I’ve been using AI automations to allow my team to minimize changes to their workflow while migrating to Asana. One thing I’ve been trying to take better advantage of are task templates. I find them to be useful in my process, but I cannot get my team to use the little dropdown box next to add task to create the right kind of task.
In the mindset of using AI to meet them where they are at, has anyone found a way to take advantage of task templates?
My use case is simple- I have a project which acts as a calendar where tasks are auto-populated by new projects (created from template.) Sometimes we like to also identify other important events in this calendar although they may not have a project associated with them- like Holidays, or markers to indicate that the date is RESERVED. Additionally, the project is synced to a shared Outlook calendar so externals can view availability. The reservations need to be approval tasks to identify the date as held (so don’t book any events that day) and in the case the event is confirmed, the task is confiremd and automatically converted to a project (by template based on custom field) or rejected (the due date is cleared to remove the task from the Outlook calendar and then removed from the project.)
My template task for these resevation has everything needed, but users prefer to click the date in calendar view and add tasks that way. I would like to train the AI to recognize a held date by the title (when task is created, check the title = hold/reserved/etc, then convert task to template task) That last part is not an current action, but does anyone have clever workarounds to accomplish this? The AI agents are very good at reading and comprehending titles (given the proper timing in the automation - sometimes the reasoning say it has nothing in the title because it’s still being written!) but maybe there’s another way? Thanks!
Re the task template, I’m not sure if AI Studio can understand using a task template (you could try it), but if not, you could just specify the same metadata/subtasks in the AI Studio rule that you already have in the task template. It’s a drag to have two copies, of course, but it’s a workaround.
Re the title still being written:
Did you try this recently? A new feature of rules in Asana is that they pause until you move off the task title. But this may not apply to AI Studio, so…
You could have a “When task added” non-AI Studio rule that simply moves the task to another section, say, and that one will delay until it’s done (hopefully). Then have your AI Studio rule specified as “When task moved to section” which might gate the behavior to eliminate the issue. (I haven’t tested this in your use case, but it’s worked in others, non-AI Studio).
Good suggestions! I think it would be a useful feature to add the option to include delay timing as an adjustable setting in the triggers. When a new task is added (Hold for X seconds) then check if, etc. I usually add a manual run trigger so I can clean things up if the timing wasn’t perfect, though then I waste credits and the rule runs twice without any useful action.
Don’t know why I was so stuck on the idea of triggering the use of a task template when obviously AI was easily able to just replicate the final product. I’ve always struggled to apply task templates successfully… I tried a few different things this time including creating a task from template and using the @ feature to call it in the guidance. I also took a screenshot of the task and included it in the guidance. Seems like this will work nicely! I’ve included the reasoning here just in case it’s interesting to others. Thanks for your suggestions!
