Project Template Roles in Rule Action is here!

[Emily_Roman]

Hi Asana Community!

If you’ve ever set up a rule to convert a task into a project from a template, you know the feeling. Everything fires off perfectly, except the project roles. Those stay blank. And suddenly you’re back to manually assigning people to tasks, one by one, undoing the whole point of the automation.

This was one of the most requested features in our Community, and we heard you

When you build a rule using the “Convert task to project” action and select a template that has Project Roles, a new section will appear right in the rule builder where you can:

• Assign specific people to each project role directly in the rule configuration

• Use “Use AI” as a variable to dynamically assign roles

Every time the rule fires, the new project comes ready to go, right people, right roles, tasks assigned, zero manual steps.

Asana Community, This One’s for You

This feature was directly shaped by your feedback. Many of you have shared how this gap was blocking your workflows, pushed for workarounds, and kept the conversation going over the past few years. Your voices made this happen:

• Ability to assign Project Roles when converting a task to a project using a template (manually or via a rule)
• Create Rule to allow assignment of tasks based on project “role”

We’re excited about the potential to expand this further, think pulling role assignments dynamically from custom fields on the task itself, making your automations even more flexible. Stay tuned for what’s next!

As always, feel free to share your thoughts and feedback in the comments. We love hearing how you put these updates to work, so go forth and automate those project setups!

[Lee_Burkett]

Is this a phased rollout? I am not seeing the roles appear when I choose a template that has roles. thanks!

[Skyler]

TIL when creating a task from a project you can choose to do so using a template. Goes to show ya no matter how familiar you are with a platform, there’s always something else to learn.

[Nikki_Gilland]

Same here, and I am SO EXCITED about this feature!

[Uli.Kisslinger]

As a next addition/feature it would be great to finally be able to use roles inside project rules (when "X "assign task to “Project Manager”). It’s a shame that the roles are basically lost (at least from an automation point of view) after a project was created.

The product feedback for this featues has actually even more votes

Create Rule to allow assignment of tasks based on project "role"

Would be nice to be able to automate to say “Assign to the person with role of “legal approver” in this project” as opposed to 1 specific human - since the person in this role may change project to project but we still want to use the same project template each time.

[Tony_Hulbert]

On the face of it, this appears a great addition, but I’m a bit confused about what it brings and how to use it.

There was always an ability to list Project Roles when creating a Template, which could then be selected in a custom field in the Template:

It seems this has now been added at the Rule stage, where it allows for a specific Assignee to be assigned to the Role, in the Rule? However, this requires that you edit the Rule each time if the Assignee is to be different each time the Rule is run.

From what I can see, it works (and already worked) if you manually add a new Project to a Portfolio using the ‘Add Work+’ button and select the Template, but not if the project is auto-created via a Rule using the same Template.

If it was possible to somehow interrupt the creation process (as it is when run manually) to set the desired Assignee to Role ‘per Project’, this would be a huge win!

[Richard_Sather]

@Tony_Hulbert

If it was possible to somehow interrupt the creation process (as it is when run manually) to set the desired Assignee to Role ‘per Project’, this would be a huge win!

@Tony_Hulbert, this is exactly what I’ve requested here:

Ability to assign Project Roles when converting a task to a project using a template (manually or via a rule)

Variables in templates for Project roles is a great feature when using a template to (manually) create a project, where we get this handy page during the project creation steps: [image] I am hoping this project roles selection popup will get built into other surfaces such as when converting a task into a project, either by: Convert to > Project action from the task details overflow ... Selecting Project Roles would be great to be included within this dialogue box which acts as a mini-proj…

Seeing that it’s still in-development still gives me hope!

Otherwise, you’re right - you would need to write rules with many many branches to control who the assignees of project roles will be, based particular on conditions (other fields, like a single-select field of ‘type of project’).

But this also may hint at this ability coming in another way:

@Emily_Roman

We’re excited about the potential to expand this further, think pulling role assignments dynamically from custom fields on the task itself, making your automations even more flexible. Stay tuned for what’s next!

[Jacob_Sappington]

This feels soooooo close to being really useful. Any plans to add this to rules? I’m envisioning something like this

[Hector_J_Herrera]

This looks like a great feature for teams with consistent role players (e.g., whenever we get a project request of type X, assign it to Bill).

It would be awesome if rules could allow interaction with the rule triggerer when role players are not yet known. For instance, when I create a project from a task, the rule could display a prompt asking me for the person I want to set as project manager.

[Yewande_Dayspring_Ad]

This is so cool! Saves time.

[Otakar.Libra]

Hi @Emily_Roman ! This looks really useful. Maybe I’ve overlooked something somewhere. Will this feature also be available when creating a project from a template? And what’s the release date for this update, if there is one?

[Richard_Sather]

Hi @Otakar.Libra this is already available when manually creating projects from projects templates as long as you have assigned project roles to a tasks.

[Otakar.Libra]

Ah, sorry, I got it wrong. I liked what Jacob suggested here. It just didn’t click that it was a feature proposal and not part of the original post. My bad. Apologies again.