Automatic movement of related (parent) cards

Separating tasks by nesting levels into child and parent tasks often makes life easier. It helps to better visualize the flow of the project, to delegate subtasks, and to better organize the workflow of several people (or departments).

This feature is even more convenient to use in conjunction with the Automatic parent card movement option. It will allow you to:

1. Conveniently organize your board with top-level tasks;

2. Stop constantly checking the status of child tasks and their checklists. Now it can be pulled up automatically and always be up to date.

How it works: if you have a parent card and child cards, when you move the child cards to the "In Progress" and "Done" columns, the status of the parent card will also automatically change.

Let's explain with an example: how Automatic movement of related cards works

Suppose you have a task and several subtasks (i.e. parent and child cards).

In this example, the "Launch website" card is the parent and the "Draw website home page layout" card is the child.

Let's turn "Automatic movement of parent cards" on the first board with the parent task:

1. Click on the three dots in the upper right corner of the board

2. Select "Rules". 

3. In the list that appears, check the "Automatically move cards depending on their children state" box

Now when we start to move the child cards around the board, the parent card will automatically move to another column as well:

• For a parent card to move to "In progress" status, one child card in progress is sufficient.

• And for the parent card to move to "Done" status, all child cards must be done.

If the parent card has a checklist, the automatic moving of the card to the "Done" column will take place only after all items of the checklist have been checked.

For the automation to work correctly, you must have the correct column types. Read more about it in our instructions.

There is also an option to "Allow automatic backward movements" in the board rules.

If a child card has been moved to the "In Progress" or "Done" column, and then moved back to the previous column, the parent card will also change its status and be moved back.

1. Click on the three dots in the upper right corner of the board

2. Select the "Rules" option. 

3. Check the box next to "Allow automatic backward movements"

Let's explain with an example:

Suppose you have a parent card and a child card.

If the board has "Automatically move cards depending on their children state" enabled and you move the child card to the "Done" column, the parent card will move to the "Done" column as well.

And if the "Allow automatic backward movement" option is additionally selected, and you move the child card back to the "In progress" column - the parent card will also move back to the "In progress" column. 

❗️Please note: 

Automatic card movement only works on boards with three types of columns: "Queue", "In Progress", "Done". The columns must be in the same order. 

👉 Read more about the column types in our instructions.