Hello! I have a template to use on all of our tasks in a project - the template shows all of the steps we have to complete in order to publish a video so it will apply to each task within our project.
The template has owners and due dates assigned but when I copy it over to a new task, neither of those carry over. Is there a way to do this so I don’t have to reassign owners and due dates to each task every time?
Thanks!
Hi,
I think this is done by following the instructions here for “Duplicate Tasks”:
(In my Asana “Copy Tasks” (not “Duplicate Tasks”) is the name of the menu item and popup dialog it shows; not sure if that’s an A/B test or slightly out of date documentation.)
A key point is when you see the dialog, make sure the checkboxes for Assignee and Due Date or checked; they may not be by default.
Hope that helps,
Larry Berger
Asana2Go & Asana Certified Pro consultant at Trilogi Software
Thank you so much, Larry - this did help! I just needed to checkmark those boxes to carry over the attendee and due date.
I have another question that piggybacks off that one that I’m hoping you can help me with - we have a whole series of subtasks that all have due dates that are specific timeframes from the task due date. For instance, subtask 1 is due 4 weeks before the task due date, subtask 2 is due 3 weeks before the task due date and so on. Is there a way for these subtask due dates to be updated or assigned automatically since they are the same amount of time between them and the task due date? Let me know if that doesn’t make sense…
Thank you so much!
Hi @Lauren_Cantoni,
Glad that worked out. Re due dates shifting…there isn’t anything in Asana itself to directly address this, except perhaps if you were to be able to have those be tasks (not subtasks), you had Premium, and used Timeline which has a feature to select multiple tasks and drag them left or right to move the tasks as a unit preserving the relative offsets among them.
I’m not sure if the addon Instagantt might offer more in this area; I believe it at least works well with subtasks.
Other approaches work in some but not other situations. I often just stack tasks in order and don’t worry about assigning due dates at all, if I know I won’t lose track of the project overall. Or just making sure the next task only has a due date; upon its completion, then assign the next one a due date. Multiple task selection can change multiple due dates at once but only to a single value so I don’t think that helps you here.
Future third-party apps may be addressing this further, I think…
Larry Berger
Asana2Go & Asana Certified Pro consultant at Trilogi Software
Hi, Lauren. I have the exact same need; I’d love to be able to duplicate a template task, and have its subtasks get relative due dates. That is, the due dates for subtasks should be set to x amount of time prior to the main task due date (3 days prior, or 2 weeks prior…).
Did you ever find a nice solution for this? Thank you!
Hey Scott! No, I didn’t find a fix for that exact problem, I’ve just been using Timeline more and although it doesn’t automatically update the due dates to the right amount of time out, it makes it a lot faster to do the manual process.
Thanks so much for your reply!