I am running into a problem where I can’t edit a rule that my teammate created, even though she has confirmed that the box is unchecked for “Only you can edit this rule.”
Both of us are Project Admins in the project.
I could start a new rule, but all the triggers and conditions are the same and I only want to add one additional item to the “do this” section, so it doesn’t make sense to add a whole new rule for that.
Why am I seeing this error?
“You can pause or activate this rule. Only [NAME] can edit this rule’s triggers and actions.”
Looking into this further, it looks like there’s a consistent pattern where all the rules I can’t edit are ones that have a “Slack - Send channel message” component in the “Do this” section.
B3.7 You can edit a rule that someone else created (provided the box is unchecked for “Only you can edit this rule”), BUT not if one of the “do this” parameters is to push a message to Slack.
I’ve solved this for now by just pausing my teammate’s rule and building an identical rule with the extra parameter I needed, but just wanted to share in case it was helpful to anyone else.
Thanks! I wouldn’t say I found a solution per se. More like “I got myself unstuck via a workaround so I’m ok now,” plus a hypothesis for what was going on (which might be helpful to others who run into this in the future).
I would still advocate for this being added as one of the “BUTs” if that list is still being maintained.
I’m finding this is a big issue as well for my organization.
It seems a bit haphazard that a rule can’t be edited even with that box unchecked. Doesn’t really follow the logic of the UI which quite literally has the checkbox for a reason and is confusing to end-users.
I think there’s something about the Asana-Slack connector that’s causing this. I’ve noticed that every person individually has to add Asana to a Slack channel before they can create any rules that push notifications to that Slack channel.
In other words - Let’s say you and I are together in zoom, working on building rules for a single project in Asana. I create a rule for “If task is moved to Section 1, send a channel message to Slack.”
When I go to publish my rule, I can’t. Asana tells me I have to add Asana to that Slack channel first. So I do that, and then I publish my rule, and all is well and good.
Then you build an identical separate rule in the same project for for “If task is moved to Section 2, send a channel message to Slack.” (Let’s assume you’re sending the notification to the same Slack channel I just did. So the only difference between your rule and mine is that it’s in a different section and you created the rule, not me.)
Even though I’ve just added Asana to the Slack channel, you can’t publish your rule. You have to go into Slack and add Asana to the Slack channel again yourself. THEN you can publish your rule.
I think this “exact-person-specific” behavior is what is disrupting any rule that has “Send channel message to Slack” running in it, making it so that only the exact person who created the rule has the ability to modify it, regardless of whether the box is checked or unchecked for “Only you can edit this rule.”
It doesn’t make sense to me that it would be like this, but hopefully this hypothesis sheds light on the problem and how to fix it or work around it.
Suggestion for Asana developers:
Can you look into whether my hypothesis holds any water and see if there’s any simple tweak to the Asana-Slack connector that would make it so that people can edit other people’s Slack rules?
Suggestion for teams wanting to get around this:
Isolate any “Push to Slack” rules so that’s the ONLY thing that rule does. (In other words, build two rules where the “When” and “Check if” sections are identical. In the “Do this” section, one rule ONLY has the slack notification set up. The other rule has all the other parameters of what you want to be triggered.) This is extra work , but it could minimize the hassle of team members running into the inability to edit a rule and having to rebuild an entire rule just to modify one of the other parameters.
Hello, also seeing precisely the same issue in a rule that has the Asana-Dropbox integration.
After deleting the step with the Dropbox integration, another user can then edit the rule.
While an integration may be tied to a specific user account, the step in the rule should indicate whose account, and allow making modifications to the rule or deleting/replacing the integration step.
One hint I’ve learned is to check the “View change history” below the rule’s name in the rule editor.
As this will show the last person to have updated the Rule, which in theory should be whose account it’s tied to. It also shows who originally created the rule.
Not a perfect solution, but a step in the right direction.
You theory is correct from my experience using other external actions.
The account who is creating the rule for the first time, is the one who’s authorization is used to enable the external action. The rule is then locked to the user who created the external action until they themselves remove that external action.
Therefore, User in Asana who creates External Action = User in External App (generally)
Unless you’re using something different like webhooks or an API call/post in which you specify a different user.
What I’ve started doing is created an “Admin” account, which I use to create and manage all of the rules and automations to make things silo’d to that account. This way if users join/leave the organization, it doesn’t affect our ability to manage external action rules.
Just had to rebuild and then delete a bunch of rules we got locked out of editing after a user left our org.
It helps it to makes sense if the rule is locked to the user who created the external action because it was THEIR access credentials that were used to establish that external action.
Thought I’d let you know since we’re on a similar topic that Project Templates do not allow for External Action Rules.
However, you can duplicate an existing project (which you would use anyways to create a Project Template in the first place ) and this will duplicate all of your External Action Rules.
Keep in mind, whichever profile you use to duplicate the Project will be who the External Action Rules become locked to. So using the tip I just suggested, I’d recommend having that “Admin” account be the one to duplicate the project.
) and this will duplicate all of your External Action Rules.