Adjust Task Title to include unique identifier

Hi again,

Sorry if this has been discussed, but I searched a bit and did not find a mention here.

I’d like to adjust the actual title of a task to include a unique identifier. One of the reasons for this is to get that identifier visible when I use @mentions around Asana to refer to other tasks.

There is a tool http://office.reddiapps.com/processes/asana/autonumber.aspx#features that will set up unique ID’s in a Custom Field. Very useful for Board View, since you can add that field into the cards attributes and reference that during meetings. However, this is one step short of having the actual ID in the task title, which is a fundamental in most Development systems like Jira, GitHub, etc.

What I’d like to do is use the Project Buddy’s feature to get the unique task ID in the custom field, then via API add that ID to the task title. Is this possible?

Another tool that has me thinking about this is the Unito Jira Sync. With that tool (heavily API-based), you can option for the Asana task title to be overwritten by the “synced” Jira Issue. It works like this:

  • Create a task in Asana

  • Via sync, the task creates in Jira - there it picks up the Issue # as do all Jira Issues when created

  • Via settings in the Unito integration, you can opt for the Jira Task Title to overwrite Asana’s

  • In a few moments, the Asana title picks up the Jira title, which is the same plus the Jira ID.

It’s almost worth just syncing to Jira and back, and not even using Jira, for this benefit alone!

Thanks guys!

Hi @OT160,

Here is a way you can add unique IDs to task names by using Zapier:


If you don’t want to use the above approach, then sure, you could do this. You would use Webhooks or Events to capture all task changes in a project, check each changed task to see if (a) it has a value in the ID custom field and (b) that ID has not yet been added to the task name; when both of these are true, add the ID to the task name.

@Phil_Seeman thank you, very intriguing I’m going to look into this. A huge need of mine is to be able to have some kind of identifier in the Task Title aside from just some words. I’m concerned about how many tasks I’d have called “update the code” or similar as my Asana Instance grows.

If you have a moment, as an API expert, I’d greatly appreciate your take on this other issue I’m trying to solve:

And while I have you, I signed up for Flowsana yesterday and eager to test it out. On a related note to this thread, one of the things I really want to look at in Flowsana is your task/subtask Template. I have a use for repeating the creation of tasks with related subtasks. It is around app/software development as you can infer from the example task of “update the code” I mentioned earlier. What I’d like to do is in the subtasks that are created in the template, tie their name to the name of the parent task.

Like this:

Task title:

“Section in DB for new User Profile Data”

Subtask 1 name: Development for “ Section in DB for new User Profile Data”
Subtask 2 name: Test for “ Section in DB for new User Profile Data”

And so on.

So over time these subtasks generated will not all have the same names.

Perhaps this is already doable? And perhaps down the road, have that title generate with a unique identifier as well!

Thanks again for the response.

I think you are getting off-topic here :slight_smile:

True. @OT160, we try hard to keep each forum thread to one topic, and start new threads for additional topics.

There’s no way I can think of (Flowsana included) to accomplish that. If I think of a solution, I will let you know!

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@Phil_Seeman and @Bastien_Siebman, I copy and will try to keep these more strict in the future. I am getting close to making the call to bring my team (small of 9, web publishing start-up) over to Asana after about 2 years of demoing. I have been impressed that after initially thinking Asana was too limited to meet some of the more complex workflows and data handling I need, in the end, I find it actually standing out for reasons of excellent UI, integrations (such as both of yours), flexibility, and intuitive design.

I will just add one more thing as this is to Phil your last point, as I’m moving along in Flowsana too and really happy about both your Subtask Template, and Dynamic Duration workflow (which incidentally I have not seen in any other apps, but such a useful feature!):

In this post:

Towards the bottom there is an image of how you allow for new projects naming to be created based on a Task which has a status change leading to that. You probably already thought of this, but if you could consider in your roadmap a way to generate subtasks based off a Task name, perhaps not based on a template in this situation, I think that would be useful. I want to add that I much prefer your current set up, as I have a routine process where I need 5 distinctly build subtasks to repeat generate out of a template, and you offer that now, very exciting!

Thanks again guys and see you in another, more on-topic :grin:, post!

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Gotcha - so noted!

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