Custom Task Templates

Hi @Eric_Cook, the quickest way to achieve this would be to create a new (temporary) Project from your template and multi-home all tasks from this new project in your existing one. Once added to your new project, you can remove these tasks from the new (temporary) Project you created and delete this project. I know this is not ideal, but I believe it is the best and quickest way to achieve what you’re looking for at the moment!

2 Likes

I don’t underestimate that this is a difficult thing to implement. I know it’s something I already need like the others. If it’s any help, I know this is something that I could do with Manifest.ly checklists. It would be great if it could be done with templates and projects too.

+1 for this features as well. We use Process Street (https://www.process.st/) for this one feature. When we’re doing a new process, we don’t always know what all the tasks should be until we go through it 5 or 10 times. Updating existing cards gets very tedious and error prone. Process Street has a good UI for when you make changes to the template, they ask if you want to update active cards based on that template. If Asana had this type UI, it would be amazing. Its so close already.

1 Like

+1 from me as well. I came here looking for this exact feature, only to learn it doesn’t exist.

Usually it take a few passes to complete the build-out of a project template. When tasks come up to add to the template, would be great to have a quick way to copy any new tasks added to a template project to all the projects that have been created from that template – that way, if you’ve got a template and 2-3 live projects derived from that template, you don’t have to duplicate the task 2-3 times in order to capture it in all iterations of the project.

1 Like

Hi @Tyler_Burr, thanks for taking the time to share your feedback with us! We already have a thread related to this topic so I’ve gone ahead and merged your post with Push project template updates to existing projects to centralize feedback. Don’t forget to upvote!

I would imagine the best course of action is to do what Clickup did when they added this feature; they made it optional to turn on or off.

The philosophy being that each individual organization can decide how they want to handle this process (including the potential problems you brought up) as they see fit.

That being said, Clickup has task templates as well, so that mitigates a majority of the problems associated with pushing updates from a project template across a whole project.

Hopefully Asana will add this sort of feature in the next couple of years.

It would be incredibly useful to have Task templates as well as Project templates. My team has endless tasks within our projects which all have the same few subtasks, and being able to automate this process instead of creating them manually over and over again would save us a lot of time!

3 Likes

It would be incredibly useful to have Task templates as well as Project templates. My team has endless tasks within our projects which all have the same few subtasks, and being able to automate this process instead of creating them manually over and over again would save us a lot of time!

4 Likes

This still doesn’t exist?

We are looking to create a standardized task template with subtasks.

For example:

Case study:
Customer quote
Review
Layout
Review
Post internal
Post external
etc.
etc.

The only workaround I can think of would be to create a project and create these tasks as templates and then to copy them over to our current project.

Yes, we badly need this too! Creating template tasks is a workaround that might work for ordinarily tech proficient teams, but with non techy folk it’s too much of an ask. We need it to be much simpler, and available within a new task.

We do this in a number of ways depending on the need.

  1. If you all have not done so yet - you should try Flowsana by @Phil_Seeman
    You can create a Pre populated task and use it as a template.

  2. Using Zapier you can create Subtasks. The Zap will be New Task in Project > Subtask 1 > Subtask 2 > Description.
    It works but kills Zapier actions like crazy, so makes sense only if you are on a very high tier.

  3. Using Zapier you can create different task templates.

  • you create a project, where your work will be
  • you create hidden (we call them buffer projects) project for each task template
  • Zapier watches each of those buffer projects. So if you add the task to one of them it will create one set of subtasks, description, attachments, etc, if added to the second project it will be a different set, etc
    You can add the task in the buffer projects in many ways:
  • manual - you create the work task in the work project > Tab+P > add it to the right buffer project > Zapier picks it up > adds the data. This way you can use templates only for the tasks you want.
  • via custom fields and Rules - you create a custom field with drop downs [template 1], [template 2], etc. You create Rules which state that when the custom field has Value [template 1] > add to buffer project 1 > Zapier watches and does the job.
  • via tags - when you add a tag it is added to the buffer project > Zapier watches and does the job

In all cases above you create the work task and then you update the same task. So you just save the manual work.

  1. There is a more interesting way, that needs Rules in which case you have only one task which will be the “generator” but this requires a lot of manual work.
  • You have a work project
  • you have one task which is the Generator
  • you have a separate project with all task templates (best to be one project with all templates in one place)
  • you create a Zap where for each time something happens to the Generator, another task is copied

So here you can copy a set of tasks, or you can copy one by one.

The manual part is in two places:

  • you need to create a Zap for each new project, unlike the one above, where the Zaps are fixes for the buffer projects
  • you will need to redo some actions on the generator project if you want to do two times the same thing.

For example

  • via tags - each time you add a tag to the generator task > copy a predefined task. This way you will add all you want as tags, like Tag 1, Tag 2, Tag 3, etc. and each tag will make you a template task. If however you want to add template task 1 two times, you need to add Tag 1 > you wait for the automation > you delete Tag 1 > you add it again, etc

  • via adding it to a buffer project (either manual, via custom field or a tag) - again if you want to repeat the action of making a template task twice you will need to add the task to the buffer project > wait for the automation > remove it > add it again

  1. Final option I know of is via Zapier and webhooks, where you shoot a request for a task to be copied when something happens (anything like explained above)

Frankly:

  • try with template projects
  • try Flowsana first (I think there is a trial, @Phil_Seeman can add)
  • only then try some of the automations above - they are not complex, but when they become many it is very hard to maintain them.

Note - you will most likely need a paid Zapier plan and most likely premium or business Asana

Thanks for the mention, @IvanStaykov! Yes, Flowsana comes with a free 30-day trial (no credit card entry needed to try it).

Just to add to the above - if you use Flowsana or something like that you will be able to solve a number of Asana shortcomings, not just this one. Generally people like @Phil_Seeman, @Bastien_Siebman and others try to provide solutions to gaps, and with one solution you will be able to fill in many gaps.

For sure we need to be very vocal to Asana, but you need to also be realistic that Asana is in a completely different business cycle - they are focused solely on market share > new users. So they will be very active in the next two years in launching new features and views, which are not with much functionality. Only once the rate of new customer acquisition diminishes, they will focus on adding functionality to features. E
ven the My Tasks revamp, which was announced to developers is again nice, but off target - they are not adding rules to it, basically it is just a normal project - it is great, but nothing new, nothing groundbreaking, like you would expect.

So they are launching things with the minimum needed to work and not investing more into it at the moment, as they want to become a place where you can manage more things first and a place where you can manage it easily second. It is classic in the project management area, drives me crazy, but the only way to become really big. Also now that they are public they will have a huge pressure for revenue growth which comes from new customers or upgrades. New customers see only the features, they cannot see the small details that make those features useless, not until they sign up. However if you manage many things in Asana (projects, tasks, goals, CRM, pipeline, etc.) they are increasing heavily the price of leaving.

So small tools and workarounds will become central to the system (like Salesforce, etc.) and this is the future unfortunately. Gone is the nice tool we all started with years ago and is becoming an ecosystem with a lot of gaps, but if you look at the world it is the way things are.

2 Likes

@IvanStaykov very well put :+1:

Yes! That would be awesomeee!
Very useful feature.

+1. Genuinely amazing that something that seems like a really important core feature doesn’t exist yet. But at least we have appreciation unicorns.

Based on someone’s suggestion on these forums, I’ve created set task lists in Excel, with some formulas so I can just enter the task name and auto generate a list of subtasks. But that in itself is a bit time-consuming and has its shortcomings. Not really ideal having to use a workaround like that to introduce basic functionality to your enterprise-level software.

3 Likes

:unicorn: :sweat_smile:

Hi everyone!

I’m thrilled to announce we’re launching Task Templates! :tada: Our first version of Task Templates allows you to create a templated task with preset subtasks, assignees, and due dates. Once you’ve created a Task Template, you and your teams have the option to use the templates each time you want to add a task – much like how it works for project templates. And, this means that you won’t find errant tasks that show up in your My Tasks list just because someone duplicated it or the template task needs to be assigned to you.

Please find more details in our recent announcement:

We hope you enjoy this update, and we look forward to your feedback! :slight_smile:

5 Likes

This topic was automatically closed after 8 days. New replies are no longer allowed.