Requesting Automation for subitem creation to set a date column to today + N days

[timlittletech (Tim Little)]

Hi there,
I have created a handful of custom automations which create subtasks every time an item status gets changed. This has worked great for us so far, but 1 thing we would love to do is set the due date column on the subitem to a couple days in the future. I see that I can set it to today, but don’t see a way with current automations that I can set it to today + N days

It would be amazing if I could handle this in the same automation, but if not at least having a way to create a second automation to get the task done in the future would work well for us as well.

Thanks!

[andrewalmand]

@timlittletech

Yes this can be accomplished with a secondary(possibly tertiary) automation:

This is one of the date changing automations that supports subitems. So you will also need a status to be changed, not preset, which may already exist in your workflow.

Hope this helps!

[timlittletech (Tim Little)]

Thanks Andrew,

This was helpful, I’m able to get this automation to work, but may still need to finagle it a little to figure out how to get status change as part of workflow, Since I’m currently presetting the status on subitem creation.

Thank you,

Tim

[andrewalmand]

@timlittletech

Hmm you are right, it’s limited by the automations that affect Sub Items. Let me mess around with some options and I’ll get back to you.

[TaylorTedesco]

Anyone have any ideas on this?

[APfluger (Alyssa Pfluger)]

Would also like to know! I have the creation of an item trigger a bunch of subitems to be created, but they all need to be a different number of days out from the main item creation. Right now that’s not possible.

[Bankin (Nate Banker)]

Same here. I have a bunch of subitem creations being automated and I would like their dates to be set + some days when created.

[timlittletech (Tim Little)]

@APfluger there is a way that with the help of a few other folks I’ve been using to accomplish this.
It is a little bit of a work around, but it does work.

I’ve been adding a status column ‘Assign Days’ with values ‘+1 day’, ‘+2 days’, etc… On subitem creation I will set the status to however many days in advance I want the task to be due. 1, 2, etc…

THEN I go into the board and create an automation for each of the status labels.
‘when status changes to {label}, set date to today and push by {n} days’

You have to repeat this automation for however many options of pushing days you want. for the example below you’d have to create the automation 3 times, but it has worked really well for my clients who need it.

The automation should trigger when the subitem gets created and will update the date of the subitem to a certain point out in the future.

Hope that helps!
Best,
Tim