Our organization hosts a lot of events, so I’ve been trying to create an Asana system where relative due dates are set based on the due date of the main task. (E.G. Event is May 30th, “Venue Checklist” is due 30 days before that) I’ve tried a few different ways of doing this, and it doesn’t seem to work.
I’ve tried having a rule make the subtasks due dates change according to the main task’s due date:
I’ve also tried creating two new tasks with due dates relative to the main task’s due date:
As you can see, they all show up blank. Any advice appreciated!
Welcome to the forum, @Riley_Boese! Are you trying to use a rule or dependency to update these (and is it upon creation and/or shifts in the parent date)? Also, are you doing this for just tasks/subtasks, or do you also have sub-subtasks (or more layers)?
Could you post a screenshot (hide private info) of any rules or task templates you’ve already set up?
Hi @Stephen_Li! My dream would be for the subtasks to adjust after the parent task due date is manually set, but based on what I’ve read, I understand that doesn’t seem to be a possibility. So as an alternative, I have the parent due date set to 60 days after the rule is triggered.
There are some extra layers to it (maybe that is the problem?) where the subtasks due dates are supposed to be the same as the parent task - and then the sub-subtasks are set relative to that date.
You can do this with project templates, where each of the tasks can be set based on the projects Start Date (days after start date) or Due Date (days before due date).
Once you create the template, all dates can be configured relative.
Relative due dates in custom project templates - News / Product Updates - Asana Forum
Once you get below subtasks, stuff can start getting a little wonky. For tasks/subtasks, you could use dependencies to auto-shift the dates around. If it’s feasible, using projects (or sections or fields) to represent events and then bringing all your layers up by one (only using sub-subtasks if absolutely needed as punch lists or something like that) might be helpful. Then, you’d use dependencies and/or rules to keep everything else in line.
There was a recent change to dependency auto-shifting where you can only shift downstream tasks, so that might complicate your process based on what you’ve shared.
