Set due date in description: Smart due date / parsing

For example:

If I write a task item: “Complete blog post tomorrow”
Is it possible for Asana to automatically detect “tomorrow” and set the due date to tomorrow?

Thank you.

7 Likes

Hi @Amy_Lin, that’s a very very bright idea!!! I love it! :smile:

2 Likes

@Amy_Lin really great idea! Is this something which would help you on a daily basis or is it less frequent.
Honestly until now, I have not thought about that, but would save some time… :slight_smile:

@Alexis if we do not find a solution for such good questions, is it possible to move the topics to product feedback category then? it would fit much better over there

That is called “natural language recognition”. Many IOS calendar apps such as the one I use “Informant” have this. Not sure Asana has.

It’s not as quick, but I’ve noticed you can type Today, Tomorrow, Friday, etc. in the due date box and it will accept it. So, you can create a task, press Tab + D, then type Tomorrow.

Your way would be better, though.

2 Likes

How does this not have more votes? Would save so much time.

It’s a cool idea in theory but IMO runs into problems in practice. Most notably because the “relative date” in the description will become out-of-date or incorrect at some point.

For example, if I type “Complete blog post tomorrow” on June 13, then on June 14 and later, the reference to “tomorrow” is no longer correct.

One solution is to have the software remove the relative-date term; i.e. as soon as the above task is entered, Asana would set the due date to June 14 and then would change the description to “Complete blog post”. Or another is to replace the relative date with the absolute date, so Asana would set the due date to June 14 and then change the description to “Complete blog post on June 14”.

Well actually it’s not in the “Product Feedback” forum section so it can’t have ANY votes! @Marie @Emily_Roman maybe this should be moved?

2 Likes

I appreciate the thorough response

One solution is to have the software remove the relative-date term; i.e. as soon as the above task is entered, Asana would set the due date to June 14 and then would change the description to “Complete blog post”. Or another is to replace the relative date with the absolute date, so Asana would set the due date to June 14 and then change the description to “Complete blog post on June 14”.

I migrated from Todoist, which does this very well.

Which of my proposed options does it do (or something else entirely)?

Some combination of both, though it doesn’t add details into the description, just parses out date data and adds it to the date field. From the ToDoist Help File:

Add a due date and/or time

Type the date and time into the task field using natural language like “tomorrow at 4pm” or “every other Tuesday starting March 3”. The Quick Add will automatically recognize the due date and add it when you save your task. Here’s a list of example date formats:

One-time due dates

Type these natural language terms when adding a task in Todoist to schedule the task to the specified date.

What you type: What Todoist understands:
today Today (tod also works)
tomorrow Tomorrow (tom also works)
next week The next Monday by default (this can be changed in your Settings)
next month 1st day of the next month
jan 27 Jan 27 (27 jan, 27/1 also works)
01/27/2016 January 27, 2016 (27/01/2016, 2016/01/27, 2016-01-27 also work)
27th 27th day of the current month
mid January January 15th
end of month Last day of the current month
today at 10 Today at 10am
tomorrow at 16:00 Tomorrow at 4pm
Fri @ 7pm Friday at 7pm (Friday @ 7pm, Fri at 7pm, Fri at 19:00 also work)
6pm Today at 6pm (unless 6pm has passed, in which case tomorrow)
in 5 days 5 days from today (+5 days also works)
in 3 weeks 3 weeks from today
in 2 hours 2 hours from now
1 Like

I just tried it in Todoist; you’re right, that’s a nice implementation.

FYI I have a variant of this request available in my Flowsana integration: see Hashtag automation.