I think it would be fantastic to add a “run rules now” button for projects and My Tasks. There have been times when I wish I could run rules on demand, such as when I just updated the due dates on a bunch of tasks. A “run rules now” option would save a lot of manual sorting in those moments, which are more frequent than you’d think (pre/post vacation, project rejiggering, massive reprioritization of projects or personal work, etc.)
I would also like to be able to run rules once during the day. Maybe this is a niche problem that only I’ve had, but multiple times, I have experienced project managers giving a previously undated task a due date of today or tomorrow, and then I missed it because the task was buried in Later (where all undated tasks go to wait for a due date or die), and the rules didn’t catch it – for instance, if the due date was today and it’s in Later, it’s not going to pop up in recently assigned because it had already been sorted. Then, at midnight it’ll be overdue, which means the new rules won’t promote it since it doesn’t fall into “due today” “due in 1 day” or any of the other autopromotion rule options.
Isn’t this basically the way MyTasks used to work? Where if the date changed, the task would immediately move to the correct section? Upvoted because yes, things are falling through the cracks into “Later” for me too.
I agree, but while I can add a due date for anything I assign myself, it often can’t be helped if I’m assigned a task from someone else. I’m not able to assign my own deadline on those because it wouldn’t be accurate in the first place, and it could confuse the project manager. But I don’t want it just hanging out in my “recently assigned” forever while I wait for the project manager to assign due dates. But then if I file it away and the project manager adds a due date that is shorter than the rules I have set up in My Tasks, then it still won’t pop up with enough time to do the work prior to the deadline - or at all (I really wish Asana would make rules apply to start dates and overdue tasks!). So a “run rules now” button could be helpful in situations like this where the due date may be assigned later or on short notice.
Re the separate question of start dates and notification, please vote for this:
Re tasks assigned to you by others without due dates for which it’s not appropriate for you to add them:
My approach here is to create a private follow-up task Shift+Tab+F for me with the date I want, and just move the original task to Later without a Due date because I know I have it covered with the follow-up. (For my own tasks, I might sometimes create a subtask instead of the follow-up task similarly.
Are there any plans in future to have an option to ‘run rule’ rather than wait til midnight? I’m working with a large corporate client to implement a rule after a form submission and having to wait for it to run overnight is too slow for their workflows.
Hi @Jane_Anderson, thanks for taking the time to provide this feedback!
We don’t have plans to implement the ability to force a Rule at this time but I will keep you posted if this is something our Product team decide to introduce in the future
Please pass this onto the Product team. This feature would save me an absurd amount of time manually sorting tasks when they change. Midnight every day is not often enough!
+1 I update the workplan and move dates around, but then have to wait until the rules run – being able to force-run the rules would be so much easier to cascade the changes immediately and check if there were any errors too.
