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Arrival and Departure Rules

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Content:

1. Introduction
2. How to create an Arrival/Departure rule?
3. How to Preview/Enable/Disable a specific Arrival/Departure Rule?
4. Specifics and Limitations of the Arrival/Departure Rules


1. Introduction

Arrival and Departure Rules enable you to define what criteria must work items (cards/initiatives) meet in order to enter or exit a given area inside your process/workflow.

Arrival rules control whether a card can be created in or moved to a particular location while Departure rules control whether a card can move out of a specific location (or get archived from there).

Note: when unarchiving a card, the arrival rule(s) of the location (where the card will be restored) will not apply.

Arrival and Departure Rules allow for endless possibilities and can suit most teams' needs and use cases.

2. How to create an Arrival/Departure rule?

To access the Arrival and Departure rules, open the “Board Policies” section from your board’s sidebar menu. You can configure these rules per:

  • board
  • workflow
  • column
  • lane
  • cell

Important: You create arrival/departure rules on a given board, users must have the Edit Workflow permission included in their custom board role, or must be added to the board as an Account Owner or a Workspace Manager.

To create a new Arrival or Departure rule, simply click on the corresponding pencil icon.

If you do not have any rules configured yet, you will be prompted to create your first one

When you open the creation screen, you will have to give your rule a Name, and then configure all of the needed conditions for the rule.

newdeparturerule.png

In the drop-down that lists all the available conditions, you will find many of the default card fields (e.g. Title, Description, Deadline, Priority) as well as any custom fields available on the board (where the rule is being created).

 

IMPORTANT! When configuring the Arrival/Departure rule conditions, keep in mind that conditions within the same rule are treated as mutually inclusive (with the ‘and’ operator).

twoconditionsinonerule.png

If the same location has 2 (or more) individual Arrival/Departure rules, the conditions inside those rules are not mutually exclusive (‘or’ operator) so only one of the conditions will need to be met before a card can enter/exit the location.

tworules.png

 

3. How to Preview/Enable/Disable a specific Arrival/Departure Rule?

Once you have defined your Arrival/Departure Rules, you can preview/enable/disable them by clicking on the corresponding icons where the rules are configured:

arrivaldepartureicons.png

The departing airplane icon indicates that the location has Departure Rules configured and the landing airplane icon indicates there are Arrival Rules present.

Arrival and Departure rules can also be managed from the Board Policies section.

Users working on the board (where Arrival and Departure Rules are present) can also preview the conditions from inside the Card Details:

arrivaldeparturecarddetails.png

 

4. Specifics and Limitations of the Arrival/Departure Rules

Important: There is a limit when it comes to the number of Arrival/Departure rules - you can have a total of 50 rules for a board, and 5 rules for each location (workflow/column/lane/merged cell).

  • Arrival and Departure rules stack in different ways
    If there are two separate rules for the same location. (e.g., an arrival rule for the entire board, with one rule stating that only red cards are allowed, and another stating that only cards of size 5 are allowed), then red cards of a different size than 5 and non-red cards of size 5 can enter. However, if the two conditions are combined into a single rule, the card must meet both criteria to enter, i.e., it must be red and size 5.

  • If rules are set at multiple levels, the card must meet all conditions
    For example, an arrival rule for the board allows only red cards, an arrival rule for the workflow allows only cards of size 5, an arrival rule for the lane allows cards with attachments, and an arrival rule for the column allows only cards with stickers). In order to move a card from another board to the specified workflow, column, and lane, the card must meet all criteria - it must be red, size 5, have an attachment, and have a sticker.

  • Separate Arrival/Departure rules at the same level are treated with an ‘or’ operator
    For example, a cell has two arrival rules. Arrival rule 1 demands a work item must have an attachment, while Arrival rule 2 demands a custom field to be filled in. A card that has an attachment but does not have the custom field filled in will be allowed to enter, and vice versa.

  • Conditions inside the same rule are treated with an ‘and’ operator
    For example, the arrival rule has 2 conditions: have an attachment, and a custom field should be filled in - the card must meet both conditions in order to enter the designated area.

Note: In the following fields Custom ID, Deadline, Owner, Size, Type, and every Custom Field, there is an additional 'Ignore if empty' checkbox. If values are not set for those properties and the option is enabled, the rule will not be executed and will allow the card to move in/out.

For example, if there is a departure rule with the condition "Size” is equal to 5 and the 'Ignore if empty' option is selected, all cards that do not have any size will be able to leave the area. Conversely, if the option is not selected, all cards that do not have a size 5, including those without a Size, will not be able to move in/out.

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