Moving items based on due dates on a specific week day #2

As mentioned in an original question with this name (found here) we want to be able to automatically move items between groups every Sunday.
To allow us to automate moving items between ‘Due this week’, ‘Due next week’ and ‘Due later’.

The initial suggestion no longer works, as ‘Every Time Period’ no longer lets us ‘clear column’. It is now limited to ‘Notify’, ‘Create group’, ‘Duplicate group’ and ‘Create item’. (see image)

Any suggestions / alternate ideas would be very appreciated.

hi @JacobNewby

Have you found the app “Date Controlled Groups”, see https://monday.com/marketplace/111. Looks like that is exactly doing what you want.

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There are a couple of ways to approach this using basic automations. Here is what seems like the most simple and obvious one.

  1. Use a trigger item on a separate board that runs every Sunday and have items on your main board connect to it by default.

  2. On your main board, create an automation like so:

1 Week before Due Date
Set Due Trigger status to Due This Week

  1. Use the trigger item to change a Trigger status. Have that Trigger status (via a mirror column) activate a status change on the item in the main board—let’s call it the Mover status. Then have that Mover status trigger the following automation:

When Mover changes to Move
And only if Due Trigger is Due This Week

Then move item to Due This Week group


What’s happening here?

Essentially, throughout the week , this is collecting up items that are going to be “Due this week” next week. It’s marking them all by a status.

On Sunday, the trigger item (which should change the status and then push its trigger date by a week, essentially creating a weekly trigger) is sending a message to all items on the board to move if they need to move.

Finally the automation is moving the items that have been marked earlier in the week. Note that they marked as “Due This Week”, but do not get moved until Sunday. So that label is just a technical marker and not an actual indication that they are Due Next Week.

This can be repeated using different offsets (such as 2 weeks before for Due Next Week).

You will probably want to improve this by doing things like resetting status columns to a “ready” state after they have been used as triggers. Otherwise it will be hard to use repeating logic. Additionally, you might want to rename labels to be more descriptive. So for instance “Will be Due Next Week” might help to avoid confusion.

There is also a significant limitation in that items created after the trigger points will be missed. For example, if you have an item due on Monday but you only create it on the Thursday before, it won’t get moved by this. There are workarounds to this, but this should at least provide you with a starting point.

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Hi Francis,

thanks for this great explanation. I feel like I completely understand it, but somehow cannot manage to make it work . Ofcourse Monday constantly changes and gets updates so the reason might just be that what you where going for, does not exist anymore.

In my case, I cannot seem to get all of the objects to change or to connect them to 1 item on a different board by default as you set.
Another problem I encounter is seen in the screenshot.
I have created a workaround using a “push date” but this means that there is one trigger line constantly having to stay within that board as to activate on a certain date.