So I have a task in one project that when created uses rules to create an additional duplicate tasks that is sent to another project. Essentially, there is a “employee” version of the task, and an “Admin” version. They represent the same work, but they cant just be multi-homed because the information/title/attachments has to be different. I have used rules to make it so that when either side creates a task, the other version is also created in the relevant project.
What I’m trying to do is use rules to “Link” the due dates of these tasks, so that if an admin changes the due date on their version in their project, it updates the “employee” version in their project. Is there a way to make this happen? My only guess at the moment is to have a date change trigger a task creation which sends the task to the partner project with a custom field, and then when the task arrives in the partner project, it somehow triggers the date update and then self deletes.
There isn’t currently a way in Asana to make one due date trigger the change of a due date in another task.
The only way that I can see this working is if the Admin task and the Employee task are:
Part of the same project
A dependency is created between the two tasks
The project dependency settings are set to maintain buffer.
If the tasks are fully in two separate projects then the dependency scenarios won’t work.
If you’re concerned about clutter in the admin project you can make the Employee a subtask of the parent task, I think this would also make it easier to track the Admin/Employee tasks that are go together.
Unfortunately the nature of the work is such that these tasks need to be in separate projects. Its too bad rules don’t have cross project functionality.
The employee task can still be in a separate project, it just also needs to be part of the Admin’s project also. If can be a task in the form of a subtask of the Admin’s task. By giving task access to the individual task you don’t give full visibility into the project.
I think it could help to explore the idea that the task that gets duplicated and needs to be kept in sync should be a single parent task, for a few reasons.
And the separate but related work should be subtasks.
There’s a lot of flexibility in that approach since subtasks are very flexible, just like separate tasks, and single-sourcing the common parts could simplify the solution.