Any hack for "relative" (variable) rule writing so that when an assignee changes for a project all rules will update to new assignee?

Hello-

We are an accounting firm using Asana for our task management for clients. We have many rules set up to auto-assign tasks to whoever is assigned to the client, duplicate tasks to certain projects for that assignee if urgent, etc. Is there a way to write rules with a relative (variable) assignee so that if we change who a client is assigned to, all of those rules will update to reflect the new assignee? Currently we have to go through all of the rules and change to the new person or project of new person when we shift work around.

Thanks!

Sean

Welcome, @Sean_Olson,

Given that Variables in Rules were just recently released, many of us are hoping that Asana will continue to build that out to enable what you’re asking for.

Here’s the recent announcement of the start of that functionality:

In the meantime, you might be able to reduce your maintenance by how/where you set up rules. Sometimes I place rules that need to apply to many projects in a single project and multi-home tasks to “acquire” the rules and thereby have single-source maintenance of rules.

Another approach for you could be to direct assignees to maintain their own rules in their My Tasks.

Finally, Flowsana.net (/cc @Phil_Seeman) already offers the functionality you request, I believe.

Thanks,

Larry

Hi @Sean_Olson,

As @lpb mentions, I think you might get close to what you want with Flowsana using its rule action that can assign a task to the value in a custom field.

You would create a custom field, let’s call it “Responsible” - a dropdown field containing the usernames of all of your possible assignees. Then create the rule:
If [whatever your trigger is], Then assign the task to the value in Responsible.

Flowsana also has the ability to copy all Flowsana rules from one project to another, which might help further.

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