I’m trying to create a board with templated tasks/subtasks and rules that push subtasks into another board (multi-home) once the subtasks are unblocked. The problem I’m encountering is:
I can’t get one rule to run correctly on subtasks (it runs on tasks) even after several different rounds of testing.
I’m creating a task with two subtasks on board A. I want my rules to push the two unblocked subtasks into board B. I have one rule for if a task is assigned and one rule for if the task is not assigned but has a custom field label applied.
The first rule (“When task is no longer blocked OR task is added to this project - check if assignee is not empty - add to an additional project”) is working great for my subtasks. This works regardless of the custom field labels applied, just as I would expect.
The second rule (“When task is no longer blocked OR task is added to this project - check if assignee is empty AND department contains any of [custom label] - add to an additional project”) is not running on subtasks. It is set to run on tasks and subtasks.
Interestingly, when I edit my template, I can make the second rule run on the task. But even if both the task and the subtask are unassigned, unblocked, and contain the custom label, only the task and not the subtask is multi-homed.
I’ve tried editing the second rule such that it only runs when moved to a new section of the project (to see if maybe Asana was running the rules before all the data for the template was applied), but the results were the same, so that doesn’t seem to be the issue. I’ve tried turning the rule to run on tasks only and then switched it back to tasks and subtasks in case there was some kind of glitch that needed to be reset, and that didn’t change anything.
What am I missing? Having this capability would unlock SO much potential for our team, and I’m stumped as to why one rule will run on subtasks but the other rule never fires for the subtask. Thanks for your help!
I think I’m already using a staging project. Let me try re-phrasing this in case I wasn’t clear.
Project A is my staging project. I have a task template in Project A which has a task with two subtasks. (One of those subtasks is unassigned and has a custom field applied. The other subtask is assigned.) So the task and subtasks are always the same when they’re created.
When I use the template to create a task in Project A, I would expect that both rules would run. One rule should multi-home the subtask that is assigned to a section in Project B (as it does), and the other rule should multi-home the subtask that is unassigned with a custom field to a section in Project B. The rule that should multi-home the unassigned subtask has not yet run when applied to the subtask.
Oddly, when I add the custom label to the task in the task template, the rule does multi-home that unassigned task in Project B… but it still doesn’t multi-home the unassigned subtask with the exact same label. I don’t understand why one rule will run on subtasks but the other one won’t. It feels like a glitch at this point, but I’m hoping it’s just something I’ve missed that I can adjust and correct.
The subtasks are not actually in the project, so it is tricky to manipulate them. So in the task template, click into the subtasks and add them to a project. That will allow you to manipulate them with rules in that project.
If you add them to the same project the main task is in they will appear twice. Once as task, once as subtask.
