Keeping projects created from templates and templates in sync

[Ambroise_Unly.org]

We love templates, they’re a huge time saver, and we use them heavily, especially for our customer on-boarding and initial project setup.

Our main pain is to keep them in sync with the template itself when changes arise. There is no easy way to achieve that.

For instance, in a template which is a workflow about how to setup a project, containing the different steps of our internal tasks (config, tests, etc.) and customer-care related tasks, we often update the template as we learn how to do things better and get customer feedbacks.

So, we usually update the template directly (not the project) and change our workflow, move tasks around, change assignments, add new tasks, etc.

But then, we have no way of applying those changes to projects created from this template.

Also, doing it manually is a real pain, because we can’t copy/paste tasks in bulk (description nor subtasks are copied, only the tasks name).
Also, copying the description doesn’t work if there are links, because the links will not be related to the project, but to the template. (it’s one of the magical things when creating a project from a template, all links in tasks descriptions are updated to be relative to the project instead of the template)

Not everybody may want to sync templates and projects created from those templates. But it can be very handy/necessary for other people. Currently, there is no good way of doing it. I can see how complicated it can be and I don’t have a works-for-all solution.

Here are a few ideas I’ve got that aim at helping templates managers:

Manual sync between a template task and tasks issued from it

This feature would help template managers to apply changes from a template to all the projects that have been created from it.
When creating new tasks, or update existing ones, it’d make it much easier to apply those changes in bulk into existing projects.

In the template, in the “task’s view”, proposing a new action to “sync” that task with all projects issued from the template, which would allow to:

• check/uncheck projects where to apply that change (basically decide for which project to sync that task).
• check/uncheck the information to sync, such as: Task name, description, assignee, due date (sub-tasks too ? could be complicated to handle, unsure, alternative solution would be to do it repeatedly for each sub-task)

Keeping in sync pristine copies

I believe we could also have a concept of “pristine” copies. Similarly to what developers use with forms in order to know whether the form/input has been “touched” by the user.

Here, let’s say I create a project from template, by default the copy (and all its tasks) would be “pristine”, because I haven’t touched any of those yet. Meaning, it’s a perfect untouched template copy, and could be kept in sync with the template itself automatically because it wouldn’t override any information, since it’s still pristine.

The same concept applies at the task level.

This could be very useful, because when creating a copy we don’t necessarily touch at all the tasks right then, many of them are still untouched, which makes it very easy to keep those tasks in sync because we wouldn’t lose any information by doing so.

Keeping pristine tasks in sync automatically (or manually, like syncing a whole project for all pristine tasks) could be a huge gain of time.

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I’m basically “thinking out loud” here, I believe the “pristine” concept fits very well with the current design, and could be a strong base to perform bulk actions or automated actions that are a huge time saver. I wonder what the community thinks about that, and what other features could be useful to help keeping in sync templates, when needed.

[Bastien_Siebman]

Looks like a coding nightmare the engineering team must be sweating reading the request. But that would be definitely cool!

[Marie]

Hi @Ambroise_Unly.org and thank you so much for taking the time to share your feedback with us but most importantly for giving us all the details and context our Team needs to evaluate this feature request; we really do appreciate it!! I’ve gone ahead and filed a task for the PM in charge of Templates for them to review your feedback; while I can’t promise if or when this will implemented, I’ll make sure to keep you posted here as soon as I have some updates on my end!

Have a great day

[Ambroise_Unly.org]

Thank you @Marie for sharing this with your team.
I’m aware of the technical complexity behind the feature. I believe the most important part is to understand what the community really needs. I don’t think we’re the only ones with those needs, but maybe the needs are slightly different for other teams using Asana.

Would you consider launching a survey? I believe that’d be a good first step to catch feedbacks and understand the pain and needs related to this feature.

[jenni_c]

Chiming in… Even a notification letting me know that a template has been updated (e.g. new tasks or sub-tasks added or tasks removed). Then maybe a follow-up notification letting me know which elements were updated. After that, then I’d have some control over whether or not an in-progress project needs the update.

[anon6309218]

I’m usually needing to make tweaks here and there in the templates I created for my work (localization processes) - it’s a hassle that when I make a change the templates that I then I have to go through allll of the projects I used that template with to make the same change. Like if I add a task or readjust a process in the Blog Template, I also have to go through about 30 blog projects that I used the template with to make the same adjustments.

Any way we can have a ‘sync’ option that says ‘apply layout changes to unarchived projects that used this template’?

[Stephanie_Oberg]

This has been mentioned before, more than once, I think. You might want to add your vote to an earlier request, posibly this one: Keeping projects created from templates and templates in sync

[Natalia]

Welcome to the Forum @anon6309218 and thank you for sharing your feedback with us!

I’ve merged your post with the thread @Stephanie_Oberg has mentioned. As she suggested, don’t forget to cast your vote on this request.

Have a great Friday!

[anon6309218]

Thank you! I tried to find some before but I must have missed them

[Robert_Fehrmann]

Hello,

we like your template feature and would like to suggest something to improve it.

As the title already says, it would be nice if the template instances update after the template updates.
One of our usecases is a readlist for team member:

1. If there is a new joiner to the team, he get’s ‘his’ readme project
   [2. missing]: as soon as someone is updating the template all instances are updated too

Does this make sense or could we use a different flow for achieving something similar?

kind regards

[Bastien_Siebman]

How do you deal with the fact that projects based on template could have been updated also?

[Liz_B]

If I understand @Robert_Fehrmann correctly, I would love this feature, too. There are some projects we do every year, and when we update our 2019 projects based on templates, I sure wish it would update the template as well so we don’t have to compare them each year. That alone may be worth us switching to the paid version.

[aleon]

Dear All,

We have a custom fields template which applies to a project.
When ever a new task is created within the project the customs fields template appears and we can pre-fill the fields as required.

My question is relating to the template and whether newer iterations of the template can be applied to older tasks that originally did not have these newer customer field applied to the template?
In other words, older tasks have the missing fields that only appeared in newer version of the custom fields template and only appear on new task creation.

Can we somehow refresh all of tasks within the specified project with this specific customs fields template to show all the new missing fields options?

What I am finding is older tasks, the template does not update with these new custom fields.

I hope the above makes sense as I am relative novice when it comes to Asana.

Thanks very much in advance for your responses.

[Jason_Woods]

Hi @aleon that functionality is not currently available to push the changes to the template project to the projects that have been based on that template.

Jason.

[Marie]

Thanks @Jason_Woods! @aleon, we have a #productfeedback thread on this topic Feature request: Updating a template updates template instances, feel free to add your vote there!

[Scott_Murray]

I this idea and would suggest extending the same logic to template tasks.

Consider presentation tools like Keynote and PowerPoint. Slides can be linked to master slides. When the master slides are updated, those changes propagate out to the individual slides.

Similarly, I’d like to link a task to a master/template task. Then whenever I update the template task (such as by adding a new subtask), that change could propagate out to the linked tasks.

My use case is: in a production-style environment, I’m using Asana to track the status of 30-50 projects (“tasks”). My team is constantly refining our workflow, clarifying hand-offs, triggering notifications, ensuring the right people get the information they need at the right time. Whenever we hit a stumbling block, we refine the process.

Currently, any time we make a process change, I either have to (a) remember it in my head (never a good idea!) or (b) manually copy/paste/edit each of the open 30-50 tasks to make sure that process change is captured across the board.

I’d love for Asana to help make these updates automatically or semi-automatically.

[Henry_Bridge]

Our team would find something like this highly useful.

We do a large number of technical integrations with partners that are all similar in shape, so we have a project template for them. When we discover a new step in the process (an approval or something that we should double check) that applies to some partners, we add it to the template, but it would be great if a notification appeared in either the instances of the project or in the inbox that offers to create an instance of the task in project instances. For reference, we have ~20 instances of this template so it’s a real pain to do manually and liable to miss one.

Updating tasks would be great but seems really hard to get right vs just adding any new tasks that are put into a template to its instances.

[anon48299972]

New here, but adding my vote as I looked up how to do this and came across this thread.

We have created an account template with a very detailed overview of the workflow that a CSM would need to follow. As our team grows and we learn from our customers, we have gone back and refined what the journey, tasks and flow should be.

Would indeed be very helpful that projects who have been created from that template have the ability to add or reflect the new template changes.

There are tasks in our template workflow that won’t apply for every client, but are there for the CSMs reference. If it doesn’t apply, we have agreed the CSM can remove them from their project. So it would be important that it is a one way sync from the “Parent” Template, updating the “Children” Copies and not the other way around.

Has anyone found any intermediary solution? Is there any way to select a new task in my template and copy it across projects?

[anon60412821]

For reporting consistency I would like the ability to globally update projects with a custom template after the projects have been created to apply a new field and field organization. Currently if I want to do this I have to edit every project (could be hundreds) one by one.

[Bastien_Siebman]

Hi,

I am pretty sure this is existing request, @Rebecca_McGrath should be able to merge your post with the other one(s).