menu available in the Advanced schedule or utilizing the Predefined interval menu.