I’m wondering if there is a way to set a rule that triggers an update to a field based on the actual Due Date of the task:
I would like to have Q1/Q2/Q3/Q4 automatically selected if the Due Date of the task falls within that quarter (if a task is due on 3/15/2022, the Quarter field would be automatically updated to Q1).
So far there is no way of specifying the Due Date range in the rule settings, just “New due date is set” or “Due date is removed”
@Phil_Seeman, I updated the title to add the word “Range” because the request is to support a range of dates in the trigger, not just one single date which we currently have.
I’m not sure if the requestor would like the rule to trigger automatically (probably) like most other rules, vs only once per day after midnight.
Oh, well, TBH I guess I never closely tested Asana’s triggers and assumed they worked in a “within” logic - because that’s exactly how our Flowsana rule triggers work!
So @anon85393365 and @David_Russell, if you’re interested, you can accomplish what you want via the date-based rule triggers in our Flowsana integration. Note that to get the behavior you want, it’s critical to create the rules in the right order, which is from the farthest-out to the closest-in. So in @David_Russell’s above examples, you would create the rules in the exact opposite order that they’re listed above.
One other thing to note: unlike Asana which only evaluates its date-based rule triggers once per day around midnight, we evaluate ours in real-time as well; so for example if you change a date and that triggers a rule to move it to a different section, that movement will happen right away. (Of course we also evaluate our date rules around midnight as well, as that’s also important to do.)
@Phil_Seeman can I use Flowsana in a similar situation that I have with the new custom date field? I titled a custom field “Announce Date” that starts off with no data. When someone adds an a date to this custom field, I want a task created for me in a separate project. Is that doable?
I have a similiar use case, so I too will piggyback here while we are talking about using date ranges:
I am trying to get a specific custom field in Asana to select a specific item from a multi-select based on when the Project was created.
ie. If something was created on 8/30/22, the custom field would select Fall22 etc. based on the range I have assigned to each custom field option. Is there anything like this available?
@Rebecca_McGrath, is it possible to change the date field based rule triggers to update from only 1x a day midnight to real-time like all the other triggers? I’m guessing your server back end does this sweep once a day only to avoid network drag, but would be highly useful if it functioned exactly like all other automation in real-time (as noted above for Flowsana).
For example, we are in the drug supply chain business. We have a receiving board with drug names on it. When the ETA for drug arrival is changed to today, we need to get pinged today if the drug has arrived and not at midnight since patient care depends on knowing in realtime when these drugs are received (especially if its a drug shortage item and we need to use it the minute it arrives, without pinging our receiving dept to see if it arrived). Any lag time could cause delays which could impact patient health.
All of our projects have invoicing tasks so I have added those tasks to a second project in order to see an overview of the upcoming invoices.
I would like to be able to add a custom rule that moves the task to a section based on the due date, but the function seems limited to due dates being added, removed or changed.
In this situation I have sections as follows:
March 23
April 23
and so on
I would like the task to move to the correct section automatically i.e. if the due date is March the task moves to the March section.
I have merged your post into an existing feedback request thread.
Don‘t forget to leave your vote at the very top.
Also it seems you can set this up in Flowsana.
We’re currently tracking work in a project broken down by quarters. It would be extremely helpful if we could set a rule that says “If Due date is between Jan 1 - March 30 then move to Q1 section” and then have that rule run whenever a due date is changed
I’m brand new to Asana (currently evaluating it). While I like a lot of things about the tool, some of the limitations are pretty surprising for a mature application. The biggest in my mind is the lack of support for due date ranges in rules. I want to do exactly what @David_Russell suggests above. Currently, if I set a rule as follows:
A task will only move into the “This Week” section is its due date is exactly 1 week before the current date. However, it will not move into that section if its due in 3 days or something. As far as I can tell, the only way to implement this type of behavior within Asana is to create a rule for each specific day in the range… i.e. a rule for 7 days, another for 6 days, 5 days, etc. Doing so (a) seems inefficient/silly and (b) isn’t possible for the limited number of rules allowed in the Premium tier.
I know that this functionality can be done using Flowsana (which I’m also evaluating), but the fact that it isn’t baked into Asana itself seems like a big miss.
