Any Timeline/Dependency Wizards out there?

I’m looking for a sly way of getting a little more functionality out of the fantastic ability to use dependencies and timelines to move a whole string of dependant tasks on the Timeline.

If I have a string of 8 tasks, I know I can move that whole string forward in time by moving the first task that is “blocking” the others. And, I can move that whole string backward in time proportionally by moving the last one.

I’m hoping to find a way to make ONE more task that will have a begin date matching the very first task, and a due date matching the very last task, that would allow me to move that entire string just by moving that one task. Think of that task as the “Master Schedule” task. Almost like a bucket handle— just pickup that task and move it wherever, and all the contents of that string of dependant tasks move with it.

I’m OK making this task manually and setting all the dependencies, but I don’t know how to make it work the way I’m describing.

I’m going to multi-home that one “Master Schedule” task into another project that our business owners would see, that would act as a summary for them to see the full gamut of Production without having a screen filled with hundreds of more granular tasks.

Unfortunately Asana doesn’t have task braces like other tools do. This would be super handy.

I believe Flowsana has some tricks to move tasks en masse?

CC: @lpb

cc @Phil_Seeman

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couldn’t you create the additional task and make it blocking the 1st one and blocked by the last (or vice versa rather)?

Thanks Larry :grinning:

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I actually tried this-- really strange things happen, including crashing your browser. When I’d move that one task a couple weeks, it would SLING the others way out several months and a bunch of the tasks just disappeared from Timeline altogether. I did this several times.

Basically, it glitched because I was forcing upon it two dependency conflicts.

Hi @Matt5,

You might want to take a look at the Auto-Adjust Workflow type in our Flowsana integration for this purpose; it moves dependent tasks backward or forward by the same number of days that you move a predecessor (and you have the option to skip weekends or not).