@Christine_Bolton I’m having one small issue with this. My template, which is a task in the parent project, has a subtask linked to the child project list (the one that designers will be using), is showing up in the child list, even though I made the parent project private and didn’t assign anyone to it.
Yes, I added colored icons and a red “DONT TOUCH” label but since there is no way to restrict editing to only one specific task (even in the pro version), I would really not want this template to be showing there. I don’t want anyone to accidentally delete or change it. I would be much more at ease if it wasn’t even shown to them.
In this instance if you don’t want it showing in the child project my suggestion would be to complete the subtasks in the template, then when you duplicate the parent task change the status of the subtasks to incomplete. Also, make sure that the child project is set to only show incomplete tasks.
I know this isn’t the best, unfortunately, in Asana, templates of any form are not the most advanced features.
Anyway, there is another issue to look out for; when you delete either the parent project of the linked child project, it doesn’t delete both, so you are left with an orphaned task in multiple places (depending on how many places you linked the parent) - so although I won’t be deleting tasks often, it’s something one would need to keep in mind.
I understand why you wouldn’t want to go that route, there just isn’t a better solution (that I am aware of). Once the task is assigned out to someone, or leaves the parent project, there isn’t a way to lock it down anymore.
Also, the deletion issue is purposeful on Asana’s part. The idea behind this is if you delete a project or a parent task and the task is assigned to someone or another project the workflow of that individual or project can be disrupted if the task is still essential outside of the one you have deleted. @Marie, I’m not misspeaking here, am I?
No, you are not misspoken. It works the same in Windows; when you have a folder and somewhere else you have a shortcut to that folder; when you delete the parent folder, the shortcut will not get deleted - it just becomes a “broken” shortcut.