Our team wants to use custom templates, but if you archive a Project that is set as a custom template, it disappears from the custom template menu. This makes the feature much less useful from an organizing standpoint.
Ideally, we could create template Projects, set them up in precisely the right way, and archive them. People could then generate new iterations of the template from the + but they would not have the template itself in the Projects list on the sidebar.
This has two major advantages:
Team members would not accidentally alter the Project being used as a template because it would not be visible unless you went looking for it with search.
Templates would not clog up the list of Projects, which can get overwhelming on a robust team.
Thanks @Mark_Hudson! This is a great idea. We found a reasonably good workaround for now too, in case itās useful to someone: I created a Public Team called āTemplatesā and we store all our template projects there. Everyone in our organization just keeps the Templates Team minimized over on the sidebar and that keeps everything out of the way, but still accessible if a template needs to be changed.
Thatās a good work around @Jack_Cuneo! It would be nice to be able to archive templates and still have them be active (but I do understand why thatās probably not going to happen).
@Mark_Hudson & @Jack_Cuneo, so are your sidebar templates, actual templates in the Asana Templates section or just projects you have deemed as templates that people must copy to create new projects?
I ran into this issue today. One of our projects is extensive for an 8 month program that incorporates many departments. I need a clean template of this without deadlines and assignees. As someone who likes extremely clean workspaces, having a project that is not actively being used in the sidebar causes me organizational anxiety. For me, this is a pretty big flaw. I guess I have no option but to use one of the workarounds recommended above but this would be very high on my feature request list. FYI @Alexis
Hey @Crystal_Alifanow, Iām fairly certain his experience was with the projects marked as templates (so used in the project creation interface.
If you archive your clean/unassigned template instead of marking it as an actual template, it would hide it on the sidebar as any other archive project would do!
My sidebar templates are the actual templates available when creating new projects. I put them in their own section at the bottom of the list so that people wouldnāt edit them (I also have a back-up copy thatās private to me, just in case).
I do think this is a bit of shortcoming in Asana. I wish we could create a template that doesnāt have to sit in the sidebar as a normal project, but Iāve found that putting them in a āDonāt alterā section has done the trick for now.
@Crystal_Alifanow I totally get that organizational anxiety thing! That was
the catalyst for the feature request and my workaround, so I understand
where youāre coming from and hope what I did also helps you feel more
relaxed
Our templates DO show up in the āCreate New Projectā list of templates. We
keep them stored separate from all other projects for organization
purposes. Hereās a screenshot that illustrates the concept:
So every project inside the Templates Team is marked as a template so that
it shows up when creating a new Project. Every member of the organization
who wants to use the templates must be a member of the Templates Team, so
thatās a potential flaw. But it works well enough for our organization! All
organization members know that if they want to (and are authorized to) edit
a template, they just pop into the Templates Team and all the templates are
right there. At all other times, they just keep the Templates Team
minimized like in the screenshot and it takes up no space.
Iām afraid not. A template project has to remain active in the sidebar in order to be available. Thereās an existing product feedback thread here if you want to add your vote:
Ideally, Iād like to see templates completely separated from projects. The dependency on a project seems odd to me. If separating them isnāt possible, then yes, Iād love to have the ability to archive a project without losing the template as a minimum solution.
YesāI wholly concur that templates should be their own section and should not sit with the projects.
I would have assumed that when you āconvertā to template that it would disappear from projects and be in its own templates section. When you have a lot of projects (like we do) and are trying to template a lot of functions (which we are currently in the process of), it really clutters the left pane.
Weāre trying to use Asana for everything (like I believe it was intended to) and fixing this would really streamline things for us.
This is incredibly important for our team as we scale - itās too easy for new Asana users to be confused and edit a template. Any update on this? A simple archive option or privacy option for templates would be ideal.
I really wish Asana would reply to this request. we canāt use a Template Teams b/c we donāt have that edition. Weāre a small team that does ALOT and this is just cumbersome. Why isnāt there an easy way to just access a Template Library? Seems like a no brainer featureā¦ and considering itās bee 4 years since the initial requestā¦
