Flowsana: workflow automation for your Asana projects

Flowsana Update: Support for Multi-select, People, Date custom fields

I’m happy to announce that Flowsana’s rules now support triggers and actions involving multi-select, people, and date custom field types.

Multi-select and People fields

For trigger conditions, this means you can trigger a rule based on the values in a Multi-select or People field; for example:

Note that unlike Asana’s rule trigger, in Flowsana you have the option to run a rule based on ONLY a certain set of values being set:

For rule actions, you can have a rule set a Multi-value or People field to a certain set of options or add options to any existing ones. Note that unlike Asana’s rule action, you can also REMOVE certain options:

Date fields

With Flowsana, you can now trigger rules based on date custom fields, and you can set a date field - even relative to any other date field!

For triggers, you can run a rule based on a relative date of any date-type custom field. This works the same as triggers on the built-in start date and due date fields. For example:

Note that just like for start and due date, Flowsana will trigger a date-based rule both immediately if a custom date changes, and also at midnight each day if appropriate.

For date actions, we’ve actually created a whole new rule action called Set a date field to…

This action lets you set the date of an Asana date field - either its due date or any custom date - relative to any other date field! Here are a few examples:

and

(Note: the features mentioned here are currently available only when building rules in the Flowsana web portal, because the Asana rule builder doesn’t provide support for external apps to utilize multi-select and people fields. We are hoping this will change in the future!)

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Bravo! Great, thorough implementation!!

Larry

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Woot Woot! Awesome news!

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Nice one @Phil_Seeman! :clap:

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Love flowsana. Still digging in but impressed so far

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Flowsana Update: Skip weekends; Use assignee and due date from parent in subtask rules

I’m here with another Flowsana update to announce…

Skip Weekends

In the “Set a date field” rule action, which was recently introduced, we’ve added a “Skip Weekends” option:

This option insures that whatever date is calculated and set, it will never fall on a Saturday or Sunday. If Flowsana sees that a date it’s about to set would fall on one of those days, it will move it to the following Monday (or if it’s going backwards via a “days before” action, to the previous Friday).


Check if subtask assignee matches the parent's assignee

In the “If task is assigned to…” rule trigger condition, we’ve added the option to check the parent’s assignee:

image

This means you can take an action on a subtask only if it has the same assignee as its parent.


Assign subtask to the parent's assignee

In the rule action for “Assign task to…”, you can now automate setting a subtask to its parent’s assignee:

image


Set a subtask date based on its parent's due date

When using our rule action to set a date, you can now use the parent’s due date as the starting point:


These enhancements are currently available when creating rules in the Flowsana web portal, and within the next few weeks they should also be available within the Asana rule builder when creating custom rules.

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Nice !!!

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Flowsana rule updates: Add a comment; Know about holidays/vacations/time off

We’ve just released two enhancements to Flowsana’s rules capabilities…

"Add a comment" rule action

You can now add a comment to the task that triggers the rule, and of course you specify the text of that comment.

Also, if you use Flowsana’s Variable Substitution feature and include {task.Assignee} or {project.Name} in the comment text, Flowsana will convert that to an @mention.


"If the task falls during a holiday or time off... " rule trigger condition

That’s right, you can now specify holidays and time off for your users, and create Flowsana rules that respond to a task being assigned to someone when they will be away from work.

For this rule condition, you just create a calendar project which identifies peoples’ time off, and the rule uses this information. See this Flowsana help article for full details on how this rule trigger condition works.

You can use this trigger condition along with the new rule action to add a task comment which alerts the assignee of a conflict with their time off, or to send them an email notification, for example.

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I can’t wait to test the updates. I was waiting for the comment rule. Thank you for your great work.

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FYI, we just made an update to the Flowsana rule trigger condition for our rule

If the task falls during a holiday or time off…

You can now use the Assignee field to identify who a time-off entry applies to, instead of using a people-type custom field. Just omit any people-type custom fields from the “time-off calendar” project; if Flowsana does not find any people custom fields in that project, it will automatically use the Assignee field instead.

See this Flowsana help article for full details on how this rule trigger condition works.

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Hey @Phil_Seeman - new Flowsana user here :slight_smile:

I have 2 custom date fields (“start date” and “est. completion”). Additionally I have a custom number field (“estimate in days”).

Would it be possible for me to create a rule where the “est. completion” date is automatically calculated by adding the “start date” and the “estimate in days”?

Hi @Diego_Solorzano,

Flowsana doesn’t currently do formulas so that’s not available. (Are you on an Asana Business or Enterprise subscription? If so, you can do it using the new Advanced Formulas feature in Asana.)

Thanks @Phil_Seeman ! I see it! thank you so much :slight_smile:

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Hi Phil,
I have same issue as Polo_josh re blank subtasks and would appreciate any guidance
Br
Sarah

Hi @Sarah_Calnan,

Actually what I asked Josh was to send the question to support@flowsana.net so we can fully answer it there; if you can do that as well, that would be great as we can be sure to address the specifics of your scenario. Thanks!

I have signed up to Flowsana, but I cannot see any Flowsana Triggers when creating a new Custom Rule.
Further, the Flowsana Actions that I can see don’t seem to be usable, e.g. Set a Custom Field only allows setting of one field, a basic Text field. I need to be able to change the value of a Single-Select field. I understood that was what Flowsana added to the mix.
Does Flowsana need more time to setup? I did connect Asana and Flowsana…
We have a Business account, that should be compatible, shouldn’t it?
This is a high priority issue for us.

Hi @Cameron_Knowlton,

Right - Asana does not provide any capability for 3rd party integrations to access the Triggers portion of their Rule Builder (only a few specific apps that Asana has contracted with are there). To utilize Flowsana-specific filters, you should build your rule in the Flowsana web portal.

You can definitely use it to set a single-select type of field (or any custom field type for that matter!). If you’re not seeing all of the custom fields that you’ve added to a project, first make sure that the field is actually added to that project (that is, it’s not just in your org library but not in the specific project).

If it’s in the project but you added it after you created the project, you’ll want to do this refresh: I added custom field(s) to a project, but they’re not showing in Flowsana for that project as Asana does not automatically inform external apps when custom fields are added to a project.

If that refresh doesn’t help, please shoot us an email to support@flowsana.net and we can definitely help you out further.

ref: “put selected project under flowsana workflow control”
So, we have to completely disable Asana workflows to use Flowsana?

No, not at all! You can use a combination of Asana and Flowsana rules; just make sure they don’t conflict.

Within Flowsana, I try to use this for my action:
Then set this custom field on the task

… how do I save the rule?

There is a button named “Put Selected Project Under Flowsana Worflow Control”, but I don’t want Flowsana to run everything, just to augment Asana.

Should this button just say “Save”, or is there something else that will be affected?

The interface is quite confusing.

Cameron Knowlton
iGods Internet Marketing Inc.

cameron@igods.com
P: 250.382.0226