OrbitZR
board automation, built into every board

Pilot

Pilot watches for something happening on your board, checks an optional condition, then runs one or more actions for you, so the busywork of moving cards, assigning people, and setting due dates happens on its own.

01

How it works

Every automation in Pilot, no matter which sidebar section it was built from, follows the same three-step pipeline. Open Pilot from the lightning-bolt icon in a board's toolbar to build one.

1

Trigger

What starts it: a card being created or moved, a due date, a schedule, or someone clicking a button.

2

Condition (optional)

A gate the triggering card has to pass, e.g. only run if a due date is set.

3

Actions

One or more things Pilot does for you: chain up to 10 in a single automation.

Whenever an automation actually runs, a line is written to the card's own Activity feed explaining exactly what happened and why. Automations never change something silently.

02

Rules

The general-purpose builder: pick a trigger, an optional condition, and chain as many actions as you need. This is where most automations get built.

Triggers

  • A card is created
  • A card is moved to a list (or any list)
  • A card becomes overdue
  • A card has no activity for a set number of days

Actions

  • Assign a member
  • Send a notification to the board
  • Move the card to a list
  • Archive the card
  • Set the due date (N days from when the automation runs)

A Filter and a Libraries panel help you find existing rules and start from a ready-made template instead of building from scratch.

03

Scheduled

Runs on a recurring schedule you set, instead of waiting on something to happen to a card. There's no single triggering card, so it runs its actions against every card in a list you choose (or the whole board).

  • Daily, weekly (pick the days), every N weeks, monthly by weekday (e.g. "the second Tuesday"), monthly by day of month, or yearly
  • Optionally scoped to a single list. Leave it blank to run against every card on the board
  • Private to whoever creates it: each admin only ever sees and manages their own scheduled automations, even other admins on the same board can't touch them

04

Due date

Fires relative to a card's own due date, rather than a fixed clock time, useful for reminders that should shift automatically whenever a due date changes.

  • The moment a card is due
  • A set number of days before it's due, or (advanced) a set number of days after
  • A specific weekday before it's due, or (advanced) a specific weekday after
Not retroactive. A rule fires the first time Pilot's periodic check sees a card cross its target moment, not for cards that already crossed it before the rule existed.

Unlike Scheduled, Due date automations are shared board-wide, like Rules: every board member sees the same list.

05

Card buttons

A one-click button that shows up on every card: from the card's quick-menu, and from the "Automations" tab at the bottom of the full card detail view. Clicking it runs the same actions available in Rules (assign, move, archive, set due date), scoped to that one card.

Enabled by default

Off by default means the button is created but stays hidden from the card until an admin turns it on from the Card buttons list.

Close card when action is performed

When checked, running the button from the card detail view automatically closes that view once the actions finish, handy for "done with this card" buttons.

06

Board buttons

Like Card buttons, but for actions that don't belong to any single card. Board buttons show up as pills in the board's own toolbar, not on individual cards, and get their own set of list-level actions.

  • Add a card: create a new card with a given title in a chosen list
  • Move cards: move every card from one list to another in one click
  • Sort a list: reorder a list's cards by title, due date, or date created, ascending or descending

Because these actions can touch many cards at once, running a board button reloads the board once it finishes, so what you see always matches what actually happened.

07

Suggestions

Pilot watches this board's own activity for a pattern worth automating. Today it looks for one thing: cards getting moved to the same list over and over by hand. Once that's happened a couple of times, a ready-to-add Card button shows up here.

Add

Creates the Card button immediately, pre-filled from the pattern Pilot noticed. No need to open the builder.

Dismiss

Not interested in this one. It's remembered per board, so the same suggestion won't come back.

08

Permissions

Every board member can open Pilot, see the board's Rules, Due date, and button automations, and click a Card or Board button. Using a button someone else configured isn't a configuration change. Creating, editing, toggling, and deleting automations is Admin-only.

Scheduled is the one exception: it's private end to end. Only the admin who created a scheduled automation can see, edit, toggle, or delete it. Even another admin on the same board can't.

09

What's not built yet

Pilot's sidebar mirrors the familiar shape of board automation tools for a reason: some sections are visible today as a preview of where it's headed, but aren't wired up to anything yet:

  • App automations / View apps: third-party integrations (Slack, Jira, Microsoft Teams, and similar)
  • A dedicated Pilot activity log, separate from each card's own Activity feed