Recurring Tasks status change

[Mohammad_Nimer]

Hi All,

I wanted to your help on a query I had. I had created a recurring task once a week. One of the columns fields also I have created was the status - “not started, overdue, completed and in progress”.

Once I complete this week’s task by ticking on the complete button as well as changing the column status field to complete, the system automatically creates a new task for next week but with the status field as ‘complete’ instead of ‘not started’. How do I fix this issue? Is there a rule or option I can use?

[Richard_Sather]

Hi @Mohammad_Nimer , welcome to the forum

What you are experiencing with recurring tasks is expected behaviour, since it actually duplicates the task, along with the values of any custom fields.

Unfortunately it is not possible to overcome this issue by using a rule because the recurring tasks is not treated as a new task added to the project. So both triggers ‘task is moved to a section’ or ‘task is added to this project’ have no effect for this case, in order to action the status, for example, to rest back to ‘Not started’.

You can vote for this feature in the following threads which are slightly different:

Recurring tasks with blank custom fields value

Hello, I am looking for a way to create recurring tasks with default blank values for custom fields on a weekly basis. Right now, the recurring task is getting created based on the values of the most recently completed tasks. My use case is below: Each week I have a task with 4 custom fields that a user can fill out if necessary. If they do not fill out any of the fields that is completely okay and a default value is used in the backend However, if they do fill out a custom field then it shoul…

Rule to change a field on repeating tasks

We use repeating tasks to manage regular pieces of work and have set up custom fields to allow us to monitor the progress. However, when we mark the task as complete the repeating task is created with the same field option as at the time that it is marked complete. I would love to see a new rule option that allowed a field (or column/section etc) on a newly created repeating task to be set. Has anyone got a similar problem?

[Arthur_BEGOU]

Hi Mohammed,

Maybe an idea for a workaround with rules (@Richard_Sather I’m curious what you think )

If you have the chance to use the Asana Business plan (or above), you can benefit from the fantastic Customized Rules. With that feature, you could try to re-create a basic recurring task behavior, without using the actual recurring task features. This will allow you to automatically change your Custom Field for newly created tasks.

The ingredients

• 1- A section dedicated to those recurring tasks (we will use the section as a trigger for the rule)

• 2- An advanced rule that will create a new task every time the previous one is completed, every 7 days (steps 1,2,3,4,5) - see screenshot

Next screenshot is a zoom on the “View all fields” (5)
then select the right section for the new task (6)
then define the field “Status” to “Not Started” (7)

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And the final result in a .gif

[Richard_Sather]

Ooooh that’s very clever @Arthur_BEGOU !

The only drawback is that you are limited for options of when the task will recur, but other than that, excellent suggestion and very nicely presented, as always!

[Bastien_Siebman]

One drawback, which will be a benefit for some, is that a newly created task will be created by the rule and won’t be duplicated from the previous task. So if you task “evolves”, the next ones won’t get those “evolutions”.

Well done @Arthur_BEGOU !

[Phil_Seeman]

@Richard_Sather and @Bastien_Siebman, FYI both of those drawbacks can pretty much be eliminated if one uses the Flowsana “Add tasks” rule action instead of the Asana “Create a task” one.

[Bastien_Siebman]

We should create an automatic disclaimer “Most requests are covered by Flowsana, please check it out”