Template tasks to support form submissions

Hi,

I think it would be great if the Form submission could be assigned to create a task based on the custom task templates that are created for that project.

Hi @Jeff_Bethune, thanks for taking the time to provide this feedback.

We do have an existing request for this feature in the forum so Iā€™ve gone ahead and merged your request with the existing one to consolidate feedback.

Hopefully this is something our Product team can implement in the future :slight_smile:

Multiple teams use forms to receive information/work orders from outside their team.

The forms come in and the task is named whatever the default form is, with all information contained in the description.

Example: Marketing Request
*Description: *
Name:

A*****

Email address:

[a*******]*

Date needed by if urgent:

Oct 1, 2021

Name of project:

Courageous Kids Climbing

Description of project, including any text you want in it.:

They provided a graphic but it isnā€™t that great. This can be a simple design to spread awareness about the event and encourage people to sign up. I provided key info below and attached the provided graphic. For ours, the less text the better!

FREE opportunity for up to twenty kids with special needs ā€“ physical, developmental, visually challenged or hearing impaired

The Pad in Henderson, Nevada on Saturday, November 6 from 10:00 am until noon. We can accommodate anyone under 300-pounds! (Reservations are required!)

Project type:

TV slide, Image

Installment instructions:

N/A

Does it need to be ordered?:

No

ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”

This task was submitted through Design/Branding Requests

Most of these forms need subtasks to ensure they are executed properly and currently we have to get around this by customizing rules to remind assignee to manually do the work needed (rename form, copy and paste content into a new custom template). In the case of the above form, it has 17 subtasks that have to populate.

Here are the reminders we have set for it:

Remember to:

  • make a new template and cut and paste this!
  • And be sure to give the name something clear!
  • Add the requester as a collaborator
  • assign an estimated time!

Itā€™s causing a LOT of confusion on everyoneā€™s part because if something is missed or a name isnā€™t renamed, itā€™s difficult to follow through with etc. Literally missing important work requests or duplicating on the regular because of the human error aspect of having to manually move a form request over and it causes people to start trying to use Google Forms as a workaround when weā€™d rather contain everything in Asana.

We have to use this workaround for everything from marketing and design to HR and honestly the reminders get ignored after a while because theyā€™re annoying.

Please help - itā€™s causing hours of wasted time and having us miss important requests.

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Hi @KristinTHorowitz, thanks for taking the time to share your feedback with us. As it stands, forms donā€™t support task templates. We already have a thread on this topic so Iā€™ve gone ahead and merged your post with Template tasks to support form submissions to centralize feedback. You can see a couple of workarounds in the comments.

In regards to the reminders you mentioned, you can try adding the field in your form ā€œShort task description for task titleā€ and link this field to the taskā€™s name. You can also add a Rule to your project that automatically adds an estimated time to form submissions.

2 Likes

Another option you can investigate is using Flowsana
I know there are automations to add subtasks to a task and to rename tasks.

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I just came to say the exact same thing! Please please please make this happenā€¦ and soon. :grin:

I also just came here to say this. Integration of Task Templates into Forms would be awesome! Would very much love this.

Yes, please! This functionality would greatly enhance automation and workflow (the stuff Asana cares about).

Please, make this. It would be a huge help! :slight_smile:

I feel like this could simply be an option in the form settings instead of needing to configure a rule where you just select the task template you want to use, or a blank task if that is what you want. Apparently this can be done in Flowsana but I have not yet tried it. Using the merge task option would also probably work if you do it right but definitely more cumbersome. Hopefully this will be added soon as it would be hugely beneficial to managing scaling up activity efficiently and consistently

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Iā€™ve tried to use Flowsana. And even though it is an alternative, it is not a native solution to Asana. The main problem is that the subtask do take some time before being synchronised and that the model tasks must be placed in one of the sections of the project. Flowsana doesnā€™t take in to account the task model library.
Last problem Iā€™ve spotted is that sometimes you can have infinite loops where Flowsana applies the rule endlessly.
So a tick box that allows creating a model task natively in Asana would be a perfect addition !

Believe me, I wish we could, but Asana does not expose task templates in its programming interface so itā€™s impossible for an external app to do anything with task templates.


This could happen if the subtask template is placed in the same project as the rule is targeted for; which is why we made a recent change such that templates must live in a different project.

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100% yes please !!

I came here to suggest this - glad thereā€™s already momentum behind the idea

2 Likes

This feature would be so helpful, and make the forms massively useful for case management, brief submissions, bug submissions, contextual feedback and on and on and on.

Please prioritise this functionality!

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Yes, please, tomorrow.

This is one feature that Wrike has, that I sort of expected Asana to have out of the box. I picked Asana for other reasons, but if I realized that I couldnā€™t use a 'blueprint" (Wrike speak) to use a form to trigger a task template I may have reconsidered. There is a form and there is a task template that gives me all the subtasks WITH dependencies but they donā€™t connect.

I can create a rule to add subtasks based on a trigger but I CANā€™T add dependencies to those subtasks like I can in the template.

Please fix one or the other ā€“ either add dependencies to the add subtask rule but even better would be trigger a task template (from a form, as a rule, or both).

Voted. This would be an ideal feature.

This is a critical feature to be able to use Task Templates. This 100% should have been standard functionality as its expected for the system to work correctly.

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I love this idea!!!
Until this becomes a thing, Iā€™ve created my form in Asana, and then I made a ā€œTask Templateā€ with all of the ā€œSub Tasksā€ I need. So now, when I get a form submission, I can just:
Go to the list my form submissions populate in, click the ā€œ+ā€ choose my Task Template, then click on the new Task Iā€™ve just created using my template. Now click the ā€œā€¦ā€ in the top right-hand corner of the screen (board view), click Advanced Options, then click ā€œMerge Duplicate Tasksā€ now search for the Task created by your form submission (be sure to give it a unique name so you can find it) and watch as Asana still does most of the work for you!

This would be a great idea, because (in addition to all that mentioned above) it will allow you to create tasks from a form where ā€œMark as Approvalā€ is selected by default.