We have a rule (in several projects) which sets a status field equal to “done” as soon as a task is finished. This works fine, but there is a sort of bug when this is a reoccuring task: since the Asana rule applies and then the next task in the series is created, it inherits the “done” property. This is not correct, since we have just created a new task which is not done.
A possible workaround for this is to be able to set delays for the action of Asana rules. In this case, a delay of one minute should be sufficient. Namely, the new task is created (this takes usually less than a minute) and then the old finished task gets “done” as its status, but not the new one.
A delay could be also useful for other situations.
Thanks for sharing your feedback with us, @Martin_Brandenburg! Just to make sure I understand the issue, could you confirm what happen to the complete task? Is the new task created added to the Done section? Thanks!
Hi Emily. I was refering to custom fields, not to sections. The completed task gets the status field option “done”, which is the expected behavior. Since only after this the new task is created, it inherits this option. It is in the same section, but has “done” as its status.
EDIT: I was just trying to recreate this issue in a small test project, and it did not happen … The status field for the new task was empty.
Upvoting: I came looking for a way to delay rule processing in the case where someone s adding a task to a section and still needs to add other details. I get Asana notifications with half filled in details, and it is a nuisance. If the rule could be designed with a delay or waiting period, it would help a lot in reducing the noise of notifications.
I think this is a pretty simple problem that is making task creation difficult. If you have a rule in place that say, moves a task to a certain section, project, upon creation, that rule fires as soon as you stop typing. Assuming you are creating the task in the task list-view. It moves the ticket and you lose focus on the input.
If rules could be applied at any time that is not immediately when the task is created then the User Experience would be improved greatly. Thanks!
+1 on this. We just connected Asana to Slack, and the triggers happen too fast. It should be some to add a delay, as they do for instance in Zapier. You choose to wait one minute after task creation, and only then it triggers the rest of the process.
+1 on this! A simple delay on the activation of rules would be awesome, we have a bunch of rules that triggers comments tagging different people based on the value of a custom field.
Problem is, when someone misclick and choose the wrong value, and then immediately changes it to the value they actually wanted, both the rule for the incorrect value AND the rule for the correct value triggers, tagging the wrong people for no reason.
It’s not a huge issue, but being able to set an activation delay on the rules would be nice.
Ideally I’d like to be able to set my rules to only trigger if a specific condition is true for more than a specific amount of time. setting that delay to something like 5 seconds for example, would ensure that if someone misclick and then immediately choose another value, we don’t have multiple rules triggering, potentially affecting each other
Currently, rules in Asana are triggered as soon as a task is added to a project, which can lead to unintended rule executions. For example, when a user accidentally creates a new task by clicking on an empty row at the end of a section, it immediately triggers rules—even though the task was not intended. These triggers also count toward the rule limit for the workspace.
It would be highly beneficial to have an option to delay rule triggers until one of the following conditions is met:
The task has been edited (e.g., assigned, description added, etc.).
A few seconds have passed since the task was created, allowing users to quickly undo or delete tasks created by mistake before any rules are executed.
This feature would help prevent unnecessary rule executions and keep rule quotas more manageable.
I would find it helpful if there were an option for rule triggers to be delayed by say 10-30 seconds.
There are times where I accidentally do something that will trigger a rule and I don’t want that to happen.
For example, marking a task complete by accident when trying to drag it to a new due date on Timeline or Calendar mode is my top culprit. I have a LOT of projects where there’s a rule that removes a task from a project when it’s marked complete.
So, the real problem here is my butter fingers, but I think many of us would find it helpful if we had an option to delay a rule from executing unless the trigger remains intact for say 10-30 seconds.
Having that wonderful little popup that says “Asana is running rule XYZ” is fantastic, it could give us a brief countdown timer and an “Undo trigger” button as a possibility.
I just tried to create a rule to sync milestones to a shared team Outlook calendar, however the rule starts running as soon as the milestone is created, before I can add a date to the milestone in Asana. Therefore the Outlook event never gets created. This renders the Outlook/Asana integration completely useless and explains why there are so many reports of it being so buggy.
+1 with another use case - when integrating with third party services, it would be helpful to be able to tell Asana to wait 10-30-60 seconds before executing on a secondary part of the rule. For example, when syncing to Jira, we need to give Asana time to create the Jira ticket (which can take 10-15 seconds) before applying some conditions that will force another sync with Jira. Currently, it all happens before the Jira ticket is fully created, meaning the fields are missed. I wonder if Asana AI Studio might be able to handle a time delay?
Hi everyone, thanks for sharing your feedback and advocating for this feature. Today, I’m excited to announce we just launched Scheduled Triggers! A powerful new automation feature that lets you create time-based rules to keep your workflows running smoothly without manual intervention.
Explore the full details and add your questions in our announcement thread here:
Please note you can also leverage the ability to run rules manually as soon as you want the action to trigger!
I have a specific use case that’s driving me crazy. We have an intake project that lands based on a form filled out by a user outside our department (and outside Asana) to let us know when a new doctor or provider is going to be joining our health system. That created task is assigned to a strategist on our team, who evaluates and then sets specific “Deliverables” in a multi-select field based on the marketing needs of the individual. I’m trying to have the task moved to a section and add some additional items once the “Deliverables” field is updated. But the rule moves the task after the very first thing is checked and immediately triggers the rule for that section. When doing it in List view, it throws off the flow for the user to change the field.
Is there another way I’m not finding that we could do this? My current workaround is going to be having the strategist just move it manually to the next section once they are done adding the deliverables. But I’d like to do our best to streamline this for our users.
You won’t be able to keep the same trigger you have now for the reason you mention.
It sounds like the user will have to indicate when it’s ready for the rule to take effect. Moving it a section works (rule uses the section change as the trigger). Or making the rule only triggered manually works; no extra section needed. Or a custom task type with statuses/phases that the user could change (but that would affect the rest of the workflow. Or an Action single-select custom field.
A powerful new automation feature that lets you create time-based rules to keep your workflows running smoothly without manual intervention.