Change the subtask from a task to an approval option

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When I hover over to change this task from the workflow, I get this
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This is the part I’m hung up on…it’s probably sitting right in front of me what to do, but I’m just not seeing it.

Hi @Tony_Busko , from the list of actions, it seems you are currently selecting ‘Create subtasks’ actions. Remove this and instead, choose the ‘Create approvals’ action :wink:

This will create a subtask Approval; not an approval task in the project, as some may expect.

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@Richard_Sather, I unmarked your post as the solution because the underlying issue is that it used to be possible in a rule action to create a set of subtasks where some are approvals and some not, and now that is no longer possible for some reason.

Thanks,

Larry

@lpb , I guess I got confused with @Tony_Busko 's cropped screenshots, not quite understanding the context. I thought we are looking at the custom rule editor, no? I don’t recall having the option to create both subtasks and approvals within an action. Was that available in the classic rule builder? :thinking:

@Richard_Sather, I’m pretty sure in either rule builder that when you descended into the subtask’s detail in the right pane, you could choose at the top Task (default), Milestone, or Approval for the type of task; that’s inactive now and not sure there’s any way to ever make it active, which is certainly odd:

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Ah right you are, @lpb . I think I had noticed this a while back and forgot about it. Strange that this button even exists if it’s just to be faded out!

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How do we get this on Asana’s radar to look into it? :slight_smile:

@Forum-team maybe you can check into this? Is this something that got lost in the move to the current rule builder?

FYI you can do this with the Add subtasks rule action in our Flowsana integration.

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Hi everyone, thank you for tagging us! I’ll escalate this to the PMs and get back to you to confirm if this is expected.

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Hi everyone, thanks so much for your patience! Our PMs who handle the rules builder reviewed this escalation and confirmed that there hasn’t been any change in how these actions work with the recent updates.

Currently, “Add Subtasks” and “Add Approvals” are, and always have been, separate actions. It’s never been possible to create approval subtasks directly through “Add Subtasks.”

@lpb, our PMs wondered if it could be the “Create Task” action you’re thinking of. This option does let you mark a created task as a subtask using the UI element shown in your screenshot.

For now, our PMs suggest using “Create Approvals” when you need approval tasks as subtasks. This action will add subtasks that are approval tasks, so it should meet most needs. If you come across any limitations, please let me know. I’ll pass them along to the PMs, who are interested in hearing more.

We know our approval and subtask automation workflows could be smoother, and our team has confirmed that they are currently working on improvements. As soon as we have more details, we’ll keep you in the loop!

Thanks, @Vanessa_N. Maybe @Richard_Sather and I are misremembering but why is there a greyed out “Task” and tooltip in the screenshots above then?

The limitation are use cases like this:

Create a set of tasks at once in a rule action, in order, similar to what you can do in a task template:

  • regular subtasks
  • milestone subtasks
  • approval subtasks

A task template can’t be activated from a rule so there is no workaround if the above is not possible in a rule action.

For example:

  • create outline [task]
  • approve outline [approval]
  • create first draft [task]
  • create final draft [task]
  • approve final draft [approval]
  • deliver report [milestone]

Another use case, a rule action with all three task types that is creating a set of subtasks destined to be converted into a project either manually or with a rule action; surely those task types should be supported then in order to facilitate that.

Finally, this severely limits AI Studio where I’d like to have AI create an ordered set of subtasks like either of the above two examples but it’s impossible now and there’s no workaround.

Thanks,

Larry

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Hi @lpb, thank you for sharing these examples. I’ve passed them along to the PMs and also asked if there’s a reason for the tooltip and the greyed out function to appear. I’ll let you know once I hear back!

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