I’m happy to announce a new feature: Manual Rule Triggers!
Rolling out now is a new rule trigger (“Manually triggered”) available in the “When …” section in the rules builder:
All “Manually triggered” rules can be easily and manually activated either 1) via the task’s right-click menu in the project list view, or 2) via the task detail pane’s “…” overflow menu. Both are shown below, and both add a “Manual trigger rule/automation” menu item with a submenu consisting of all the project’s “Manually triggered” rules available for running. You specify the submenu item labels that appear here by entering a 30-character title in the rule’s definition (not shown in screenshots).
Until now, automations have been designed to run automatically without requiring proactive work from users. We’re now introducing the ability to create rules that you can run manually. You can now set up rules that are triggered either a) Manually, b) Automatically (as before), or c) both.
Launch Status: Gradual Rollout, starting on the 16th of October
Pricing Tier:
Available on Asana Starter, Advanced, Enterprise, and Enterprise+ tiers, as well as legacy tiers Premium, Business, and Legacy Enterprise.
FAQs
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Can I manually run auto-triggered rules?: Yes, You can now set up rules that are triggered either a) Manually, b) Automatically (as before), or c) both.
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Will this take the place of my “Actions” single-select custom field “menu” and corresponding rules auto-triggered by their selection?: It can, but it’s up to personal/team preference. One benefit is that you neither have to create a dedicated custom field nor keep it in sync for each rule addition or removal. Another is that these rule triggers are the only way to get your action into the right-click task context menu and the task detail pane task actions menu, where other task actions are found, so it’s perhaps a bit more standard.
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Will the rule’s “If …” conditions be run when manually triggered?: Yes, if you specify “If …” condition(s) they will be evaluated upon manual triggering. This gives you some flexibility to set up conditional manually-triggered rules.
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Can I set criteria for when the manual trigger option appears?: Not currently. The trigger will always show in the relevant menus if the rule exists in that project.
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How many manual rules can I add per project?: The limit is 50 rules per project, which is shared with all rule types.
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Will manual rules also run on subtasks?: No, manual rules do not currently run on subtasks.
This is the first iteration of Manual Rule Triggers, so perhaps additional features might be added later. Feel free to add new individual requests in Product Feedback.
Please feel free to share your best use or examples of how you might incorporate manual triggers in your workflows, and let us know if you have any questions or other feedback in the comments below!
Thanks,
Larry Berger, Asana Consultant @ Trilogi Solutions
