Now rolling out to Asana users — Rules

Hi @Ju2 and thanks for your kind feedback!

I’m confident we will make Rules available to other Custom Fields, but just like @Phil_Seeman recommended to @Nate_Barrett above, I would recommend creating a new #productfeedback thread so other people can support this feature request. And on my end, I’ll make sure to keep you posted as soon as I have more info internally :slight_smile:

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Hi @Ju2,

FYI, Flowsana’s If-Then Rules support both conditions/triggers and actions using all types of custom fields, not just drop-downs - i.e. you can trigger a rule to run based on a numeric or text custom field, and you can set a numeric or text custom field to a certain value as the result of a rule firing.

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FYI, in response to several queries I’ve received, I’ve written a blog post with a detailed comparison of Asana’s If-Then Rules vs. Flowsana’s If-Then Rules:

How do Asana’s Rules compare to Flowsana’s Rules?

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Is it me or is this once again a really useful feature that only those on the Business plan can take full advantage of? as someone on the premium plan - for which I have to pay for 5 seats whether I want them or not - I only have the option to move a task to another section when completed - or to complete a task by moving it to another section. No customised rules if you aren’t paying top dollar!

Been using Asana a few years now and been a big supporter but seriously looking into a move over to Clickup - so disappointed and unhappy with Asana right now - spoiled my pleasure at the new view for being miserly once again :angry:

I am liking this feature a whole lot, but am disappointed that a common Asana issue remains even with new features. We need a way to have a data dictionary of custom features. We should be able to get a list of Custom Fields, Tags, rules and know what projects they are in. I get that asana relies on its open source partners for a lot…but this is basic. I just made 20 rules for a project and cannot see them with any degree of usefulness anywhere in Asana and if I need to edit 1, I need to click into EACH rule till I find it. That is really not helpful at all.

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Thanks for sharing your feedback @Rachel_Botts, sounds like a great opportunity to create a new #productfeedback thread and get the Community to support your feature request!

I’ve noticed that when performing interactions that would otherwise be Triggers on the web app, within my android app, no actions are performed - whether within the native app, or when viewing the item on the web app.

Do you all have plans to implement rules awareness into the mobile applications?

Hi @phildalencour,

Would you mind creating a new #tipsandtricks thread and give me a example, with steps to reproduce, so I can take a look into this? Thank you!

As a premium user, I have started using the new forms which are great but the problem is you can only have one form per project. So as a workaround, I have created a team called ‘Submission Forms’ and then have created projects for each of the forms that we need.

What would be great is if Asana offered premium users the ability to create the rule, "Task added to this project → add to another project’. This would allow for our ‘Creative Services Team’ to have form requests automatically added to our ‘Submission’ project that we used to track all of our submission requests without having to manually check each of the projects to make sure they have been added to our ‘Submission’ project.

Hi @Talana_Lattimer,

FYI this rule is available in my Flowsana integration - all of Flowsana’s rules are available for all Asana users regardless of subscription plan level.

Hi @Marie! We are testing out rules in our projects and are wondering if can rules be used to create recurrences. And follow up question - can the CSV upload can be used to create recurrences? I don’t see anything in the documentation about it.

Thank you!
Stephanie

HI @StephanieC and thanks for reaching out!

As it stands Rules don’t allow you to create task recurrences, and I’m afraid that the CSV importer won’t allow you to achieve this either. Our new CSV importer supports dependency creation but can not be used to create recurrent tasks. Sounds like a great opportunity to create a new #productfeedback thread :slight_smile:

The biggest issue I think everyone has had is triggering dependent due dates after completion of a prior task. Has this not been enabled for premium users?

Hi @Yan_Digilov and welcome to the forum!

It is not available for Premium users, only available at the Business and Enterprise levels.

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I have tried to look beyond the simple triggers and actions and imagine innovative and fun ways to use the rules! The coolest Asana rules 😎

Looking forward to more feedback and contributors.

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Hello! Loving this feature.

Question - Can a Rule change a Custom Field or Column/Section field in a DIFFERENT project?

Our use case: We have a Project list that tracks things at a high level, and then a Section in that project that tracks certain smaller, repeatable tasks. These tasks are multi-homed to another kanban style board, where we drag and drop items to move them through the columns of a linear process. What we’d like to do is whenever we move a task to a new column on the 2nd board, fire a rule to update a custom field on the 1st board, to essentially keep those “in sync”. (So actually, if that’s possible some other way - would love to hear that!) However, it looks like right now a Rule can only change a custom field, or a column/section in this CURRENT project.

Hi @Christopher_Yi,

If the custom field is in your organization custom field library, and you have it added to both of the projects where the task is multi-homed, then changing it in one of the projects via a rule action will also change it in the second project.

If the custom field was created locally in each project (i.e. didn’t come from the library) then Asana sees it as two different custom fields (even if it has the same name in both projects) and changing it in one project won’t change it in the other.

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THANK YOU!!!You set me ona path - it didn’t occur to me to add the Custom Field that I wanted…
to BOTH boards! So the rule triggers on the 2nd board, affects the Custom
Field, but that change also is visible from the first board! It’s exactly
what I wanted! Thanks!!

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I have a Master Project Board where I want to sync the Column and Status level custom field of every task displayed on it from across multiple projects. Our Columns reflect the Status (To Do, In Progress, Done). We also manage the Status level within each task as a Custom Field. If I change the Column or Status level within the individual task’s project, I want it to do the same on the Master Project Board.

I was able to set up two rules: “Task moved to a certain column/section → Set Status” so that if we manually moved a task on the individual task’s Project Board to a different column, it would change the Status. I set up the second rule: “Status changed → Move task to a certain column/section” so that if we changed the Status field within the task, that it would do the reverse action and move to the respective Column.

Worked great both ways, but that didn’t sync with our Master Project Board, even when I applied the same rules on all boards. The task would get stuck in the original Column. The Status would display correctly, but it would not move to the respective Column on the Master Project Board.

Any help with this yet?

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