Hi Community,
Due-date rules are steady and reliable, until humans bend time out of shape. Here’s how to build your own Asana Flux Capacitor and keep your workflows on track, even when Dave gets involved 
Isn’t there something comforting about rules where the due date itself is the trigger? They don’t rely on someone to complete a subtask at the right time, or a colleague to update a custom field to the correct value. When Tuesday arrives, it’s Tuesday. When a task is 18 days overdue, it’s 18 days overdue (yikes).
Rules can be as simple or as complex as you wish. They can have several conditions, multiple branches, and actions with almost limitless possibilities. And with AI Studio, it pretty much is limitless.
But at the heart of all that complexity sits the simplest, purest cornerstone: time. The due date is the due date. It’s the one fixed point you can count on. The thing you build everything else around.
At least, that’s how it should be.
Because while the mechanics of your rule, or the guidance you’ve written for AI Studio, or your neatly organized My tasks, may all be rock solid, time itself is only as reliable as the humans who respect it. And humans… well, humans move due dates. They reschedule things to yesterday by mistake. They forget deadlines exist at all. It happens to the best of us. Yes, even me 
and suddenly your carefully crafted due-date rules are stuck in limbo - not because the system failed, but because someone bent time out of shape.
The thing about due-date rules
Rules where the due date is the trigger are special. They fire when the clock says so, not when someone pokes a task.
Due date is approaching → Runs when the task naturally hits that window (like “3 days before due”). Moving the due date around won’t force it.
Task is overdue → Fires only when the clock ticks past the deadline in real time.
If someone changes the dates, though? The system doesn’t backfill. No “oops, this task was actually due yesterday.” Time doesn’t work that way.
Which leaves you with a workflow that would have run… if reality (or Dave) had behaved.
The good news: you can warp time
That’s where the manual trigger comes in. Think of it as the Flux Capacitor for your workflow.
Your real due-date trigger stays in place. But when humans interfere with space-time, you can push the manual trigger and fire the workflow anyway.
And don’t worry, this isn’t just for AI Studio fans. The same trick works on regular Asana rules too, giving you a way to double-check or fire off automations whenever time (or humans) let you down.
It doesn’t replace your due-date rules. it’s simply a safety valve to:
- Check that your workflow does what you intended, without waiting days.
- Recover when due dates were “helpfully” rescheduled into the past.
- Prove that your rule works, even when the calendar is chaos.
How to build your own time-warp device
Leave your due-date trigger alone, it’s your “real” anchor in time.
Add a second manual trigger to your rule, which you can control.
We’ll use the manual trigger to kick off the exact same actions as your due-date rule.
Fire it whenever you want, and watch the workflow leap into action. No waiting required, no timeline paradoxes.
A quick example
You’ve got a rule: “If a task is overdue, escalate to the manager.”
But then someone shifts the due date from next week to yesterday. Time didn’t pass naturally, so the overdue trigger never fires. The workflow is waiting patiently, but the calendar has been rewritten.
No problem. You use the manual trigger. One click, and the rule runs the exact same actions. The task escalates, the manager is notified, and order is restored to the timeline. Great Scott!
So yes—rules tied to due dates are steady. It’s humans who mess with the fabric of space-time. But thanks to the Asana Flux Capacitor, you can still warp time when you need to. No flux given—your workflows will still run on time.