I have created a project template for my team. I want to automate the project stage of a task and sub/task. So I have set up a rule that states if a task is added or moved to ‘initiate’ section then the PMF Stage is set to ‘initiate’. However, in the template I have pre-built in tasks and the rule doesn’t update these tasks because technically they haven’t been ‘added’ or ‘moved’ to a section. Is there a way I can get the rule to apply to the tasks and subtasks already in the template?
Hi @Yasmina_Khayat , no, rules cannot be triggered within a template. However, from your description, I’m not clear on why you would need this or what you are trying to achieve exactly.
But it sounds like you have Sections with the same name as your ‘PMF Stage’ custom field. If that is the case, you may want to consider this approach, that many are finding useful, for such cases:
Adding to @Richard_Sather I generally advise against adding rules to a template that aren’t in a bundle, as it builds resistance to change (needing to edit all projects when wanting to change how a rule works) and increases the chance of errors (not updating all projects when changing a rule).
A very good point, @Jan-Rienk, but remember that not everyone has the Bundles feature which is exclusive to Enterprise tiers.
I know. And I’d still stand by not adding rules to templates if they are not in a bundle. Which in this case means don’t add rules to templates. The headache along the road isn’t worth it in my opinion.
For those who don’t have Bundles, I sometimes suggest to add just one rule to a template which is to add all tasks to a ‘master rule’ project (that collects all tasks from all projects created from the template) which would contain all the rules that you would nowadays place in a Bundle.
That was for the days before Bundles - now, obviously, Bundles are more powerful than just controlling rules but it’s still a decent workaround for those who it suits.
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