I just learned how to use the new feature where you can put due dates into a custom template, then when you create a project from the template, you can set a start date or end date for the project and it will automatically set all of the due dates. That is something we have been waiting for and it is great! BUT I have a question and that is…the due dates that you assign in the template now show up as a “task” in each team member’s My Tasks list with the “old” due date set. I thought maybe when the task was in a template, it wouldn’t actually show up as a task due on that date in the task list. How can I use these templates if all the of the template tasks from which the new project is created show up the same as a “regular task” awaiting completion?
Hi @Brooke_Behar,
Yes, you’ve discovered this behavior/limitation of Asana. Here is a thread all about it - be sure to upvote it to register your desire to see it changed:
At the moment, the main suggested way to deal with these tasks is given here:
FYI my Flowsana integration also provides a solution.
OK, great. Thank you for directing me to other posts that help with this. The way the majority of our team chooses to use Asana is to use My Tasks sorted by due date and we don’t reference the “Later” and “Upcoming” expandable areas. From what I can see, if there is not a fix, it is easier to go back to my initial way of doing things and just create the project from the template and populate the due dates manually. At this point, that is preferable to having the template tasks show up in our “My Task” list.
Hi Brooke,
I realized the same thing recently. I love the ability to autopopulate the dates in a template, but my vigilant team was marking all their template tasks as complete. The workaround I’m doing is to keep the dates in a template populated, but not the assignments. I drop the name or role of each task assignee into the task description so that when the template is used, the dates can auto-populate and I just bulk assign the tasks manually.
Agree it would be great if there was a way to differentiate the template tasks so they could hold assignees as well.
That’s a good point…so I just need to decide whether the dates or the assignee are more of a pain to populate each time 
I only have three people I need to assign to the template I was using so I will try to do it this way next time. Thanks!
@Kristi_Barron and @Brooke_Behar,
If you continue using due dates but leave the assignee field unassigned for the reasons you mentioned it might help to add a tag corresponding to the intended assignee’s name for each task (which you can do with multi-select to speed it up.)
When you instantiate the template you can search (paid plan) for the pseudo-assignee tags in that project, or click each tag (free) to get a list of tasks which can be multi-selected to do the actual assignment (and remove the tag).
Hope that might help as a workaround,
Larry
That’s a great idea, thank you!