After using vPlan for quite some time, your backlog can become quite full of planned and unplanned cars. You can clean your backlog manually (see: How to clean up cards in the backlog), but you can also automate this based on the expiration date. In this article, you can read about how to use this automation.
To refresh your memory about automations and how to set them up, you can always visit: How do Automations work?
How does automatic archiving work?
In the automations centre of vPlan (which can be found in the configuration of your planning board > automations tab) you can set the following automation:
This automation will be triggered on the expiration date. So all the cards with an expiration date that lay a few days before or after today must be archives. vPlan does this check at night and carries out the automation when the collections meet the conditions
You can also set conditions for this automation:
Planned / unplanned: With this you indicate whether vPlan should archive planned or unplanned (backlog) cards with this automation. You can also check both options.
Number (days): This indicates the number of days on which the automation should start working.
Before / after: Choose whether vPlan should check for an expiration date in the future, or the past.
Days/working days: Choose whether vPlan should take working days or calendar days into account.
Example: As a planner, you want all cards in your backlog and with a delivery date older than a month to be automatically removed from vPlan. For example, because some of your orders go through a different process, or they concern orders that have since been cancelled.
In this practical example, you can set up the automation as follows:
You could also opt for a situation where your planning is automatically archived one year after delivery. This keeps the number of tickets in your planning limited. In that case, you can set the automation as follows:
vPlan Pro Tip: Do you have an integration between vPlan and your ERP software? The delivery date of your orders is often taken over in vPlan as the due date. That way you can also clean up your imported orders with this automation.