Can you use 1 Form to create tasks in multiple project boards?

Hello! So I am trying to see if one form can be connected to multiple project boards. For instance, the Form will utilize the branching feature, and there will be 3 different project boards called “Operation A” “Operation B” and “Operation C”. The first question on the form would be “What operation does this impact?”, and based on the drop-down answer to that (example answers would be “Operation A”, “Operation B”, or “Operation C”), new questions relevant to the operation selected would pop up on the form (thus, using the Branching feature). However, after submitting the form, based on the answer to that first question, the task will go to the appropriate project board (so if the answer to the first question is “Operation A”, then the task will get generated on Operation A’s project board only.

Is this feature possible?

Thanks!

Hi @anon17668333 and welcome to the community!

What Asana subscription level are you at: Free, Premium, Business, or Enterprise?

As you might have guessed by now, the answer will be different depending on your subscription level.

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Hi @Phil_Seeman

Thank you for your reply! I believe I have the Business subscription level. What subscription level would I need to have in order to gain the feature described in my above inquiry?

Thanks!

With a Business subscription, you have access to building custom rules and can accomplish close to what you want. (With a Premium subscription you can build custom rules in my Flowsana integration, but I digress… :slightly_smiling_face:)

What you can do is to map that first question to a custom field; let’s call it Operation.

Then build 3 rules: “If the Operation field is set to a value of ‘Operation A’, then add the task to Project ‘Operation A’” - and make 2 more equivalent rules for “B” and “C”.

Asana doesn’t have a “move to project” rule action, only “add to project”, so the task will remain in the form’s project as well (Asana tasks can be attached to multiple project, which is known as being “multi-homed”); that’s why I said “close” to what you want above.

If you do want a true “move to project” to also get the tasks out of the form’s project, you can use my Flowsana integration - it has a “move to project” rule action.

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Hi Phil,

That’s great news! I will test out the “add to project” rule in the Business subscription to see how it works. I believe this function is enough to accomplish our intended goal without needing to upgrade to Premium. Thank you so much for all the information!

FYI @anon17668333, it’s actually the other way around - Business is a higher subscription level than Premium. Because you have Business, you can build custom rules; Premium-level subscribers cannot.

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Hi Phil,

I went ahead and tested it out by making multiple project boards (one titled “General Board”, and the other two “Operation A” and “Operation B”). I was able to make the “Add project” Rule work, and the task was able to get added to the appropriate project depending on the answer to the “Operation Impacted” question. However, it seems that the task that gets added to another board will also show all the task fields that was meant for a different project. An example for this is, how I have the General form set up is that the first question asks what Operation is Impacted. Then depending on the answer, new questions will branch out that are specific to the operation. For instance, if they chose Operation A, then questions about Operation A will show up, and Questions from Operation B will not. However, when this tasks gets moved to Operation A per the “Add to Project” rule, I am still able to see all the task fields from questions meant for Operation B. Additionally, when I hover over the task field, it says “Only Members of this field’s project can see this field”. Does that mean if the members of Operation A are NOT members of the General Board, they will not be able to see any of these task fields? (I am unable to check on this since I am a member for all three project boards).

Is there a way to make sure that once a task does get added to the appropriate project, that it will only show the task fields of that project, and omit the ones meant for the other project boards?

Correct!

There are two types of custom fields, project-specific fields and “global” fields that are part of your organizational custom fields library. As long as you make sure that the General Board custom fields are project specific and not in the library, then it should work the way you’re wanting.

You could test this out without incurring any cost if you have an alternate personal email address (gmail or the like) - join your organization using that address as a guest user, then in your regular account, add the guest user as a member of the Operation B project, and see what the guest user sees/doesn’t see.

Hi Phil,

Thank you for your response.

Is there a way to have it set up so that tasks that go to Operation A will only see task fields that are related to Operation A? Right now, when a task gets added to Operation A (since the operation impacted was selected as Operation A), all the other task fields meant for Operation B also pop up as task fields in Operation A. Is there a way to remove this? In my case, I would need them to be removed since although in this example, I only have Operation A and Operation B, in reality, there will be more than 2 Operations, and each operation has their own operation-specific questions they would like asked on the General Form. If the task-specific fields will remain present on the task, then that task will be very long and will contain too much information that are not necessarily relevant to an operation.

Let me know if further clarification is needed. Right now, with how I have it set up, the questions on the “General Form” that are tied to a “Field” only gets linked to the other project boards if I have them set as a “global field”/part of my company’s library. But if I do that, then that would mean all fields would remain present on the task, no matter which project they go to. So example, Operation A’s fields would still show up on the task that was meant for Operation B and that is housed in Operation B.

I think this would be a much more straightforward/efficient process if we were able to link forms to other forms. Kinda like the branching feature for the questions on the form, but instead, we can link a form to an answer. So if a question asks, which operation is impacted, and the drop down options are Operation A and Operation B, we could link the forms to the respective project boards. So if Operation A gets selected, it would automatically take you to Operation A’s Form.

Is this feature possible? If not, do you think this is something that could be implemented in the future?

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Ah right, sorry, I missed that requirement in your use case in my last reply - as you say, they can’t be project-specific fields in Operation “N” because they have to be available in the General Form project.

No, not with global custom fields, sorry.

No, it’s not possible to link forms together as you describe.

I don’t work for Asana, and they don’t publish a public product road map, so there’s no way to answer the “future” part of your question; but I don’t recall anyone asking for that feature here in the forum, so I’d recommend you add a post to the Product Feedback section so others can vote for your suggestion.