I’m trying to create a “smart” approval process for an ongoing project. The approval for the task needs to go through one of three people, and if any one of them approve it, the task can be marked ‘approved’ and reassigned for completion. Here’s where I run into a problem; I can’t figure out how to create a subtask as an approval in the rule creator. I can create the subtasks, but I can’t change them to approvals. The place I’d normally make the change is grayed out. Any ideas on how to set this?

Welcome, @Christy_McFarland, Are you using the action Create approvals?: [image] Re automation with approvals: [image] How are Approvals different than normal Subtasks? Tips and Tricks @Richard_Parke, I don’t think you’re missing anything. Approval tasks just supply those three choices, but all three are considered “completing” the task because the approval task is just about the approval, not the underlying work being approved. For better or worse. For automation, this doesn’t work well; better to use your own single-select custom field treating the approvals as steps or phases each as an option value. For more manual approaches, I like to use approvals as subtasks becaus… Thanks, Larry

Won’t work in this case, the approvals have to be set up as a subtask to a ‘master’ approval task. Since we only need one approval from one member of the approvals team for any given task, the idea is to set up automation that detects if one of the approvals is completed then close the main approval task: [image] It’s the ‘create approval as a sub-task’ part that’s presenting challenges. As near as I can find, there’s no way to create them as approvals in the automation setup. -Chrystal M. [75x106_71d1e366-dc91-45bf-9d3b-567f15fb4243.png] [prlogo_a2a5c893-c438-4f0b-87e1-42442fc57315.png]

@Christy_McFarland - have you tried using the Create Approvals button that @Larry_Berger_lpb mentioned. The wording of the action name is confusing, but that will actually create an approval as a subtask of the triggering task (i.e. your main approval parent task) and not as a new parent-level approval.

@Christy_McFarland, As @Stephen_Li reiterated, Create approvals are subtasks, but As I mentioned initially, you will run into problems automating in that manner.

Create approval as a subtask in a rule?

Asana Community Ask the Community

Larry_Berger_lpb 25 January 2024 16:02 2

Welcome, @Christy_McFarland,

Are you using the action Create approvals?:

Re automation with approvals:

Thanks,

Larry

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Create approval as a subtask in a rule?

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