Asana and Automation

Developers & API
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#1

Hi, Another new user to Asana here and trying to figure this all out. How steep is the curve to implement simple/intuitive “if this then that” automation in Asana. I’m here representing a real estate staging company that doesn’t need massively engineered mega solutions, just simple automation of tedious user interface logistics. For example:

Project created for a property: Create bidding task section and tasks/sub-tasks (templates; cool; :+1: ).
Project is moved to a design team: Create staging task section on the project and 15-20 corresponding tasks/sub-tasks.
Property sold task complete: Create de-stage task section and corresponding tasks/sub-tasks and assign destage crew.

Project Rules appear very limited and incapable supporting this type of scenario, but I could be missing something? If I want to go through Python, is the only method for users to use a second UI that communicates through the API to fire commands? Or can you build these automations and add them into your organization via the API somewhere? Is that type of development investment too much for such a simple workflow? Any insight or recommendation on this is much appreciated as this is a make or break subject for our office.
Cheers

#2

Hi @Dan_Enstrom!

At the moment, there is no supported way to integrate external API-based functionality into the Asana UI. (You can, and some external integrations do, accomplish this via writing a Chrome extension; but it’s not officially supported by Asana and these can, and periodically do, break when Asana changes elements of its UI that they rely on.)

So yes, it’s possible you would have to build an external UI to trigger the functionality you describe. Might it be possible, though, to use webhooks to monitor activity in your account and then automatically trigger things based on that? For example, monitor project adds and every time a new project is added to team “X”, create the tasks A, B, C, D, and E in it - something like that.

(FYI my Flowsana integration has a rule to add subtasks based on any trigger, but it only currently covers subtasks, not tasks, so I don’t think it will help you - though I’m thinking of expanding it to tasks. :slight_smile:)

#3

Thanks very much for your reply and the information @Phil_Seeman!

In going through a lot more documentation, it looks like we will need to adjust our project structure to better achieve what Asana can actually support. Unfortunately we are a small business and feel the impact of a per user per month cost greatly and it restricts our ability to pay more for external integrations like Flowsana.

We also feel strongly that if the base platform we are already paying for (Asana) cannot support what we see as a relatively simple and repetitive project management structure, then we need to find a better base product, not pay even more to patch inadequacies.

During this process I have read many of your forum posts/replies and just want to thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience with the community, it has been immensely helpful!
Thanks,
Dan

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