I feel an enhancement here is very important, at least an option to suppress task notifications in templates. In our workflow, we have a template projects with many, many tasks in them, and it is confusing and distracting for users to have those tasks and deadlines show up in their task list, when it’s not from an actionable project, but rather just the template.
With the recent feature of adding relative dates to templates, having deadlines and assignees in templates makes so much sense. Except for this issue — which makes working with templates confusing.
I am aware of using the Later attribute to hide tasks in My Tasks, but it’s a pain to communicate that to everyone every time a template is created. It’s kind of a hack.
Is this problem still unresolved? The workaround of adding “TEMPLATE” to the task names is ridiculous – then they just need to be manually edited one by one, which defeats the purpose of the template.
@Claire_Vannette, Until there’s a better solution, I use one of these workarounds.
Either:
Don’t actually assign tasks in the template itself. Instead use tags with names like “Assign Claire” and then on instantiation of the template, search tasks with the “Assign Claire” tag, multi-select them, assign them to Claire, and remove the tag.
or
If you want assignments of template tasks, first multi-select all those to be assigned and add the tag “MOVE TO LATER” in one fell swoop, then select each person’s batch and assign to them. One time only, notify anyone who may get a template assignment and see this tag in their My Tasks to multi-select them, Mark for Later, and remove the tag in one action.
Not ideal, but the best workarounds I know of for now.
Though I’d think if folks care, then they are motivated to comply in order to unclutter their My Tasks, and you’re making it as easy as you can to do so. Fact is, many don’t even use My Tasks seriously (the Recently Assigned category is where all assigned tasks are unfortunately!) so for those people I wouldn’t think this shortcoming of templates even matters.
We are trialling the upgrade and one of the main reasons was for the use of the templates. This task issue showing up ‘My Tasks’ as incomplete tasks is a big disappointment and has not met our expectations. As other users appear to have mentioned for some time now I would like to support the idea of making this a high priority to fix. Can anyone from ASANA give us an update on status of this problem please.
Same complaint here. This is a real nuisance. We have a team of community managers on asana, with lots of recurring project templates. It’s a real nuisance. Please fix it. This thread has been going on for 2 years. Are the devs even listening?
In the 2.5 years I have been using Asana, right now is the most active time I’ve seen as far as Asana rolling out real improvements reflecting the most urgent requests of users. The devs are legitimately busy with the new “spreadsheet” lists, more filtering, Board/List toggle, etc. Also keep in mind that these aren’t just new features…Asana clearly has a lot of questionable architecture it’s having to revamp to even make the features possible.
So, this is our Golden Age… Please don’t knock it!
I’ve noticed, that obviously collaborators are added to tasks when building out a project, however when you convert it to a template, those collaborators stay there and seem to be added to the live projects once duplicated. Is this how its supposed to work? I need to tell the agency to always remove themselves after building a project? Also, it seems like the people the template is “shared” with also carry over, what is the best way to like, not have that happen. I feel like people will miss this and start getting tons of alerts that will deter them from using Asana. I’m assuming for now we would need to remove everyone as a collaborator from all templates, and then when they duplicate to make it a live project they remove everyone that it was shared with? Anyone have any ideas or are we setting these up the wrong way?
What you have noticed is correct. When converting a Project into a Template, everything you have set up in that original project will remain in the Template, including assignees and Collaborators.
There is an existing thread regarding this issue in the #productfeedback category so I’ve gone ahead and merged your post with it to avoid duplications.
Yea, we don’t assign the tasks in our templates, however when building the template, it obviously automatically adds collaborators, I wish when you clicked convert to template it gave you options on what to include just like duplicating projects does, can you please submit this feedback to the product team? I think my suggestion would be an easy fix
Alexis,
HI! Thank you for your comment. Your work-around is just that, a work-around. This original same request was requested in 2017 and its now Oct 2019. Your competitors (Wrike, plus others) have the same concept of templates that can be assigned to team members and those TEMPLATED TASKS do not show up in reporting or My Tasks, if you will. WHEN WILL THIS BE FIXED. This is not a hard fix. When can we see it deployed? Thanks so much!!!
Have a good day!
I just discovered that this issue has been flagged for years and still hasn’t been fixed.
It’s pure logic, a task in a template should not show up in people’s “My Tasks”, it doesn’t make any sense and I can’t believe Asana would suggest using hacks to get around this obvious flaw in the logic.
Another frustrated Asana user echoing the above comments.
Particularly as Asana will automatically adjust the dates in the template when it is used. This means I can schedule my monthly processes in the template, and have them automatically update each time the template is used. But if I assign the task in the template then the person responsible has it show up in their My Tasks, with an assigned date. There is a huge risk that they will complete the task early and break the template.
Thank you for reaching out!