Rules in project template don't run on its tasks when project initially created

English Forum Tips and Tricks
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Agreed that this is critical for us to have. We are adopting project templates, which at the center of working efficiently and reducing manual work. Within the project template we are setting values in custom fields. When the project is created, there are no rules that will run on those newly created tasks, because it seems like Asana doesn’t catch this in either rule

  1. Task is added to project
  2. Field is changed to X

Is this on the roadmap to improve? I believe this is a blocker for fully adopting project templates and adopting rules for when projects are created.

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Hi @Katelyn_Price and welcome to the forum!

I moved your post to a new thread as your request is about something different than the other thread where it was posted. (I tried to give it an appropriate title but let me know if I’ve misunderstood.)

At the moment, you’re correct that rules in a project template do not run on tasks in that template when a project is initially created from that project template. Am I correct that’s what you’re looking to happen? If so, could you provide an example (or examples) of what action(s) you’re looking to have happen in that scenario? Perhaps we can offer some suggestions of ways you might accomplish your goal(s).

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Thank you @Phil_Seeman ! Im attaching a diagram to help explain how I would like Project creation via Templates to trigger project rules.

Asana Workflow Improvement (1)
Asana Workflow Improvement (1)5152×3968 362 KB

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Hi @Katelyn_Price,

Re. your Rule 1:
I may be missing something but why would that need a rule to initially populate subtasks? Since you’ll know in the template whether the field contains X, when it does, why can’t the subtasks just be added in the template? (You would still of course want the rule for scenarios that occur once the project is in use.)

Re. your Rule 2:
Yes, having the project name be added as part of task names when a project is initially created is definitely a popular request. I think the best current workaround for that might be to create that rule as a manual trigger rule, then as soon as project creation completes, multi-select all of the tasks and run that rule on them manually.

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@Katelyn_Price adding to @Phil_Seeman 's excellent input.

Manual rule triggers are limited to 50 tasks at a time. If you have more you can work around this by using the change of a cusom field as a trigger, which is slower with >50 tasks, but it does run.

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@Katelyn_Price @Phil_Seeman I think I’ve found a workaround that solves this:

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