Would Asana allow us to put an entire project on the calendar with one click?
Let’s say we have a project with @20 tasks with 20 deadlines.
If we know the completion date of the project, is there a way to simply
put the project deadline onto the calendar and the program will populate the
calendar with all of the project deadlines?
Put another way: can we create a template for projects that looks like this:
50 days before deadline: buy supplies.
40 days before deadline: put supplies in warehouse.
30 days before deadline: mix all the supplies.
20 days before deadline: apply supplies.
10 days before deadline: begin final application.
DEADLINE: project complete.
Then, can we name the project and pick a deadline date, and
Asana automatically populates the calendar with the appropriate
number of days prior to the deadline.
If Asana cannot do this, does anyone know of a project management software that would do this?
@blake_a If this were possible, it would be LIFE CHANGING! I love this suggestion. But I’ll tell you what I currently do to (sort of ) work around this…
Our team often has recurring projects with similar timelines each month. So let’s say I want to plan a 90-day project (Project B) that begins 2/1/18.
I’ve already made a previous project (Project A) (which began 1/1/18) with this same timeline and distribution of dates, but of course it has a different due date than the project I now want to create.
What i do is copy Project A (including all tasks, due dates, and assignees) and rename it Project B. Then select all of the tasks in my new Project B using shift+down arrow or shift+click to select all the tasks.
Then, hold command (on mac) or control (i’m pretty sure) for PC and use the up and down arrows to mass-change dates. This shifts ALL dates at the same time. So, just shift the kickoff date from Jan 1. to Feb 1. and voila, you have an accurate project with the correct distribution of dates!
I tried this, but when I Command-Up/Down arrow, it moves the tasks up and down in the task list, and doesn’t do anything to the dates. I’m guessing I’m missing something, or maybe the keyboard command has changed.
But you can follow @Avery_Bingham’s recipe up to creating Project B from template Project A. Then, in Timeline View multi-select (ctrl-click) all the tasks to be date-shifted as a group maintaining their relative dates. Now, drag any one of them left or right to change all dates relatively.
Any chance this has been implemented? If so - where would a tutorial be to review steps? If not - I’m hoping others find this useful.
I’m looking at it forma product creation standpoint - and having to self populate dates is tiring if I could put 1 date in and have it populate the rest of the project, that would save SOOO much time!
The only thing along date-automation lines that Asana has implemented to date (pun intended) is an initial “auto-shifting” of dates when you create a project. The way it works is: if you have an existing project where it has its dates all set appropriately in relation to each other, then you can set it as a template; then when you create a new project from that template, you can enter either a new project start or project end date, and Asana will adjust all of the project’s task dates to match the new date you entered. Here is the Help section on this feature:
If you want the ability to have dates automatically adjusted ongoingly whenever you update dates within the project (i.e. not just at project creation time), and/or you want the ability to set relative dates for each task, exactly as illustrated by @blake_a in the first post of this topic, then you can use my Flowsana integration which will do all of that (and lots more).
This would be HUGE for me. I have bi-weekly video launches that have 100+ tasks. I have the tasks in a template but my issues is that I have three dates I’m working with so the date feature for the templates doesn’t work for me. I have tasks that occur within a certain time after our shoot. Tasks that occur a certain amount of time prior to our pre-launch and then tasks that occur prior or after our full launch. I can’t automate those dates in Asana currently since it only lets you use a start or finish date and I have several. Currently I have a spreadsheet that auto-populates the due dates for me so I have to reference that and then manually enter all the dates. Also, because these are so frequent, I have to include that artist’s name in the task so that staff knows immediately what project it’s for since all of the tasks for each launch are identical. A find and replace feature would be immensely help so I don’t have to copy and paste a name a hundred times. In addition to that, I have to link via @ in several of the tasks. Those are set up in the template so I have to change each of those when I create a project from the template. Not sure if there’s a way for that to automatically change based on the project name, but it sure would be helpful. How I use Asana