Introducing templates, for Tasks!

[Joe_Moran]

100% agree! This would be a game-changer. Our team runs dozens of projects that need to use the same workflows.

[Martin12]

This is great news, thanks. However, what seriously limits (and likely eradicates) its usefulness is the fact that a Task template is only available in the Project it was created in. Our workspace contains different Teams each with many Projects. We currently have a ‘Tasks’ project in a central Team where users from all Teams can duplicate tasks and move them into a Project. So, the ability to access common Task templates in all Teams and Projects is essential for this to be useful for us.

[jeremyw]

Agree! @Martin12 That is similar to how we work as well. This is NOT useful unless common task templates are accessible from any/all Teams and Projects.

[anon43001922]

Nice update, will take out the problem we’ve had when people accidentally modify the template. I wish you could set it up for multiple projects. I saw your note that it doesn’t currently support that. That would be the only drawback for now.
But I have a workaround. I’ve just had to duplicate the template in the other project, set it up the same from scratch, and set up rules for both projects so when the new tasks are created with the templates they are automatically added to the other. I Will see how this goes, seems like it should work the same without having to worry about the template being screwed up.

Thanks

[Ambroise_Unly.org]

First limitation I see for automation, would be to allow to automatically make the task creator as Assignee. And, for subtasks, allow to assign the subtasks to the same person who’s assigned to the main task.

That would help automate quite a lot of manual steps for sure.

[Emily_Roman]

Thanks for sharing your feedback with us, @Martin12 and @jeremyw! I don’t think we have a thread in our #productfeedback category for this request, do you mind creating one so other customers can upvote as well? Thank you!

[Martin12]

@Martin12

what seriously limits (and likely eradicates) its usefulness is the fact that a Task template is only available in the Project it was created in. Our workspace contains different Teams each with many Projects. We currently have a ‘Tasks’ project in a central Team where users from all Teams can duplicate tasks and move them into a Project. So, the ability to access common Task templates in all Teams and Projects is essential for this to be useful for us.

That’s done @Emily_Roman - see Make Task templates available to other projects (Task templates library) (FYI @jeremyw)

[Kimberly_Yanni]

Two questions: Once a template task is created how can you edit/modify it? And if you have custom fields implemented on subtasks with data in them - do those get saved within the template as well so they are already existing when you create from the template? Or is the field just already existing but the data has to be manual populated each time?

[Phil_Seeman]

Hi @Kimberly_Yanni,

@Kimberly_Yanni

Once a template task is created how can you edit/modify it?

See this from above:

Introducing templates, for Tasks!

Hi @Sawsan_El_Darrat and welcome to the forum! If you click on the template in the Customize window, it will open it back up for editing, and there’s a “Delete template” button in the lower left corner.

@Kimberly_Yanni

if you have custom fields implemented on subtasks with data in them - do those get saved within the template as well so they are already existing when you create from the template? Or is the field just already existing but the data has to be manual populated each time?

Yes, they are saved with the template.

[Skyler]

1. Editing Task Templates

You can edit it by clicking on Customize and then the task template you want to edit.

2. Custom Fields on Subtasks with Task Templates

Custom fields in subtasks do carry over when created a template from its parent task — yes. Same with descriptions. Comments will not carry over though.

[Kimberly_Yanni]

Thanks a million!

[Kimberly_Yanni]

Appreciate the screengrabs! Super helpful.

[anon76296728]

Will this feature be available under the ‘Basic’ plan, or only ‘Premium’?

[Emily_Roman]

Hi @anon76296728, Tasks templates are currently available to Premium, Business and Enterprise customers!

[Heather_Bruce]

My team and I are very excited to see Asana moving in this direction. We do a majority of our work in Asana on a task and subtask level (we are a content marketing team scheduling and creating blog content, so we work out of the same 1 project year-round).

Unfortunately, in its first iteration, the task templates are not quite useful for us yet. In order for this to be helpful for us, everything that’s carried over when you duplicate a task (many of the things listed below in a quote from the announcement) would need to also be included in the template. We connect our tasks and subtasks to other projects across our organization and rely heavily on dependencies and tags. Without the ability to apply these things to the template, there would still be a lot of manual work we’d have to do. We’ll need to stick with duplicating the tasks manually for now, but we do hope these improvements are planned for the near future!

@Michael-Chen

Please note Task Templates currently don’t support tags, comments, sections, attachments, other projects and dependencies. Additionally, project templates currently don’t support task templates either.

Please let me know if a more detailed use case would be helpful to share in the Product Feedback section - wasn’t sure if it was more helpful to have here or there.

Thank you!
Heather

[Brian-ten-Bosch]

This looks great! Thanks for sharing

[anon6512290]

When can we expect task templates to be saved as part of project templates? For Asana clients with larger volumes of project based throughput, this limitation is the difference between task templates being completely unusable or a game changing feature.

[Marie]

We don’t have a timeline yet @anon6512290 but we will keep you posted here as soon as we do!