I have this issue also. Annoyingly just ordered everything for the template, started a new project based on this template and the ordering is now all over the place.
Do we have to duplicate the “template” rather than saving it as a template?
Hi @Julien_RENAUD and thanks for reporting this issue! So sorry for the late follow-up, I must have somehow missed this thread! We’re aware of this issue and we’re working on fixing it. In the meantime, my best advice would be to re-organize your tasks manually using drag and drop!
Love asana so far but I find myself coming across several issues that are quite annoying. This one is on top of my list. So I’ve created a quite comprehensive project map and after spending many hours changing the visual organization on the timeline and saving the project as a template, when creating a new project based on this template the entire layout structure gets rearranged based on the dates that tasks are due and not how it is saved in the template. You can imagine my frustration in having to rearrange the layout every single time I have to create a new project. It takes me about 30-45 minutes to move things around to match what’s on the template. A time that I cannot afford to waste on manual workarounds. Looking forward to your feedback and (fingers crossed) a quick resolution.
Thanks for reporting this issue @Petros_Martirosian and sincere apologies for the hassle; I can completely understand the frustration there. This is something our team is aware of. Timeline is a pretty new feature, and we still have a full team working on improving it, so hopefully this is something that will be addressed in the next update!
Julien - cannot agree with you enough!! We are an architecture and design firm, and honestly, the only thing preventing our 1,000 person + organization from switching completely to Asana is that the timeline is not a replacement for say, microsoft project. If the order of the timeline followed the order of the task list, and there were better export options, we would be ALL IN.
I can not upvote this feedback enough.
I have just spent the last two days organising our entire businesses project management templates for consistency and quick visual reference.
I’m sure you can imagine my frustration when I saw that the project I created today from my template has reset all of its formatting, making the last few days work quite simply a complete waste of time .
Is there any progress on the updates and improvements to this feature?
Sincere apologies for the trouble @K_Taylor, I don’t have an update to share just yet, but I can confirm this is something we’re working on. I’ll make sure to update this thread as soon as I have an update on my end!
Marie, how far are we from having a progress update on this? The whole point of having a template is so you can duplicate it. Currently, it is almost taking the same amount of time to reformat a project after it has been created back to how the original template looked.
Not at the moment @Julien_RENAUD but I’m closely following this task and will make sure to keep you posted as soon as our team starts tackling this request!
I just stumbled on this limitation, Google found this thread. A little over 2 years has passed since the issue was raised? Is this a priority? My template has around 80 tasks and a lot of effort in laying out tasks to make readable tracks. Projects created from the template are a total mess, drag and drop is not really a decent workaround.
It’s been nearly 4 years since this bug was reported and it still appears to be unresolved. When I create a new project from a template, the order of tasks in the Timeline view is not necessarily maintained for the new project. This means I have to manually reorder tasks in the new project to maintain a nicely organized Gantt view.
Fortunately, there appears to be a workaround for this issue. I believe the task order in Timeline only becomes jumbled when you try to view the Timeline before the new project is finished being populated with tasks. So, the best solution is to:
In your template, ensure that you have NOT saved Timeline as your default layout. Otherwise, when you create a new project from your template, the new project’s Timeline will be immediately displayed (before all tasks have finished populating for the new project).
Follow the typical steps to create a new project from your template. While the project is being populated with information, do NOT click into the Timeline for the new project.
After Asana has completely finished creating the new project, click into Timeline for the new project. Theoretically, your tasks in Timeline (for your new project) should be in the same order as they appear in your template.
It would be nice if Asana could fix this bug to avoid confusion and frustration for people not aware of this workaround, but at least there’s a solution available!
The timeline for programs with more than a handful of line items is non-value add. The manual effort it takes to use a simple gantt chart makes this feature useless.