⏰ Scheduled Triggers V2: Now run scheduled rules on the tasks already in your project

[Nadeen_Saleh]

Hi Asana Community!

Back in January we launched Scheduled Triggers V1, and many of you asked the same follow-up: “this is great, but when can it act on tasks that already exist in my project?” Today is that day.

What’s new

Most rules in Asana react to something happening to a task (a custom field changes, a due date approaches), and that same task is what the rule then acts on. Scheduled triggers are different: they fire based on time, so there’s no task kicking things off and no obvious task to act on. In V1, a scheduled trigger could only do things that didn’t need an existing task to act on — like creating a new task or drafting a status update with AI.

V2 changes that. Scheduled rules can now run on a defined set of tasks already in your project. That means you can automate the kind of recurring project maintenance and coordination work that used to require manual cleanup every Monday morning – reassigning work, updating fields, moving tasks between sections, archiving stale items, and more.

What is a “scope”?

When you pick a scheduled trigger, you’ll now see a new step called execution scope. This is where you tell the rule which tasks to act on when it runs.

You can choose from things like:

• All tasks in the project
• Just incomplete tasks
• Tasks in a specific section
• Tasks matching a custom field value
• Tasks last modified more than X days ago
• …and more

A quick note on why this is a scope and not a condition, since a few of you have already asked: conditions in Asana are always checked against the single task that sets the rule off. With scheduled triggers, no task sets the rule off – time does. So instead of asking “does this one task meet these conditions?”, we needed a way to ask “which tasks in this project should I go find and run this on?” That’s the execution scope.

Workflows this unlocks

A few of the ones we’re most excited about, several of which came directly from your requests:

• Stale task cleanup. Every morning at 9am, find tasks where Last Modified is more than 7 days ago and assign them to a project lead for review — or auto-comment “please provide an update.” This is the trigger many of you have been asking for, finally possible.
• Monday morning triage. Every Monday at 8am, take everything in your “This Week” section and reassign it, re-prioritize it, or move it forward.
• Recurring resets. Every Sunday night, reset the Status field on a recurring task back to “Needs agenda,” or clear out an Actual Time field across a set of tasks.
• Escalation on aging work. Every day, find tasks where Priority = High and Status = Not Started, and reassign them to a supervisor.
• Weekly reminders to a group. Every Friday, send a custom notification to the assignee of every task still open in a workflow stage.

A small nod to the future

Execution scope is the first step toward a bigger shift in how Rules work. Today, a rule acts on the one task that set it off. In the future, we want every part of a rule – the trigger, any conditions, and each action – to be able to have its own scope. That’s how we’ll get to workflows like “when something changes in Project A, go update a specific task in Project B” – what kicks the rule off and what the rule acts on don’t have to be the same task anymore.

V2 of Scheduled Triggers is the first place this idea shows up in the product, but it won’t be the last.

As always, let us know what you build with this and what you want next.

[Otakar.Libra]

Epic!

[Emily_Piotrowski]

Thanks for the update! Are there plans in the future to add scheduled triggers on the portfolio level?

[Lacey_Bockhaus]

Does this still cost AI credits? Because rules that are triggered cost so much and as a small team, we are blowing through AI credits to help keep us organized since we don’t have someone to fully manage our projects.

[lpb]

Welcome @Lacey_Bockhaus,

@Lacey_Bockhaus

Does this still cost AI credits?

Not necessarily. This is not part of AI Studio, just a new regular rule. If you choose to turn it into an AI Studio rule in will consume credits, but not otherwise.

Thanks,

Larry

[Lacey_Bockhaus]

So running regular rules doesn’t consume AI credits?

[lpb]

Regular (non AI Studio) rules don’t consume AI credits.

[Esteban_Giannini]

One of the best updates for power users. I’ve already put it to work. Great job!

[Lorie_Grucelski]

Will this be made available for rules under “My Tasks?” It would be SO helpful!

[ka_nishiyama]

It appears that a new feature has been added to My Tasks as well.

It appears that there is a discrepancy between the rules’ actions on My Tasks and within the project (for instance, the inability to create a task).

[Vanessa_N]

Hi @Emily_Piotrowski, this is definitely on our radar, though it’s not on our immediate roadmap just yet.

Feel free to create a new topic for this request in English Forum > Product Feedback so you and others can vote on it! Once the team officially picks it up, we’ll update the thread status and you’ll get an automatic notification.

[Jonathan_Elchison]

Hi friends! I’ve been quite excited to finally see the Scheduled Trigger finally roll out to my account. I’m eager to automate the manual movement of ~10 tasks from one section to another each morning.

I note (and understand) the computational limit: Rule matches over 150 tasks won’t run due to processing limits. This is reasonable.

What I don’t understand is the Cancellation error I receive daily when the rule runs: Rule cannot run because the project has more than 1000 tasks

I’m a small-business owner, and yes, I have >1000 tasks in “My Tasks”. Since the rule necessarily runs on the “My Tasks” project, I can’t find an easy workaround. (Creating an intermediate holding project isn’t tenable for my case – to be useful at all, it needs to operate on My Tasks.)

It’s unfortunate that the 1000-task project limit is snagging me, despite my rule filter matching only ~10 tasks (well below the 150-task limit). Any tips?

Thanks in advance!

[Nadeen_Saleh]

Hi everyone! I love seeing the excitement for scheduled triggers!!! Here are some answers to the questions above:

Q: Are there plans in the future to add scheduled triggers on the portfolio level?

A: Yes, but not immediately. Look out for this later this year, along with some other big improvements to rules

Q: Will this be made available for rules under “My Tasks?”

A: It is available in My Tasks! It will support all the actions currently available in My Tasks rules.

Q: Does this still cost AI credits?

A: If the rule uses any AI features (AI instructions, AI conditionals, and “Use AI” variables) then the rule will consume credits for every task that the rule runs on.

Q: Rule cannot run because the project has more than 1000 tasks. Any tips?

A: One way to think about the two limits:

• A scheduled trigger rule can scan up to 1,000 tasks to potentially act on (pre-filtering)
• A scheduled trigger rule rule can act on up to 150 tasks

These are limits that we put in place for performance and scalability reasons, but I understand this can be especially limiting for My Tasks. I’ll chat with the team to see if we have any wiggle room here and circle back here! In the meantime, one work around would be to create a rule that multi-homes the desired tasks to a temp project and run a scheduled trigger rule there.

[lpb]

Hi @Nadeen_Saleh,

Thanks for all the answers!

Re @Jonathan_Elchison’s question, I just did a test (but in a project, not My Tasks, but you could tell us if My Tasks should the same). The project has more than 1000 tasks and, as expected, the rule failed to run (based on rule history) with no Scope. But when I added Scope to reduce the total below 1000, the rule did run. So that tells me Jonathan could also try scoping as a solution (not sure if that will help him or not).

But, I don’t understand this message:

The message seems not to respect the scope. Shouldn’t that message be improved or removed? Again, that rule did run for me, in spite of the message.

Some folks may give up on the rule and not try to run it and never learn that it actually respects scope and works.

Thanks,

Larry

[Nadeen_Saleh]

Ah, that’s really good feedback, Larry! We don’t know how many tasks the rule matches until its executed, so this message is meant to be a warning. But I could see how it sounds blocking. I think better language could be “Rules that match over 150 tasks won’t run due to processing limits.” Curious your thoughts.

[lpb]

@Nadeen_Saleh,

@lpb

I just did a test (but in a project, not My Tasks, but you could tell us if My Tasks should the same). The project has more than 1000 tasks and, as expected, the rule failed to run (based on rule history) with no Scope. But when I added Scope to reduce the total below 1000, the rule did run. So that tells me Jonathan could also try scoping as a solution (not sure if that will help him or not).

Does My Tasks operate the same as my project test? Would Scope help in @Jonathan_Elchison’s case?

@Nadeen_Saleh

“Rules that match over 150 tasks won’t run due to processing limits.” Curious your thoughts.

That’s better, but only very slightly. I think it needs further UX attention:

First, I think the use of “Scope” initially, then “Filter” from then on, with “Scope” never being mentioned again, is confusing to users.

Should the warning mentioning the 150 limitation and not the 1000 limitation?

The “match” wording is not really clear enough since both of the above might be interpreted as “match.”

Thanks,

Larry

[Jonathan_Elchison]

Thanks for the suggestions!

On “scope” vs. “filter”:

First, I think the use of “Scope” initially, then “Filter” from then on, with “Scope” never being mentioned again, is confusing to users.

I agree. Unless I’ve missed something fundamental here (completely possible), I’m using “filters” in the UI, which I think is what @lpb (and the original forum post) is referring to as “scope”?

Unless only the first filter is the “scope”, I think I’m using 2 filters/scopes:

It doesn’t appear that the 1000-task limit applies to the post-filtered number of tasks. (In my last test, there was only 1 incomplete task in the Wed section.) Rather, if I understand @Nadeen_Saleh, it appears as if the limit is rather applied to the number of pre-filtered tasks (in this case, all incomplete+complete tasks in My Tasks).

And if that’s true, then I think this Scheduled Triggers eventually become useless (in My Tasks) to any Asana user who has completed 1000+ tasks assigned to themselves

For kicks, I tried reversing the order of my two filters (in case the first filter acts as the scope), with the same (Cancelled) result:

Multi-homing may be a tenable workaround, but I’ll have to give some thought on how to restructure my incoming tasks.

Thanks again for everyone’s ideas!

[lpb]

@Jonathan_Elchison, Yes, I was using Scope and Filter interchangeably, and Asana is doing the same, I feel.

I went ahead and did another test in another Asana env where I have thousands of My Tasks. Unless I’m mistaken, the 1000 limit is after scope/filter in projects, but for My Tasks, as Jonathan discovered, scope/filter doesn’t help get you under the limit.

@Nadeen_Saleh:

1. As Jonathan pointed out, this renders the rule useless for My Tasks without workarounds for many users.
2. A number of us have strongly advocated for features to operate consistent with expectations (MCVP, Minimum Consistent Viable Product), and this goes against that (My Tasks different than projects). The “Gotcha Debt” in Asana is high and I’m not sure if it’s decreasing or increasing.
3. Feature announcements that don’t express the caveats lead to unmet expectations and wasted time. At least one of the announcement workflows won’t work for anyone who’s used Asana more than a few months, generally.

Thanks,

Larry

[Sheryl_Jen_Doluna]

I want this rule to run daily and move all tasks in the “Due Today” section that are not due today to their proper sections, but I keep getting the “Project has too many tasks” error even after narrowing the scope. (There are only 7 tasks in the “Due Today” section when I did this test. )