Flowsana hashtag automation - now sets "My Tasks" section

[Phil_Seeman]

Continuing the discussion from Help with follow up emails:

@Phil_Seeman

Hey @Bastien_Siebman, thanks, this gave me a great idea!

Currently you can already accomplish the first two of those things - setting a date and assigning to you - right from the email without having to go to Asana at all, using Flowsana’s Hashtag Automation. But Flowsana was not setting the task’s status, so it would end up in “New Tasks” on the My Tasks list.

Your comment made me realize that I should also set the status - so I’ve just added that to Hashtag Automation! Now if you assign the task via a hashtag, and you set a due date or time, Flowsana will set the status so that it automatically shows up in the right section in My Tasks. (This enhancement will be rolled out to production tonight.)

Thanks for giving me that idea!

[Phil_Seeman]

@lpb

@Phil_Seeman, That’s great, but shouldn’t the Marked For status be up to the user? What about today upcoming later being settable by the user instead? I might have a task with a due date two weeks out that I want marked for Today because I need to start working on it today.

Thanks,

Larry

I was going to implement that at first, but then I changed to the current automated approach for simplicity’s sake. But you’re right; the user should really have the flexibility to set the status to whatever they want.

Question: would you prefer to have the status not set at all if you don’t explicitly set it; or would you prefer to have it set automatically based on the date if you don’t explicitly set it, but you could override that if you did explicitly provide a status hashtag?

[Bastien_Siebman]

Nice addition!

[lpb]

@Phil_Seeman

Question: would you prefer to have the status not set at all if you don’t explicitly set it; or would you prefer to have it set automatically based on the date if you don’t explicitly set it, but you could override that if you did explicitly provide a status hashtag?

I bet I’ll get some pushback, but so long as Asana’s model is to make new activity appear in “New” I feel your default behavior should be the same. I’d prefer that and I think it’s simple, consistent, and understandable.

If there’s a lot of demand for setting Marked For based on due date, I think you should offer than as as Flowsana setting set by default either on or off as you wish, but able to be configured.

Thanks!

[Phil_Seeman]

@lpb

so long as Asana’s model is to make new activity appear in “New” I feel your default behavior should be the same.

That’s a good point. I tend to agree with you. My general philosophy is to be as consistent and “in sync” with Asana as much as possible, and your suggestion would probably best do that here.

I’m going to think on it some more today (and see if I get any more feedback here) but I’m currently thinking I’ll add the three special hashtags of today, upcoming, and later (which, consistent with Flowsana hashtag design, could also be specified as ~today, ~upcoming, and ~later if you needed to avoid a collision with a tag or project of that same name); and if none of those special hashtags is included, just leave it as going into “New Tasks”.

[Phil_Seeman]

I’ve added this functionality to Flowsana’s hashtag automation feature. The way it works is: if you’re using hashtag automation to specify an assignee and you want to also specify what section the task should be placed into within the user’s My Tasks list, you can include one of these in the task description:
!today
!upcoming
!later

If you don’t include any of those phrases, the task will go into the New Tasks section.

---

#me
I also added one other new feature to hashtag automation: you can use #me to assign the task to yourself. Note that this only applies to the user whose Asana user is linked to the Flowsana account that added a hashtag automation workflow to the project in Flowsana.