Offer (for Premium and above) a new rule "Start/Due date is approaching . . ." to trigger based on the earlier of Start date or Due date

The new My Tasks v2 rule “Due date is approaching → Move task to a certain section” only triggers based on the Due date, not the Start date if one is present.

Please add (for Premium and above–that is, wherever Start date is available) a new rule: “Start/Due date is approaching → Move task to a certain section” and consider the Start date, if present, as the date to consider for this rule to fire, otherwise, the Due date if no Start date is present.

I believe most will want this behavior and find the current behavior of ignoring Start dates unfortunate and causing missed notifications and extra work to accomplish. I think a single rule that respects the earlier Start date, if present, is the simplest approach. If you disagree, then I request that you still provide this rule as mentioned as well as add more rules you feel are needed, because I wouldn’t want to have to write multiple rules which is what would be required if you didn’t provide the requested rule which automatically uses the earlier date.

I hope you’ll consider this with some priority because I believe the current choice of providing no way to trigger My Tasks rules based on Start date is a significant omission and a real time-waster to work around (it’s not good when Asana creates work about work!).

Thanks,

Larry

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Couldn’t agree with you more, Larry. This is a bit of a miss on Asana’s part: First rule of core feature upgrades – don’t break it.

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Thanks for providing this feedback, @lpb. I agree, this would be a fantastic addition. I’ll keep you posted if we have any updates :slight_smile:

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I definitely agree. This is a great fast follow update.

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Currently, Tasks only get promoted at midnight of when the rule is set. But this means that tasks might get promoted incorrectly if they end up in the wrong section.

It would be really helpful to be able to set that tasks with a due date of, say, between 2 days and 7 days in the future get moved to an Upcoming section

The rule would then be applied at midnight on days 2-7, giving 5 chances for the task to be moved.

I think this would only really be helpful if it would be possible to restrict tasks only being moved in one direciton

Super important to have with the new “my tasks” update rolling out soon!

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Agreed! This is essential for my team since we often have tasks that span weeks.

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For now, I’ll have to return to the free version and use Due Dates as my Start Date. It’s the only way I can see to make the My Tasks (sort of) work for me now.

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Agreed with the exception, why insist on excluding free users?

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You’re completely right! I edited the thread title and the original post.

Thanks for that,

Larry

Just upvoted this… Just found this issue today…

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Free users don’t have Start Date available, so this request wouldn’t apply to them.

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Hi all,

FYI our Flowsana’s integration’s date triggers include this ability to trigger based on Start Date. :slight_smile:

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@Phil_Seeman @lpb I think the key distinction here is between Premium tier and Business tier: Basic users don’t have Start Date capability so this change doesn’t affect them, but Premium users do. The problem is that Premium users have only limited ability to create Rules; there’s no custom rule creation ability. Premium users don’t have among the Rules they can create, the ability to create one that moves a task into a section based on its Start Date.

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@mderzko, I just updated the title and my OP to refer to “Premium and above,” so wherever Start date is available for use. (Previously I mistakenly had Basic and above.)

I think this addresses your helpful comment; thanks.

Larry

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I REALLY REALLY hope this is included in an update SOON. My workflow was destroyed (and that’s really not an exaggeration) when they made that update because suddenly Asana didn’t show me tasks on their start date, but I didn’t know that the update was going to remove a common sense feature like this. Days or a week later, the task would pop up but by then it was essentially overdue because I hadn’t planned time to work on it, as I had always trusted Asana to show me tasks based on the start date. This seems like a huge oversight. Now I feel like I’m having to use more brainpower to look at tasks multiple times to double-check whether I need to move something manually into Today or This Week to work on in advance of the due date because I can’t trust Asana to show them to me when I need them anymore. The biggest advantage of moving to Asana was to get tasks out of my head and use the tool’s simple yet effective automation to remove the worry of things falling through the cracks. I’m still so so frustrated with this update, and I’m frustrated we haven’t seen certain improvements like this yet even though they promised a “fast follow” update.

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The rules of the new version of My Tasks work for the moment only with the “due date” which corresponds to the end date. Unfortunately this is a problem if the task must be scheduled over 10 days we will only be notify the last day of the task and not the first, the task will therefore be directly escalated to today the last day of the task which unfortunately does not make sense because we are warned on the last day and not the first day of the task. Very problematic

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Hi @Dominique_De_Riaz, welcome to the Asana Community Forum :wave:t2:

Thanks for providing this feedback. We do have an existing product request for this feature in the forum already so i’ve gone ahead and merged your post with the existing one to consolidat feedback - I hope you don’t mind!

I’ll keep you posted and let you know if we have any updates :slight_smile:

sure thank you, do you know when this issue will be fixed, it’s realy problematic. Thank you

Yes fully agree Wendy, this is a real issue