Hi everyone! 
Based on user feedback, we’re rolling out improvements to our automation capabilities, providing a consistent and flexible experience for managing due dates. You can now set dates relative to any other date, including past dates, offering more precision in automating project timelines.
1- Consistent design and functionality across all date actions:
We’ve unified the user interface and functionality across all date-related actions. Whether updating an existing task, creating a new one, or setting a due date with a date custom field, your experience will be cohesive and straightforward.
2- Negative offsets
The updated interface now lets you set dates in the past, allowing for more creative scheduling options, such as “create a subtask to finalize the meeting agenda two weeks before the meeting.”
3- Offset based on date custom fields
This new date action will also be able to set dates relative to the triggering task’s date custom fields.
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Does this/Will this work on subtasks?
How do I find out when I have access to this feature?
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This feature is going to solve the biggest frustration I have with Asana! Any way to get access to it ASAP? I am happy to test.
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Hi @Raeyn_Smith1 and @Jennie_Chafin, glad to hear you’re excited about this launch. 
Unfortunately, it’s not possible to expedite the process and enable this feature at the user account level, as the launch needs to progress gradually so our team can control and correct any potential issues. But we hope to launch it fully by the end of the month or the first week of November.
Once the progress status changes, I’ll post updates here.
@Raeyn_Smith1, the new date actions will work on both tasks and subtasks; however, note that rules will only run on the first level of subtasks (i.e., not on sub-subtasks). This limit hasn’t changed with the addition of new date actions.
Our Help Center team is working on a new guide article about the new date actions, and I’ll add it here once it’s published. Thanks for your patience!
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OMG!! This is really exciting!
Thank you so much for the update. The set up you’ve mentioned works great for my team and how we set up our boards for various meetings we track. Thank so you much for the update!
Is this use of automations a paid level feature? I have one main project “template” that I duplicate for every client. It seems like with these updates, I would be able to automatically set the task due dates based on the overall project due date, right? That would be amazing!
This is amazing, which plans will this be part of?
Love it!
I do miss a relative date in the task rules.
For example: when change the deadline date & deadline date is later than ‘today — 7 days’, place it in the section ‘task for this week’.
Have the task rules been considered? Would that be a follow-up roll-out? Or am I completely misreading the update and is it also a part of this release?
FYI you can do this in the rules in our Flowsana integration. 
This is a HUGE UPDATE!
This is going to be a game changer for all of our project managers. Can’t wait to test it out!
Thank you!! Will the subtask deadline show up in my tasks if it is earlier than the parent task deadline? Or will it still only show up separately there?
Please feel free to direct me to a different thread if this is too off-topic and is addressed elsewhere!
This is exciting! What are the options for the date offset setting dropdown, besides days? Are hours/minutes an option?!
This solves one part of the issue since moving to your new project template formats. When are you all going to fix the issue so that we can set recurrences in project templates again?
Hi @Vanessa_N , this is a great update and definitely much needed but I feel with are missing some functionality that was previously available. In particular, for the action ‘Create subtasks’, when setting the due date of subtasks, it seems we can no longer also set the start date of the subtask.
I am in the midst of creating such rules for a client and now I cannot complete this work because I cannot set duration to subtasks anymore 
Am I missing something?
What makes this more worrying is that the same rule, after the update, is creating subtasks completely differently. In the below screenshot, the subtasks above were created before the update kicked in, and the subtasks below were created now, after this update kicked in.
The rule used to set the start date and due date of the subtasks relative to the parent/trigger task’s start date, i.e the first grey subtask was set to start on the same day as the parent task and the due date was set +6 days after the parent task’s due date.
In the version below, it has incorrectly plotted the due dates of 3 subtasks for some reason.
I feel this should be escalated immediately before more workflows are broken.
PS: I just realised that a relative start and due date can indeed be set within the subtask’s setting (by clicking on the pencil icon) within the ‘Create subtasks’ action
Not sure why the discrepancy between the before and after screenshot above; that may still require some investigating.
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Will this allow me to set a reminder email two weeks in advance of a due date? I am trying to use a project I created as a reminder for online platform renewals – so I have enough time to re-evaluate with my team before a platform renews. Thanks!
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Hi @Lisa_DeYoung , welcome to the forum
This sounds like something you can do right now, regardless of this update, using the custom rule trigger ‘Due date is approaching’. You will need to switch the setting in the top right corner of the custom rule editor to ‘Run on tasks’ (not subtasks) in order to enable this trigger.
You can then use the action to send an email using the Gmail or Outlook rule action under the ‘External actions’ tab in the list of actions on the right.
Thank you @Richard_Sather – I kind of saw that the other day when I was exploring the options but did not put it together. I think I got it now!
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Hi @Richard_Sather, sorry for the delay. I’m having some trouble replicating this on my end. Would you be able to share a screenshot of the rule’s set up?
This is great to see! However, would still like to be able to use the rule based on a custom number field. For example, we have an SLA field in days and would be great to set a due date as follows:
- Blocked by dependency due date has changed, automatically (not via the update button), change dependent tasks due date according to their SLAs.
- Set a project start date and automatically have all tasks populated with the date based on dependencies and the pre-established task duration (SLA). I know you can automate dates based on start date in project templates, but it doesn’t consider dependencies and predetermined SLAs.
Hi @Vanessa_N , it will be difficult to replicate unless you had such a rule already setup before this update. The rule was/is basically creating subtasks with start & due dates.
I will try and capture it if it comes up again - so far, all good, thanks!
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