Allow Rules for Subtasks

Hi @anon64027379, welcome to the Asana Community forum :wave:t2:

At this time, Rules do not apply to subtasks. This is a popular request in the forum and so we do have an existing thread for this in the #productfeedback category already. I’ve gone ahead and merged your post with the existing one to consolidate feedback, I hope you don’t mind :slight_smile:

Hopefully we will see some new Rules, and subtask specific Rules, in the near future. I’ll let you know of any updates :slight_smile:

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if you create the rule on your My Tasks window it will at least give YOU the notification when a subtask you’re assigned to gets unblocked. I’ve had my team set up the same rule in their instance so we have ultimately created a somewhat global rule (for my team) to be notified when a task is no longer blocked.

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Thank you very much @Rebecca_McGrath, I appreciate your help :pray:

Brilliant! Thanks a lot, that is a decent work-around and actually helps a lot!

I am struggling to find a way to use rules at ALL because of the way we are set up and use subtasks. I really want to use them to cut down on the ticky tacky work of account managers setting up work for designers. :sob:

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14 posts were merged into an existing topic: Add “Create subtask” as an Action for Rules

A rule where an attachment from one subtask is forwarded to the next subtask would be SO helpful.

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I cannot express how happy this just made me. I have a project that catches all the work that’s assigned to me. I just have a rule in My Tasks that adds any task assigned to me to a Project called AllTheThings (because I hate the fact that you cannot filter or sort well in the My Tasks view like you can for tasks that are in a project).

Problem was that I have numerous subtasks that I don’t want to see until they are unblocked, but you can’t run rules on subtasks. This was the answer for me. Now I just have a rule in My Tasks that says that when a task assigned to me is unblocked, add it to my AllTheThings project.

You are my hero, JD! Thank you so much!!

Our teams use boards to move media pieces through production. We use other projects to track and plan project (Product A), team (Video Production Team), and sprint tasks. What I would like to do is, as a piece moves from section to section through a workflow (that beta is awesome btw) have a rule that would enable the adding of a subtask to a project. The subtask rules are nice now, but by adding it to other projects we’d be able to track the particular work by person more easily and have it actually report the hours to the correct projects, which subtasks currently do not do without adding to a project.

Hi @Aaron_Kishbaugh,

FYI Flowsana’s rules can apply to subtasks so you could accomplish what you’re wanting. Feel free to DM me for more info if desired.

I have a task.

Let’s call it:
“Allow user to login”

It has 3 subtasks:
“iOS implementation”
“Android implementation”
“Website implementation”

The 3 subtasks also live on another board that has your traditional software dev columns. “Todo” “In progress” “In QA” “Done”

The parent task has 3 fields.
iOS Status
Android Status
Website Status

How can I link it so that when I move iOS subtask to the column “In QA” I don’t have to manually change the status on my parent task?

Hi @Idle_Idle, thanks for reaching out! At this time, you would have to update the status of the custom field manually as Rules do not current support subtasks.

We do have an existing thread for this feature request in the #productfeedback category so I’ve gone ahead and merged your post with the existing one to consolidate feedback.

I’ll keep you posted and let you know if I have any updates :slight_smile:

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@Rebecca_McGrath How can I find the link in #productfeedback to where this feature request is being requested. I’d like to vote it up.
I probably need more rules that work / trigger off of subtasks than I do main tasks.
Cheers, Jake

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Hi there,
Just adding my 2 cents in hopes that this request might soon be addressed.
Our company also works mainly off of subtasks, since many tasks require several smaller subtasks and several days to accomplish the actual tasks. No it is not practical to make every task its own section and start making everything their own tasks, that just adds clutter. We really need rules to apply to subtasks so we don’t have to keep going in and manually adjusting every subtask for things I already have made rules for.
We just upgraded to the Business subscription specifically for the custom rules feature, but now it’s really of no help to us.
It’s frustrating that the answers are so often to just keep adding (and paying for) all these other plug-ins or apps to make Asana work for us.
Please please please add rules to subtasks, it would help us immensely and greatly reduce the amount of wasted time editing everything manually. (Isn’t that the whole point of “automation?”)

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Welp
You consider another platform because Asana doesn’t do it. And probably won’t for years to come. Rolling out subtasks without visibility of them and without automation rules is like selling ice cream without offering a cone or cup.

How does anyone use Asana without this critical feature? I have no idea.

The only way at all to achieve what you’re doing is the have the subtasks start out as tasks and be converted manually into subtasks which is arduous and frankly stupid. but then, you can make a rule that once they are initially created before converting them to be a subtask that the task is added to another project that has all the same rules in it
 then you convert the task to a subtask under a parents task and the changes to those subtask fields will In fact change
 because the rules in the other project where the task is still a parent task, still apply.

If your head hasn’t exploded yet, cheers.

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This doesnt work, Imagine managing a project and a change order occurs. Now you need to track all tasks associated with the change order within the same project. You arent going to make a new section for each change order that would be messy and cause massive data accuracy issues due to human error, Also there’s no way to make a new section from a from. Its all around a no go. Sorry. If you have a better solution, I’m all ears.

An alternate we tried is to tag all change orders with a custom field and the create a rule that sorts it to a change order section where we give it a unique name and then each task in the change order is a change order, and each subtask is an action item
 but rules don’t apply to subtasks so it doesn’t work, not to mention that if subtasks are added to the subtasks which would be common in this scenario, you cannot see them in list view because Subtasks of subtasks arent displayed in list view.
This is unusable.

Alternatively we tried keeping change orders listed in a section and giving each a unique tag. Then if any work that’s associated with that change order is created, we just tag the task with the unique tag. We expected this to centralize all the tasks associated with the tag but the tag view is just a search view which doesn’t display the custom fields. So then we customized a search and it displayed the custom fields and tasks with tags, but then none of the subtaks show up rendering it completely useless. And we cannot use a rule to apply a parents tasks tag to a new subtasks rule. All of this is horrible and makes the platform completely unusable.

The only solution can think of to manage change orders is to create a new project for each change order which is completely absurd and not at all a solution.

If I sound frustrated its because my entire team hates that we are using Asana and are stuck with no feasible workarounds to extremely basic functions. Does Asana staff use Asana internally? Who is developing these features if they are poorly implemented?

Asking very seriously, what is the point? We are spending a massive amount of money paying people to ensure that data is being entered correctly and are desperate for rules for subtasks to automatically change statuses of parent tasks and other custom fields within a subtask.

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Yeah. My team has become frustrated enough that sub-tasks are treated as second class citizens. We just moved to another task management tool. I am using asana for personal tasks now because I do enjoy it’s speed, but it’s rather rigid when it comes to anything else. This request being open for 2 years doesn’t instill confidence.

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What did you switch to? we are considering many apps to move to ASAP.

The fast that they rolled out rules without planning to roll it out to subtasks sounds to me like it was a financial decision not a technical one. Subtasks CAN have rules applied to them if the subtask was generated as a task and added to another project before being converted to a subtask as long as the other project it lives in, has rules to make it automate. This is asinine.

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