A question recently popped up on the Asana forum: how can you identify tasks for which the deadline has been missed, even though it has been changed since. Turns out the solution is quite easy using the native Rules in Asana.
The trigger you need to use is “Task is overdue”. In this case, the rule will run as soon as the task becomes overdue, and will run only once (unless the due date is changed again). Then there are 3 ways to achieve our goal:
- multi-home the task to a project called “Missed deadlines”
- or comment on the task “This task’s deadline has been missed today”
- or change the value of a custom field “Has missed deadline” to “Yes”
Depending on the option you chose, you can check the “Missed deadlines” project, or the task comments or the task custom field!
However, only using the Asana rules, you can’t create a counter of how many times the deadline was missed.
Does that help?
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Thanks @Bastien_Siebman! I already have rule #2 on My Tasks that hit this condition so I was able to follow your recommendation right away.
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Thank you @Bastien_Siebman, I will take the 3rd recommendation.
I will try to finish my tasks well to achieve my goals.
Thanks for the tip @Bastien_Siebman !
The solution is quite easy indeed. But some people push the deadline before it’s missed (they have a task due for next week, they push it to next month). Any idea how to identify this case?
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@Ludovic_Oudinet I believe for this use case the only solution is a post-analysis, using the API to read through the history of the task and see who changed the date and when.
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Since we have a certain team member who regularly changes Due Dates MULTIPLE times on tasks, I have added a custom field for “Original Due Date” to our form, which populates from the Due Date that is entered by the person who is making the task request. That way, no matter how many times this person (or others on our team) kick the can down the road, we can always see the date that it was supposed to be due to get a realistic picture of how long tasks have been languishing. 
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Is there a way i can pull the expired due dates of subtasks as well ?
If you are using an advanced search, you can decide to see subtasks or not Siddhu?
I mean to say
Can i pull all expired subtaks to to project ?
Can you clarify what you mean by “pull” and also “expired”? Thanks
Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to add a tag “Missed deadline” using a rule? That way it is visible in My Tasks (while custom fields are not).
I mean to say
I want all task expired to be automatically added to another project which I am able to do it now. But I am unable to do the same with substask
@Siddhu_Soma that’s because subtasks don’t belong to the project so rules don’t apply to them. Workaround is to add those subtasks to the main project, in a section at the bottom.
Thanks @Bastien_Siebman !
I also use reporting where i have created a chart for “overdue tasks per user” but i have a question here. The issue is when i have multi home task then it calculate many times the task. I also use this chart for the workload to come per user in the next week and i think we should’nt see the task counted in double (or more) if this task is in many projects since it’s only 1 task. Is there a way to resolve this? (I have premium plan)
Hi @Bastien_Siebman,
Thanks for putting this together for us.
I am having some challenges with number 1. I created a project called Missed Deadlines and created a custom rule in a project that I am trying to track overdue tasks. However, I do not see the overdue task move to the Missed Deadlines project.
Is this because the rule won’t be applied to previously created tasks, and only applies to tasks created after the rule is created?
Any feedback would be helpful.
Yes 100% the reason why you are confused.
And just to add, going forward, such Rules will trigger at around midnight.
