💡 Break long templates into stage-focused templates

[Bastien_Siebman]

Hi Community ,

Here is my little tip of the day regarding templates, especially the ones taking weeks or months to complete.

If your client’s projects are usually spanning across several months and are based on a template, you should consider having several templates instead of one. Try to identify the main stages of the projects (e.g. initial stage, preliminary, design, delivery…) and have one template for each. That way, you’ll always start a new stage with the latest fresh version of the template, rather than being stuck with the big template version from 1 year ago…

That is important because Asana does not have a possibility to push template updates to projects that used it!

[Jerod_Hillard]

Great suggestion, @Bastien_Siebman!

I think often times clients and coworkers struggle with the idea of having multiple projects for one given initiative (master project). If there was an ability to add to an existing project (like you can with import via CSV) then I think having templates for stages of a project would be a fantastic solution. I would even recommend that one of the final tasks of the previous stage would be to create the next stage using the appropriate template!

Maybe there is an external tool that achieves this or I’m mistaken in my understanding that you can only use templates to CREATE projects and not add to them. Either way, great tip!

[Bastien_Siebman]

@Jerod_Hillard

one of the final tasks of the previous stage would be to create the next stage using the appropriate template!

This is definitely what I advise!

[Bastien_Siebman]

@Jerod_Hillard

you can only use templates to CREATE projects and not add to them

People forget that you can use a template to “just” create tasks and then move them to the appropriate project. Template could be seen as a a factory! (looks like I found my next post topic )

[Jerod_Hillard]

@Bastien_Siebman

use a template to “just” create tasks and then move them to the appropriate project

I admittedly never looked at it that way! Being a huge fan of import by CSV, I’ve always defaulted to that being the solution. While it’s an extra step to move into an existing project and then delete the empty project… this is a very manageable workaround.

Template factory, yes! Great topic. I bet that helps others see possibilities they didn’t previously consider. Thanks!