Process Stages

English Forum Tips and Tricks
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2 Questions:

  1. Within a Project, we create multiple tasks with process stages for that task. In order to move the task along, we assign the task, the assignee will then drop down the process stage and re-assign the task to someone else. From time to time, one employee can do 2 stages one after the other. Normally when one person makes a change and then another makes a change, both changes are show. However, if one individual, say myself, goes in and updates the process stage to “verified” first and then moments later to “assigned”, it will not show the change to “verified”, but overwrite it to just show “Oren Assigned”. There will be no history of verification.
    Is there a way to show both “stages” in the update area in the right panel?
  2. If the above doesn’t work, and I want to change the process stage to instead of say assigned to say “verified and assigned” so I kill 2 birds with one stone, will that overwrite historical tasks that had just said “assigned”? Or is the change being made only for new tasks subsequent to this date? Is it possible to only make the change moving forward?
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Hi @Oren_Wener, thanks for reaching out and welcome to the Community Forum!

If the same user makes multiple changes in 24h, only the last change will be recorded in the task stories. So for example, if you update the field from Verified to Assigned few moments later, only the last move will be recorded. It’s currently not possible to show both changes.

In regards to your second question, you can certainly update the name of your drop-down field options. You can update the name of the option “Assigned” to “Verified and Assigned” and that will overwrite historical tasks that had just said “Assigned” and also the option will be available for future tasks. Please find the steps here.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you have follow up questions.

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Hi Emily,

Thanks for the quick response. That’s unfortunate regarding the 24h. I would have thought that was a bug.

Regarding the second point. I don’t want to overwrite the name of the drop-down field historically, only going forward, as this would now be a change in process whereby we would not want to change historical tasks. Is there a way not to overwrite the drop down?

What if I delete a drop down option, and replace it with a new one? Will the historical tasks that showed that option in the past still show that was selected in the updates, or that action will be removed from historical tasks as well?

Thanks,

Oren

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An alternative for the process we are working with would be to make a rule to automatically create specific subtasks when opening a new task in a specific project. That also doesn’t seem to exist.

As an example, Task name: Transfer to X. This automatically forces Asana to create the following subtasks:

ST #1: Transfer request verified

ST #2: Transfer assigned

ST #3: Transfer reviewed

ST #4: Transfer approved

ST #5: Transfer executed

Then we can have a rule that once all these are completed, then the task can also be completed. Is that something that can be done. Just don’t want to have to create all these subtasks each time.

Thanks,

Oren

5

Thanks for the additional information @Oren_Wener!

If you don’t want to change historical tasks, you’d need to create a new custom field. If you edit the existing field, the information will be updated in all tasks. Apologies for any inconvenience.

You are right, we currently don’t have a Rule that allow you to automatically create subtasks when opening a new task in a specific project. As a workaround, I’d recommend you creating a “template task”, and add the subtasks.

Everytime you need to add a new task to the project, you’d need to simply duplicate the template task and the subtasks will be automatically duplicated and added to the new task as well.

You can also mark the task as dependent of the subtasks. The dependent task will have a banner in its right pane indicating it is waiting on another task.

The assignee of the main task (dependent) will receive notifications when the subtasks are marked complete so they can also mark the main task as complete.

I hope this helps!