Rule action to delete a task

English Forum Product Feedback
21

Here’s a solution. I have coded and deployed an external app that uses the asana API to delete tasks programmatically. The app follows asana rate limiters and complies with all asana terms by letter and spirit. It has been a godsend.

I used information science to identify that out of our organization’s 400,000 tasks, 250,000 were mathematically without much or any remaining information. We deleted them. Our search results are crisp and clean again. And we haven’t missed a single task.

I have ideas about how to delete another 100,000 of our tasks. It’s unfortunate but true that asana task duplication and project templates resulted in 90% of our database becoming garbage over time. But now after the deletions it’s like we just moved into a new apartment and everything is wonderful and possible again.

I realized I was afraid to tell any of my team what to do on asana because I was only contributing to the clutter. Now the organization is humming.

If you would like professional help deploying this app for yourself, possibly with your own data retention rules, feel free to reach out. If there is interest, I will apply to be listed as an asana partner “systems integrator” or whatever asana thinks best and we can do this by the book. Meanwhile asana can follow whatever roadmap it’s on in whatever other direction it’s headed in. (Presumably, to make more tasks. =)

22

[Not speaking as an Asana associate] I was able to solve this problem using the External Action Run script and using the below script

async function run() {
  if (target_type === "Task") {
    log("Deleting task: " + target_gid);
    await tasksApiInstance.deleteTask(target_gid);
    log("Task deleted successfully");
  }
}

run();