Rules Assign Actions

English Forum Product Feedback Features Launched
1

When setting a Rule, it would be great to have an action available that would re-assign a task based on a trigger like section change or perhaps a custom field drop-down. Currently there is assign task, but not remove assignment or re-assign.

I have an ongoing project where I am constantly creating tasks as follow-ups with dependencies that trigger notifications for the next team member to start their work in the process. As an alternative, I have setup some rules setup in the project and can use most of the current rule triggers and actions available now to ‘push’ one task from start to finish. The only thing I can’t do is change the assignment…

2

Hi @JoshFinch,

I haven’t tried this use case, but if you have a task assigned to User A, and a rule fires for that task where the rule action is “Assign to User B”, are you saying that rule will not assign it to User B if it’s currently assigned to another user (i.e. that the “Assign” action will only do the assignment if a task is currently unassigned)? It would surprise me if it worked that way; I’m curious about your findings.

3

It is currently exactly as you have described. If the task has an assigned user, then it will not re-assign.

I tried a workaround relying on the ‘add collaborator’ action to notify that a user has been added to the task…but my preference would be to assign, where it is most clear that the task has been ‘handed off’.
The other workaround is my custom field notifying collaborators when the status changes, to also reinforce the fact the task has moved on to their plate.

4

By the way I’ve read a lot of your posts and am very impressed with your Asana experience, knowledge, and contributions…keep up the good work!

1 Like
5

Thanks, @JoshFinch!

Wow, that’s interesting (and surprising)!

Well then I would be remiss not to mention that my Flowsana integration does not have this limitation. Flowsana’s Assign To User ___ rule action will assign a task to the designated user even if the task is already assigned to someone else.

In addition, Flowsana has an Unassign Task rule action as well, which will remove a task’s current assignment and leave it unassigned.

6

I discovered that if I set the same assign rule to another project, and move the task to that other project, it will remove the currently assigned team member, and then assign the new team member based on the trigger/action assignment.

A small work around, but it suits my needs.

7

Happy Monday @JoshFinch :wave:

Jumping here to let you know that you are now able to create Rules using multiple Triggers (up to 20) and multiple Actions (up to 5). You can learn more about it in our Guide and in the announcement made in the Forum.

I’m closing this thread now but if you have any follow-up questions or feedback to share please let us know! I hope you enjoy it!