Custom Task Templates

So you would like to duplicate a task (title, description, tagsā€¦) but not duplicate the fact that the task is in some projects?

This would be so great if we could assign a task template to a form. User submits all the information we need for a task, and then all the tasks are already there.

+1

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Isnā€™t it what a Asana Form is about?

How we use Asana
Our customer success team uses a project board in list view for tracking customer actions and initiatives. Each customer has their own project board where we store all tasks associated with that customer. We use custom fields for priority and progress, rules for automating repeatable actions, comments for providing updates on tasks, and more.

The problem & suggested solution
Many of our tasks tend to follow a pattern in that they consist of similar sub-tasks (ie. schedule workshop, send agenda, complete prereqs, write up report, etc.), so being able to have task templates that include the repeatable sub-tasks would not only save us time, but would eliminate human error. As it stands, steps are easily missed/forgotten because the sub-tasks have to be manually added; or the sub-tasks feature isnā€™t used at all because itā€™s too much manual effort for such a repeatable list of actions.

What weā€™ve tried:
We have tried many workarounds such as creating a separate project board purely for templates and duplicating a pre-made task with all relevant sub-tasks; but although this means things arenā€™t missed, it requires people to remember to put it in the right customer list and remove it from the template project board to avoid confusion. Weā€™ve also tried using rules, but these do not work with sub-tasks. Alternatively, weā€™ve also stored a basic list in another tool (ie. Google Doc or Sheet) and just copy/pasted each time. None of which are great solutions for this frustrating, yet similar issue.

Hi @Fraja_Hodges, thanks for taking the time to share your feedback with us! We already have a thread about this topic in the #productfeedback category. Iā€™ve gone ahead and merged your thread with Task templates in addition to project templates! to centralize feedback. Iā€™ll make sure to keep the main thread updated as soon as I have news about this feature.

Hi @Fraja_Hodges,
FYI Flowsana has a rule action that adds a set of subtasks from a template you define; see this forum post for more info if interested.

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!

3 Likes

Here me out Community Lovers!!

Wouldnā€™t it be great if we had the ability to build a task template not only a project template.
For example:
I build one task that has a saved sub tasks under it. Every time I want to add to different projects, I can type in the name of this task and it will automatically populate all the sub tasks under it.
I know I can copy a task, but as asana is about efficiencies, it would be cool to have that option.

Any thoughts?

@Rashad_Issa While not being a task template per se, [Sendana Add]https://www.sendanatools.com/ may be able to facilitate what your are trying to do. Currently it is limited to one layer of subtasks but you can build a project with the one tasks and subtasks in it and Sendana Add gives you the option of add Tasks only or Creating A New Project. Adding this master task as long as subtasks do not exceed one level (for the time being) will be added to your target Project. You can save as many CSV files as you want and examples are ready to download at the hosted site.

Hi, Can you please consider adding the functionality of allowing you to push any changes made to a project template out across all projects created originally using this template? Cheers.

That promise to be one hell of a development challenge. What if someone removed a task that changed, do you add it again? What if someone was fine with the original task name and you change it in the template? What if you remove a task in the template, donā€™t you think people would get angry to have tasks disappearing? I am not sure miroring the template is a good idea. Warning any template user on the other hand why notā€¦

What do you think?

I have created a custom project template and now I am using this template with a few projects. If I want to update something in the template itself, how do I get it to update the projects that are using that template?

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You donā€™t, that is not possible. I thought about it and this is hard to wrap your head around the concept because you might not always want to have the changes propagate. This is a tough one, my guess is that Asana will probably never go this wayā€¦

Bastien
Asana Certified Pro, consultant, author and developer

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Hi guys, Iā€™m merging this thread with Push project template updates to existing projects to gather feedback, feel free to add your vote on this main thread!

My team has created a project template that we copy for each new project that follows the same exact steps (we have MANY projects that follow the same steps). Over time, the template changes, so we have to go into each individual project and manually update, which takes a lot of time and creates a lot of issues since our teams have so many contributors. We might have anywhere from 10-30 projects open at one time, and they each contain several dozen tasks. Outdated projects has become a real problem.

Would it be possible (if this already exists, please smack me) to be able to push project updates from one project (used as a template) to another (live)? The way I see it working is this:
When a templateā€™s taskā€™s description is changed (or subtasks are added, etc.), the UI gives an option to push changes to other projects (which I can select from).
When I push, the live project is changed to include the updates.
Iā€™d have the option to view each affected taskā€™s description pre-change, just like I can do now.

Thoughts?

5 Likes

Thank you so much for your feedback @Josh_A! We already have a thread on this topic in the Forum, so I have gone ahead and merged your post to consolidate feedback on this topic. Feel free to add your vote to this main thread by hitting the ā€œVoteā€ button at the top of the thread. :slight_smile:

I too wish this were a possibility. While I understand the complexity of this type of functionality, it would save an immense amount of time for me and my team. We have over 100 projects separated into different teams that all follow a set of 6 complex templates. Itā€™s extremely time consuming that once we make a change in our process (which happens frequently) that I have to spend weeks manually updating each project.

Hereā€™s some suggestions for possible workarounds that I see people mentioning as to why this would be near impossible:

  • Have overwrite settings in the template. i.e: Set which fields/attributes are to be overwritten/replaced for tasks with existing info
  • Have a note in the that any existing information or tasks in the existing projects will not be removed

Basically check if fields or attributes exist. If they donā€™t, add them; if they do, overwrite or skip them based on selected preferences. Again, I understand this functionality is more complex than it sounds, but it would literally chop days of work off my plate every month. Iā€™m sure it would for many others as well, this is a feature that doesnā€™t exist in many PM tools and would be a HUGE differentiator as far as I can tell.

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I know this has not been talked about for a year, but hereā€™s a spin. We have existing projects for customers and they would like now do a new website. Is there a way to take a template and the associated tasks and have them appear in an existing project? Iā€™d prefer to not open a new project, and keep all of the tasks under the same client project - if possible.

Thank you!
Eric

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 youā€™re looking for at the moment!

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