I want tasks created from a form to include predetermined subtasks

Tips and Tricks
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#1

Hi,

We would like to use a form on a site to let a user fill in some fields and when that form is sent it will create a task in Asana. So far so good… This is not an issue.
I can chose to have a bunch of fields in this automatically crated taks but what I really want is a bunch of automatically created subtasks.
These specific tasks in this project will always have a couple of steps that needs to be done so to manually create all these subtasks every time feels very old-school!

I have searched for this and all I can find is threads with users also asking for a similar function but not any solution. There seem to be a “add-on” you can subscribe to called “flowsana” but that’s not what I’m looking for, I need less accounts, subscriptions and services, not more.

I have also seen some answers on how to copy or duplicate a task that you can call your template task. Really don’t want to do that!. I’m looking for automation bu I cant find it?. I hope I’m just bad at finding it and that it is a function is actually just hiding from me… :wink:

The thing is that a colleague as quite sure he had stumbled upon this function in Asana way back. It might be very wrong or could it be that has been a function that’s been removed?

#2

Hi,

What you expect to achieve cannot be done with Asana alone, and at the moment Flowsana (or maybe Zapier with some heavy lifting) is the only way…

#3

I never ever saw that feature, and I have been using Asana for many years… :confused:

1 Like
#4

OK.
Is it possible to program my own function for this using the info from the API pages?
I see there is a section about creating subtasks but before I jump down that rabbit hole I better check to see that this is actually stuff I can implement between our site and the project in Asana?
https://developers.asana.com/docs/create-a-subtask

#5

Hi @Emanuel_Teljemo,

I can cconfirm this function has never existed in Asana natively. Apart from the workarounds and third party tools mentioned by @Bastien_Siebman (in this post @Phil_Seeman who developed Flowsana explains how you can achieve this with his tool) I don’t believe there is currently a way to do this. I’m not an API expert, but hopefully @Phil_Seeman or @Bastien_Siebman can answer this question!

If you haven’t yet, I’d recommend upvoting Forms: Ability to have questions trigger a task/subtask creation & option to share/manipulate at form level

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#6

Hi @Emanuel_Teljemo I actually automated this myself the other week using the API and have been meaning to write up an explanation. I’ll make a little video and post later today. The short answer is: use the Asana Webhook and subscribe to new tasks being created; have a template task somewhere with the subtasks and other details that you want; when the webhook is triggered, loop through the template task and add new subtasks to the task that triggered the webhook. I use Tray.io as a general purpose automation tool, and they make it easy, though Tray isn’t cheap. If you have your own server you can set this up fairly easily too.

Subscribing to an Asana webhook is a bit more complex than using the rest of their API, but it’s not too bad. I’ll try to reply later today with more detail. With this automation I also checked if the submitter email address was in my organization, and if so, added them as a collaborator to the task!

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#7

Thanks for sharing @Anthony_Tamalonis :+1:t3:

1 Like
#8

@Emanuel_Teljemo oh, and one critical piece to keep in mind… Creating new subtasks under a task will trigger the Asana Webhook and loop out of control! You need to check that the task created is not a subtask (parent=null), and ignore it otherwise!