I think we should be able to drag and reorder the steps in the Rules. The order in which they trigger is extremely important especially when you have multiple rules triggering at once.
I’ve often found myself having to delete half of a rule or an entire rule to make sure it’s in the best order. It’d be nice to be able to just drag the elements around as well.
Hi @SamW,
Since it’s a request for a different feature, I moved this to its own thread where you and others can vote for it.
A post was split to a new topic: Allow boolean logic in rule triggers
The ability to reorder the actions when customizing a rule.
I would like the ability to re-order the ‘check if’ conditions and their connected ‘do this’ outputs so that I can manage the order of the different branches. A drag and drop type of user experience would be ideal.
When building larger and collated rule structures with multiple ‘check if’ conditions and varying ‘do this’ outcomes I have found myself needing to add to the structure over time as my workflows develop.
When adding new parameters to the rule structure, these are only available to add below the last condition and output, however a new addition sometimes makes more sense to be listed after or before other items in the condition list because they are relevant to each other.
For example, say I have a single select custom field with various options that works as a staging line A-D and my rule has a ‘check if’ condition on each of the stages A, B, C, D, with different ‘do this’ outputs for each of them.
If I then use this for a period of time and note that there is a step unaccounted for (say between B and C), I need to add a new ‘check if’ condition (and associated ‘Do this’ output) but only have the ability to add this to the bottom of the full ‘check if’ condition list. Note that the new option in the custom field is added into the order its supposed to be in (A, B, i, C, D).
From a visual point of view within the rules editor, the new step is out of order when taking into consideration the use of the field as a staging line, so the new order is A, B, C, D, i, where ideally the order should be able to be A, B, i, C, D.
Where ordering is important for the rules readability, the more this changes, the more likely that the entire rule needs to be rebuilt if one were to want a particular ordering. The ability to re-order would solve this.
I agree, this would be useful. Voted!
@BenjaminG , would you agree that your request is similar to this one?
If so, I could merge them.
Hi Richard,
Good spot. I did search for something related but I guess not hard enough. Happy to merge but if my explanation can be retained some how, that would be useful.
-B
Done, @BenjaminG . Our posts and votes have been consolidated into this thread now. I’ve also added ‘conditions’ to the title.
I agree!
Re-arranging the order of rules would be nice to tidy it up, but I’m not sure if/how it would effect outcome. @SamW Do you have examples of this?
Re-arranging the order of actions would allow for making the rule slightly more efficient by dragging the most common actions to the top, but I don’t see how it would change the rule’s output.
As only the first applicable branch is executed getting this right is really important. The rule order can influence which branch is being executed eventhough the conditions may be the same. So needing to insert a branch before other branches leads to needing to delete and re-make all branches on and below the position where you want to insert a new branch.
Being able to re-arrange the order of conditions within a branch would also be nice to make things tidy and more efficiënt, but not a must have as I don’t see how it would change the output.
Getting the order right is also really important here, as a different order may produce different outcomes. So I often end up re-making all actions when I realise I need to insert a step before others.
Related: Remove the requirement to fill "otherwise if" in the last branch of a rule
Hi everyone,
Consider upvoting the topic Enhanced Rule Editing in Asana – Copy/Paste, Duplicate Triggers/Conditions/Actions as well, since it goes hand in hand with the requested improvements in this topic.