Situation: We have a project request process where the initial request flows through a board for triage/approval and gains about 6 subtasks along the way, generated by rules within the board. Then, approved projects get converted to an Asana project using a template. All the previous subtasks are transferred into the project template upon creation (becoming parent tasks). They show up in an “Untitled section” at the top of the board. I have a templated task for the project leader to bulk-select any subtasks moved into the new project and manually move them to the template’s first section (PHASE 1: Initiation), where there are additional tasks that should be grouped in the same phase.
I keep periodically checking to see if there is any functionality to remove this manual step for project leads. I was previously focused on “added to project” rule triggers and thought I’d test more today and try a solution based on the newer schedule-based rules (maybe one day after start date?). Another better solution finally emerged.
Findings from testing today:
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We still cannot employ “Added to project” triggers to try to catch these tasks as they are brought in and shift them to the desired section (even though their “All activity” indicates a record of “added to project”).
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I found and referenced these forum posts on subtask sections (Tab+N):
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I manually added the subtask section and found that, if the subtask section is exactly the same name as the first section in the template (capitalization match required), the subtasks carry through as desired, grouped with other PHASE 1: Initiation tasks generated by the template.
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At first I could not identify a way to create a subtask section through a rule, but found by playing with it that I could after clicking in the subtask title field to begin naming a subtask.
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I found that placing this section at the top, above the first subtask generated, kept it at the top and continued nesting other subtasks within that section as the request flowed through the board. This is exactly what we needed.
Sharing for others needing more seamless pass-off as tasks morph into launched projects!