Adding automatic numbering to a form

[Diana_Weaver]

I am trying to create a form for one of my projects. I would like the form when completed to assign a number to that task as a reference. The project is collecting requests that need to be completed and if there is a number the requester can reference it. Do you have any ideas on how to do that?

Diana Weaver

[Phil_Seeman]

Hi @Diana_Weaver,

There are several solutions that people have developed to add a numeric identifier to a task; you can find them discussed in this thread:

Reference numbers for tasks

When a task is created, is there a reference number in the background that we can not see? We create hundreds of them and it would make life so much easier if I could look them up by an auto populated number. The task line line numbers are nice but the number does not stay if you move the task’s order in that list. Thanks! Erik

[Natalia]

Welcome to the Forum @Diana_Weaver and thank you for reaching out!

I’ve moved this post to the #tipsandtricks category to allow other members of the Forum to find it more easily. I hope you don’t mind!

Have a great Monday guys!

[Diana_Weaver]

thanks Phil I read through the thread, but it looks like there is no real solution to automatically adding a number to the task.

Diana

[Phil_Seeman]

Hi @Diana_Weaver,

Here are the four potential solutions I was referring to in that thread:

Reference numbers for tasks

For anyone looking for a third party solution for this, please try the following: Register for a trial of Project Processes here: http://bit.ly/2xMBkVk Create a new process and connect Asana with a Custom Action. Complete the Asana authorization process. Click on Get Started under Auto Numbering. Complete the wizard. You can setup a prefix for the number, a suffix, a starting offset, etc. We can utilize custom fields or simply prepend the information to the task name which works better for s…

Reference numbers for tasks

If anyone is interested, I’ve just used Zapier to create a pair of Zaps which provide auto-numbering for Asana tasks. There are currently two main limitations: Since Zapier doesn’t know about Asana custom fields, the auto-number can’t be put into a custom field. What my Zap does is update the task name to include the auto-number; for example: [2738] - Follow up with Betty Jo Bialoski You can format the task name and the number in really any way you’d like. When you create a new Asana t…

Reference numbers for tasks

I am using this extension Ticket Number Generator, by OneHat - Chrome Web Store

Reference numbers for tasks

Ninjana ist capable of providing numbers for Asana tasks: www.ninjana.team.

[Craig_Hill]

Hey Asana! Any update on the addition of an auto-incrementing number column? I see several posts requesting this, yet no real response from Asana about its intent to address. Has your position on this changed, and if so, when can users expect this functionality?

[Dave_Lai]

This is such an obvious feature to be missed here by Asana team… Each project should have its own auto-increment task id starting from 0. not the 13 digit unique identifier bs. Real world people are not going to reference that in a meeting. Look at how jira does it.

[Arthur_BEGOU]

Hi Diana_Weaver & Dave_Lai

We at iDO (with Astogi) have created a small Asana additional tool that might solve this for you: Auto Numbering.

@Diana_Weaver

I would like the form when completed to assign a number to that task as a reference.

No need for external tools like Zapier or else.

@Dave_Lai

Each project should have its own auto-increment task id starting from 0.

By simply inviting our bot (as a guest user) to your project, it will automatically auto-number all tasks you add. Even if the tasks were created by filling a form.

If you’re interested to try it, just go to this page: https://ido-clarity.com/auto-numbering/

The beta version is free to use under a fair use policy.

Good luck

P.S. @Bastien_Siebman @_Sander

[Bastien_Siebman]

The tool mentioned above by Arthur is not supported anymore by iDO, sorry for the inconvenience!

[Terry_Windwalker]

Is this feature so hard that Asana cannot solve it for plain 5 years, or is it so unimportant that no enough user actually need it?

[Bastien_Siebman]

Or they released “ID” as a custom field type for unique numbers on task and you simply missed it?

[Peter_Doepke]

Yeah but you can’t just label it as ID as that is apparently already taken, you can’t use special characters like #, you absolutely have to have a field title so “125” is a no go, no spaces can be used and its gonna be all capitalized. So you are left with things like AABDSID-105 or PMOSCINTAKE-2027.

Not only that but it numbers things as they come in, regardless of if they stay and need to be numbered or not. The ID system works very well if you are happy with its basic functions but there needs to be a lot more customization options in order for it to be useful. As it stands there are multiple organizations within my company that just cannot utilize the ID field as it stands.

I have only had luck with the ID system if its added in at the very beginning of a teams creation and if the teams acronym isn’t excessively large. Perhaps If they added customization options to the ID field or added a numbering formula for the formula field we could make use of it but currently we are stuck with a manual process of applying IDs to our incoming tasks.

[Phil_Seeman]

FYI @Peter_Doepke if you’re interested, the ID numbering in our Flowsana integration does not require a prefix, and because it’s added to tasks as a rule action, you can choose which tasks to add an ID to - it doesn’t have to be all of them.

[Peter_Doepke]

Sadly we cannot get approval for 3rd party app integrations so our orgs are stuck using only the native features in Asana.