Automating weekly check-ins into assigned tasks from form responses

Hi everyone,

I feel like this should have a simple answer, but I’ve spent way too long trying to figure it out.

I’m trying to create a lightweight weekly workflow where each team member shares:

  1. What they accomplished last week

  2. Their top priorities for the coming week

  3. Any blockers they have

Ideally, I’d send out a form every Friday where each person can enter open-ended text responses. From there, I’d like Asana to automatically create tasks based on what they submitted, assign those tasks to the team member who submitted the form, and add them to the right section/status in our “Priority Tracker” project.

For example, their priorities for the coming week would be added to the appropriate priority/planning section, while any blockers would be auto-added to the “Blocked” status or section in the project. Ideally, they could also mention the team member who can help unblock them, and that person would either be tagged or added in some useful way.

Where I’m getting stuck is that open-ended text responses don’t seem to map cleanly into tasks, assignees, mentions, or custom fields in the way I’m hoping. I also looked at using the Slack integration, but even that feels clunky. Posts from Slack don’t seem to do a great job of assigning the task based on the person submitting the response, and because I’m trying to capture what happened last week, priorities for next week, and blockers, it turns into a multi-step workflow instead of the simple weekly check-in I’m hoping for.

The larger goal is to track actual outcomes, upcoming priorities, and blockers across team members in one shared project without manually copying, assigning, tagging, and organizing everything each week.

Has anyone built something like this in Asana? Is there a way to do this with forms, rules, Slack, or custom fields, or does this require a workaround with something like Zapier/Make?

Hi @Brayden_Wardrop ,

You got something here I like! So after carefully reading all these, you could use the power of custom fields, to allow team members select it themselves to properly route it to the correct section, with the help of Asana Rule.

On another note, I think what you really mean by proper routing is the “things” or “tasks” mentioned in the form like their next week priorities or blockers are the ones you’re trying to extract from the form, and auto create those tasks? If yes, then yes, it would require some zapier/make for something like to handle the heavier logic that asana cannot support natively.

Welcome, @Brayden_Wardrop,

If I understand correctly, you’re asking to combine several things (completed work, prioritization, blockers) that Asana best handles more independently.

And you are asking for help creating a form for routine use by existing Asana users to create their own work; that’s usually done more directly and without use of a form.

Unfortunately, I feel your valid set of needs is too broad to do a good job answering in this static Forum, and is best addressed collaboratively in real time. But maybe others will weigh in here where I can’t. But at least I wanted to offer those general reactions above in case they help provide another viewpoint.

Thanks,

Larry

Hey there @Brayden_Wardrop

Yes this is possible to do, it just takes about 4 rules, sections, and custom fields I believe.

  • First for you’ll want to create 3 custom text fields: Accomplishments, Priorities, and Blockers.
  • Then create 1 custom single select field and each choice will be your employee names.
  • Then you’ll want to create 4 sections: Accomplishments, Priorities, Blockers, and Intake.
  • Next create an “Assignment” rule. This rule will be when Employee field is changed, check if employee is set to that employee, and then to assign that person to a task. Do a branch for each employee.
  • Then create an Accomplishments task creation rule. This rule will be when a task is added to this project by your form, check if Accomplishments text field is not empty, then create a task and make sure the “task name” field is set to use the Accomplishments text field variable, then click “All fields” to open up more options, and make sure you set the “Employee” single select field variable so it carries over the task owner from the form task and triggers the auto assignment in the new task. Also make sure that the default section for that task creation is set to “Accomplishments”.
  • You can duplicate the rule you just made and change the settings and sections you need to for Priorities and Blockers.
  • Next, you’ll want to go into your form and create a question for “Your name” and connect it to your Employee single select field.
  • Create 3 more questions labeled as Accomplishments, Priorities, and Blockers and connect them to their respective text fields.
  • Go into your form settings and make sure that new submissions go into the “Intake” section.
  • And last, just so it looks nice, you can collapse your “Intake” section so that it doesn’t show all of the original form submissions but they can still be there hidden in case you want to use it as a form receipt. You can also get fancy and create a custom date field and have the title use the date field variable at the beginning for a proper time stamp in the title if you’d like.

I’ve created this on my own test project, tested it, and it works. I know it sounds like a lot but it’s actually a lot quicker to build than you think, I did it in about 10 min. Once it’s set, it should run itself and you’re good to go. Let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks for the reply, @Bryan_Martillan ! Looking through all these replies and will report back on what I can figure out. Appreciate your thoughts.

Thanks @lpb I’ll report back if I figure something out.

Thanks for your time and thoughtful reply @neonrain.club. Going to see if I can get this to work and will let you know! Really appreciate your time and thorough explination!

@neonrain.club on the very first bullet. How would I create a “custom text field” Is this a Single Task Select Field with the accomplishments, priorities and blockers as custom options? Reading that bullet I thought maybe there would be an actual custom text field type but from the list of drop-down I have, I dont think I can select that as an option. Am I missing something obvious?

@Brayden_Wardrop it’s the 6th one down labeled “Text”. You’ll create 3 of these fields: one for Accomplishments, one for Priorities, and one for Blockers.