I want to make a rule that if a task is added to my task and has a due date of within the week (but not today), it goes to the “Next 7 days” section. If more than 7 days, to the “Future” section and if today, then to “Today”. It was at all not possible with the old rules system that didn’t have if conditions on triggers but even with the new system the Due Date is after… condition only allow specific dates fro the calendar, which make little sense for rules and don’t allow using them in the way that I described - sorting new tasks into sections based on the due date. Setting the Due date is possible with a relative text (see the second screenshot), so why not checking for dates using relative dates, too? Please implement this.
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Hi @Jacob_Gorban,
Instead of the trigger being “Task is added to My tasks”, what if you make the trigger “Due date is approaching” which allows for relative dates?
Due date is approaching is already used to move tasks from the later sections to those closer in time. This has always been possible. Also, this trigger only runs at midnight, so not good for sorting now.
For example, if I have a task in my Recent Tasks without a due date and I set a due date to 10 days in the future, I want the task then to move automatically to my “Future” section. “Due date” trigger can’t do that. It can be used to move from Future to “Next week” or from “Next week” to Today sections at midnight.
Ah, OK.
FYI if you’re interested, you should be able to accomplish what you want with the “If task starts or is due in…” trigger in our Flowsana automation: it runs immediately when a date is changed (in addition to running at midnight), and also it treats dates as “within” as opposed to Asana’s exact dates.
I’m surprised by this as well. I struggle to find very many use cases for rules that use absolute dates at all, unless it’s a short-lived rule, and I would be surprised if a lot of rules are intended to be short-lived. Is there a request for Asana to reconsider this? Enabling relative dates should be easy for them since they use them elsewhere.
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Currently, Asana’s automation rules only support date-based conditions with fixed dates (e.g., “due date is before” or “due date is after” a specific date). Expanding the conditions to include dynamic date ranges would provide more flexibility in managing task deadlines, particularly for ongoing task monitoring in “My Tasks.”
Proposed Feature
The condition should include options to check if a date is:
• Within the next [X] days
• Passed by [X] amount of days
Benefits
• Supports automation for tasks newly added to “My Tasks” that may already fall within a defined date range that would trigger an action with the “date is approaching”-trigger.
• Ensures tasks remain accurately flagged or categorized when dates are updated, keeping workflows aligned without manual intervention.
This would be a useful feature for our request management workflow. If someone fills the request form with a due date within the next 2 days, email the assignee (for example).
This is a huge failure of logic. This Rule cannot work without the relative option.
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