Automation in most tools is a trap. You open the rule builder, stare at a blank canvas full of conditions and branches, and quietly close it again. The promise is great; the setup is a project.
Coalface Tasks keeps automations deliberately simple. A rule is just when this happens, do that. No heavy builder, no scripting. So instead of explaining the feature in the abstract, here are five rules that pay for themselves, and that you can set up in a couple of minutes each.
First, turn the extension on under Settings, then General, then Extensions, then manage your rules under Settings, then Automations. Now here are the five.
1. Tidy up as tasks get finished
When a task is marked complete, move it to Done.
Obvious, and that is the point. Nobody enjoys dragging finished cards into the right column, and everybody forgets. This rule keeps your board honest on its own, so “In progress” only ever shows things that actually are.
Because you can match a column by name, one rule can do this across every board that has a “Done” column, not just one.
2. Give new work an owner immediately
When a task is created on a board, assign it to the right person and notify them.
Work that lands with nobody’s name on it tends to sit. This rule makes sure every new task on a client’s board, or a particular project’s board, gets an owner the moment it appears, and pings them in-app, by email, or in Slack.
No task falls into the gap between “someone created it” and “someone noticed it”.
3. Escalate things that have gone quiet
When a task has been untouched for a number of days, raise its priority.
Every board has tasks that quietly rot. They are not urgent, so they never get picked, so they never become urgent enough to pick. This rule breaks the loop: leave something alone for, say, five days and it bumps itself up the list until someone deals with it.
It is the difference between a backlog that surfaces its own stragglers and one you have to audit by hand.
4. Catch overdue work before the client does
When a task becomes overdue, notify the assignee.
A due date is only useful if missing it does something. This rule turns a slipped deadline into an actual nudge to the person responsible, worked out in their own timezone so “overdue” means overdue for them. It is a small safety net that stops the quiet slips becoming the awkward conversations.
5. Start repeatable work from a template
When you kick off a familiar job, create it from a template.
Not every automation is a background rule. If you run the same kind of task again and again, a new client onboarding, a content brief, a site launch checklist, save it once as a template. It captures the title, the description, the subtasks, and the default labels and assignee.
Next time, you create the whole thing, checklist and all, in one click. The work that used to mean “recreate the same ten subtasks from memory” becomes a single action.
A note on not overdoing it
Two small things worth knowing. Rules can trigger other rules, but only up to a few steps deep, so you cannot accidentally build a loop that runs away with itself. And time-based rules like “overdue” and “untouched” are checked once a day, in each person’s own timezone, so they fire when you would expect.
Start with one or two of these, live with them for a week, and add more as you spot the next bit of busywork you keep doing by hand.
The short version
- Move completed tasks to Done automatically.
- Assign and notify on every new task so nothing sits ownerless.
- Raise the priority of tasks that have gone quiet.
- Notify the assignee when a task goes overdue.
- Spin up repeatable jobs from a template in one click.
Good automation is not a rule engine you have to learn. It is a handful of small, obvious rules that quietly do the admin you were doing yourself.