An illustration of a Trello list with the text 'Trello automations for support teams' against a picture of two colleagues working at their laptops

Streamline your customer support workflow with Trello automation rules and the Email for Trello Power-Up.

Trello automation is powerful way to do more with your Trello board, improve customer service, and free your team up to focus on more important tasks.

Combined with the Email for Trello Power-Up, you can create email automations to take your help and support workflow to the next level.

Email for Trello testimonial – Thousands of teams use Email for Trello to organize and automate their emails

In this article, we share our top 5 Trello automations every support team should set up. Let’s dive in!

5 Trello automations for help and support teams

1. Auto-assign new tickets

Don’t let any help requests fall through the cracks! When new tickets are created (whether that’s manually, or when new email cards arrive via the Email for Trello Power-Up), you can set up a Trello automation to assign new cards to team members in a round-robin.

Here’s how it works:

Make a line-up card. Create a Trello card (i.e., ‘Line-Up’) and add the team members you want to include in your round-robin.
Set the automation trigger. To target new email cards, set the trigger to “When a card is added to the list ‘Inbox’”.
Set the automation action. To assign a team member to the email card, choose the action “Add a member in turn from card ‘Line-Up’ to the card”.

Now, whenever a new email card arrives in your ‘Inbox’ list, a team member from your line-up card will be automatically assigned, so that nothing gets overlooked.

Find out more how to automate card assignment in Trello, round-robin style.

2. Send auto-replies to incoming messages

An email auto-reply is a very simple, ‘set and forget’ Trello email automation that you can use to your support team’s advantage! It’s a great space to:

Confirm receipt of your customer’s email and assure them that your team is working fast to resolve it.
Signpost self-help resources (like your help center or FAQs) which can help your team resolve problems without having to get involved directly.
Provide an alternative point of contact in case your customer needs to escalate their query.

Find out more about how to write a great email auto-reply for your shared inbox in Trello.

💡 TIP Create smart email auto-responses for your Trello workflow with phrase-matching. For example, automatically reply to emails mentioning the words “forgot password” with a template reply explaining how to reset their password.

3. Move Trello cards automatically

Save your team repetitive manual work and reduce the number of overlooked tickets by moving to-dos through your workflow automatically as issues progress!

Automatically moving Trello cards can be achieved a number of different ways, depending on your workflow. For example:

When the due date is marked complete. For example, when the due date is marked as complete in a card, move the card to the top of list ‘Done’.
When a Custom Field is filled. For example, when Custom Field ‘Escalated to Dev’ is checked, move the card to the top of list ‘Waiting for Dev’.
When a checklist item is completed. For example, when the ‘Fixed by Dev’ item is checked by anyone, move the card to the top of the list ‘In Progress’.

Discover more useful automations in our Trello automation directory and find out more cool things you can do with checklist automation in Trello.

4. Trigger follow-up reminders for your team

Don’t let missed deadlines or unanswered emails drag down customer satisfaction!

Trigger follow-up reminders for your team with this simple Trello automation that posts a comment when a card is due:

Trigger: Two days before a card is due
Action: Post comment “@card Let’s get this done!”

💡 TIP Did you know that you can merge duplicate support tickets with the Email for Trello Power-Up? Streamline your workflow and avoid confusion by combining duplicate email cards in Trello.

5. Automatically send an email when you move a card

Let the bots take care of your support emails for you! For example, when you move a card to the list ‘Done’, you can automatically send a template email to your customer, confirming the resolution of their help ticket. Here’s how:

Write your template email. Use Email for Trello’s Saved Reply feature to set up the template email you want to send. For example, confirmation that your customer’s help ticket is now resolved.
Set up your Trello automation rule. When a card is moved into the list ‘Done’, post comment @reply ##ticketresolved.
- The rule works by using Trello automation to add a comment, then using the Email for Trello Power-Up to convert a Trello comment into an email with @reply.
- ##ticketresolved is the keyword reference for the Saved Reply template. The keyword will be replaced with the full email content at the time of sending.

💡 TIP You can also include variables to personalize your email and make it more relevant to your customer (like their name and reference number).

For more details, take a look at how to automatically send an email when you move a Trello card from one list to another.

Email automation for your Trello help desk

Work smarter, not harder with Trello email automation. Automate your customer service emails with our top 5 Trello automations for every help and support team – less time spent typing means more time for meaningful work!

5 automations every support team should set up