When creating a rule that creates a subtask, it would be really useful to be able to assign that subtask using a variable other than the three current options of: Rule Triggerer, Task Creator, Assignee. Best would be to be able to do it based off a “People” custom field.
Our Use Case
We use forms and tasks to process quick creative requests. They are initiated by a form being filled out. In our case, the current three variable options would all be the same person.
Task Creator: The requester is the task creator.
Assignee: The requestor is assigned the top level task so they are able to easily track it’s status, effectively manage it and ensure its full completion.
Rule Triggerer: After a design is reviewed, the requestor triggers the rule by changing our “Task Progress” to “Needs Revisions” which would create a sub-task for those revisions.
We would like the assignee of that Revisions sub-task to be assigned to whichever Designer was working on the request, as is noted in our “Designer” custom field (people field).
Currently, other than using an external tool like Flowsana, our only option would be to create a branching rule that first checks to see who is in the “Designer” field and then directly assigning them to the subtask. But that means creating a branch for each of our designers individually.
It would be extremely beneficial to have the ability to fill in custom people-fields with the same variables that are currently available for the assignee rules (right now, it looks like the only option under rules is to fill in a people-type field with a specific person).
Are there any plans to do this?
For example, we have a DRI/Requester people-type field and we need this to fill in with the form submitter/assignee and there’s no way to currently do this with the options available under the people-type fields.
I’ve merged your post into an existing topic where you can click the title to scroll to the top and vote by clicking the purple Vote button. (Existing votes will be merged automatically.)
It would be a huge time-saver if Asana allowed the use of a People custom field to dynamically assign tasks via rules. Currently, rules only let you assign tasks to the creator or the person who triggered the rule, which is quite limiting.
Right now, we are having to manually build out hundreds of rules to assign tasks based on brand logic (e.g., If brand = X, assign to Y). It would be much more efficient to set stakeholder roles using the People field in a task template, and then have a rule assign the task based on that field—rather than hardcoding individual rules for each scenario.
Welcome to the forum, @Katie_Murray! I’m guessing the issue currently is that people fields can hold multiple users while assignee can only hold one, so in cases where you have more than one person in the people field, the system wouldn’t know how to assign the task.
That said, as is the case with many challenges, enterprise customers can use script actions as a workaround. @Phil_Seeman’s Flowsana might also be an option.
Make sure you vote for your own post using the vote button next to the title!
Indeed it is! We support the rule action of assigning a task to the value in a custom field, where that field can be a People field. (If there are multiple users in that people field, we take the first one as the assignee.)
@Katie_Murray - do you know what Asana plan you currently have? If you are on enterprise (and not able to use Flowsana), you could do this with a script action. AFAIK, those are the two best workaround options.
Asana doesn’t typically publish a feature roadmap, so we don’t know if this is in their immediate plans, but I know they do regularly monitor the forum for feedback and have launched many features requested here so we’ll have to cross our fingers that this gets some traction.
But it seems like you have the option to use that custom field to assign OTHER custom fields. Surely there’s a way to have the “assign” feature use custom field data. My current workaround is using AI to handle this, but it’s so unnecessary. “Custom field” could be a dropdown option under the “Set assignee” options, like it is for “Set [custom field person] to”.
I am tempted to say that it is “by design”. A People field is a multi-people field in reality, you can have multiple people, and the assignee field is a single-people field. So they don’t match, that’s why you can’t. And I guess Asana didn’t want to get into the nitty gritty of picking the first person, only doing it if there is one…
Hi @Sarah_Osentowski , I’ve merged your post into this existing one.
Don’t forget to vote for yourself!
However, @Bastien_Siebman , is right and I understand the complexity of Asana implementing this request. What would the expectation be if there are more than one person on the field? Only run the rule if it is one person?
It’s a great point by @Bastien_Siebman. I’m unsure what the functionality should be if the field had multiple people. I honestly would rather the rule not run if there is more than one person in the field, rather than not having this feature at all.
What is the process for elevating this request?
I’ve done some scrolling of the forum and I think a lot more people have/had use cases for this proposed feature but it’s getting picked off by Flowsana reps i.e.
Posting in this topic and voting for it, as you’ve done, is the way to express your support for this request. (Trust me, while many people at Asana like Flowsana, my forum posts about Flowsana don’t deter consideration of any feature requests by Asana folks.)
I couldn’t find this feature in Product Feedback to be voted on, but found historical consensus and use cases in Rule to update assignee based on a custom people field? The topic was closed, so I could not contribute there.
We have appreciated every new dynamic ability within rules. This one remains unavailable. Clicking the + while setting an assignee in a rule only provides these options:
even when there are People fields active in the project.
I imagine that a current barrier is that People fields can have multiple people in them. I’ve opened a separate product feedback to vote on (Allow further customization of People fields) to provide a path for this feature in the interim while Asana considers the product feedback Assign multiple assignees on one task, which has over 2,300 votes at the moment.
I believe this feature (dynamically set Assignee from People field), coupled with Allow further customization of People fields, might actually fulfill the need some people are pointing to in the request for multiple assignees. People with various roles in the flow could be indicated in single-select People fields and rules could cause the Assignee to change to a person named in a People field at different stages in the flow, clearly passing off work as stages are completed, but leaning dynamically on custom people fields instead of relying on lots of if/then scenarios and criteria to be built out in rules.
FYI this capability is now available in our Flowsana “Assign task to a value in a custom field” rule action. (If there are multiple people selected in the relevant People custom field, it just assigns to the first person of those values.)
