Today, we’re excited to announce saved views is now also available in Project Templates. This update brings sorts, filters, and tab management directly to your template builder experience!
Here’s what you can now do:
Add, rename, and reorder tabs within your project templates
Set up filters and sorts that will be preserved when creating projects from templates
Configure view options including custom layouts for different stakeholders
Save time by having your preferred views ready to go from day one
This means when you or your team creates a project from a template, all your carefully crafted views - complete with the right filters, sorts, and tab arrangements - will be there waiting for you! No more manually setting up views every time you start a new project.
Note: Dashboards & Note tabs won’t have full support in our initial launch, but we’re planning continued improvements in the near future.
FAQ
Who has access to this feature? This feature is available to all users who can create and edit project templates in Asana.
Will my existing templates be affected? No, your existing templates will continue to work as they always have. This feature enhances what you can do going forward!
How do I get started? Simply open any project template in edit mode, and you’ll see the new tab management and view options available in the Template Builder interface.
Please don’t hesitate to drop your questions or comments below!
@Emily_Roman, you mention a couple of times “filters and sorts” but leave out “Groups.” But I did a quick test and it appears that Filters, Sorts, and Groups are all supported, at least partially.
Can you confirm that, and also can you specify what’s not supported among typically available Filters, Sorts, and Groups, and what’s planned if that’s the case?
Hi Emily! Thank you for the update, this is a really nice one! But…
I think the dashboards are a major part of the need, because building and customizing the tabs is relatively fast, but building the dashboards is a whole different animal. I see the “Add Dashboard” feature is there, but I can’t create cards and graphs. When do you think this feature is coming?
My 1st feedback on a few discrepancies / fixes needed or improvements:
Overview: a bit confusing we cant edit the description box as one would be able to in the project view, but in the template edit mode the wizard offers to enter a description. It would be helpful to have the option to do both
Filters in tab: they do not actually work within the team template creation edit mode. My tasks are showed across all tabs despite having applied filters
Subtask view missing: we are only seeing 1 level of tasks in template editor, could we see the same as in the project view? helps with navigating across levels
Hidding fields/ columns: only works when doing it from the right pane, from the main view hidding field from field option >> hide column, does not work
Discrepancy in multi-dropdown value: see screenshot, I only select 1 value but the field shows +0. When clicking in the field, the +0 disappears
As has been noted above, though I’m also very excited, it’s a bit confusing because even though it says that it’s saving filters and sorting in groups, those are not reflected in what’s shown in their respective views in the template. It shows things are saved, but nothing changes in what is shown on the screen.
Thank you all for the detailed feedback!. We’ve reviewed your points, and I wanted to share an update on what is expected behavior, what we are fixing, and where we need a bit more information:
Template Fields and Filters
Regarding the inability to filter by ‘Complete Date’ or ‘Last Modified’, or add them as fields within a template:
This is currently a limitation because we do not yet support these specific timestamp fields within the template architecture itself.
We have filed a feature request to add these fields and their corresponding filters to templates. To set expectations, we don’t have immediate plans to launch this, but it is now on our backlog for future consideration.
Clarifications on “Expected Behavior”
The filters set here will not apply to the template list view. Instead, they are designed to apply automatically to the tasks once they are created. We realize the UI warnings could be clearer here and are looking into how to improve that messaging.
It is expected behavior that only one level of tasks appears on the list view; we have not changed how subtasks render in this update.
Bugs & Known Issues
Hiding Fields: You are correct, ‘Hide column’ is currently failing when clicked from the header. We are investigating a fix.
Workaround: You can hide fields using the Options side-pane for now.
Multi-dropdown values: We are aware these are displaying incorrectly; this is a known issue unrelated to this specific launch, and the team is working on it.
Overview Description: We believe the inability to edit the description box is a bug, but we cannot reproduce it on our end. @Jean-Paul_Tourne could you please share a screenshot or screen recording of this behavior?
Hey @Emily_Roman - thanks for looping back really appreciated! Nothing major just glitches indeed.
I mean the “overview” tab in the template shows empty”. Instead of having a step 2 “overview optional”, one should be able to add the description field directly in step 1. Makes it all in one place and aligned with the rest of the user experience.
I get though that you are probably iframing the description field from the overview tab in step 2, because the overview tab in the actual project view WIZIWIG carries normally much more functionality / features.
I was confused when 1st using the template editor that Iwas asked about the description in step 2 vs entering in step 1. I had to try once to realising it was 1 and the same field but captured at a different step / location. Which made me think the description in step 2 was a description of the template in the team vs the actual description body which would show once the project is created from that template.
Screnshot attached where I was expecting to be able to directly enter the description. Hope this helps
Hi Emily! Do you have any idea when the dashboards will be able to be configured from the template editor? I would like to assess whether it is worth the effort of recreating the templates from a project so that they can have the dashboards, because their current templates have relative dates configured that cannot be recovered from a project and have to be re-entered manually. Is this something you expect to launch soon?
Hi @Moises_Trejo , sorry I can’t answer that, but because I feel your pain too, for what it’s worth, if you create a project from your current template, then setup the dashboard there, and then save as a new template, you will be able to retain all the relative dates.
The problem is if your ‘pivot date’ has tasks before AND after the project’s start or due date. That needs to be setup again.
And the other issue is if you are currently using dynamic project roles in your template - those too need to be manually rebuilt in the new template’s version.
I really hope support for Dashboards and the Gantt view will be supported soon!
Thank you, Richard, you understood me perfectly. The situation is that a project created from the current templates will seed specific dates calculated from the start date configured for the project. When creating the template from there, those dates are not useful to my client because they would have to put the relative dates (which they had already put) for future instances. The issue is that there are many templates, and each template has many tasks, which makes the effort considerable, but above all, it is rework in their eyes.
Add, rename, and reorder tabs within your project templates
Set up filters and sorts that will be preserved when creating projects from templates
Configure view options including custom layouts for different stakeholders
Save time by having your preferred views ready to go from day one
