Lock task and project templates

I really want to use a comment-only project as a repository for typical task templates. But I can’t, because comment-only projects disallow the Copy Task… feature for some reason.

Example:

In our company, we have some tasks for which we have defined process (like installing our software to client’s server, fixing a bug, etc). I have a shared project in which I created task templates, like a template for software installation task, with multiple sub-tasks as a check-list of what needs to be checked and done.

When my colleague needs to install the software, they copy the task, put it into a proper project for tracking installations, and starts following the sub-tasks.

The problem with this approach: since multiple people collaborate, and there could be several copies of the task made every day, sooner or later the original task templates get “corrupted” — somebody starts editing the template task instead of its copy.

How I thought the comment-only projects would help: I would put all the template tasks there, so that nobody can edit them, and people would just copy those templates to other projects. But they can’t now, because copying is not available.

Please allow copying in comment-only projects, I cannot see how this feature contradicts with comment-only logic.

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We also use task templates in various projects across our organization. Unfortunately since there is currently no way to lock the template, allow copying of the template, and then editing of the copy OR granular permission settings for task templates I am having to fix task templates daily. Other employees accidentally start filling out the template/removing fields in the description, removing collaborators, deleting subtasks (that contain numerous other tasks) etc. It is a huge issue and extremely time consuming to fix every time. I have done departmental trainings, 1 on 1 trainings, and anything else I can think of to stop this from happening, but it is unfortunately inevitable.

I love Asana (have used for over 6 years at various companies) and am responsible for rolling it out at Well+Good, but unfortunately it kills mine and other directors productivity because we are constantly dealing with task template massacring by our sales, marketing, and editorial departments.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE rollout this functionality!

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I badly need this feature as well :hushed:

2 Likes

Hi there,

I’ve seen the request to carry over dashboards also when creating projects based on a template.

Now I what would make our live even easier is the option to lock certain aspects with the (mother)template . For example: the dashboard, rules and maybe even sections. For the latter two I can imagine there are some use cases where you would need to ask the user what to do with tasks that are in a section that’s going to disappear. Maybe we can introduce a function that pops up just as your os does with duplicate files.

De x for all or do x for project y, next, do project x for project z.

What this would do for our company is that small changes in our workflows represented in asana would alway be consistent and adjustments made across all clients are made with a breeze.

I would start with the Dashboards which has the least edge cases afaic.

What do you think?

Hi @Thomas_van_der_Woude, thanks for taking the time to provide this feedback :slight_smile:

We do have a similar request for this in the forum already so I’ve gone ahead and merged your post with the existing request to consolidate feedback - I hope you don’t mind!

Hopefully this is something our Product team can implement in the future. I’ll keep you posted and let you know if we have any updates :slight_smile: