Hello everyone,
For the last months in my company, we worked hard to create accurate templates which will save us a lot of time to setup project and take advantage of the timeline add-on which is really helpful to move tasks in case of delay or early work being performed.
While testing our different templates, I faced an issue which will create some frustration to the teams:
On the first screenshot: you can see one of our template with the rightful dependencies and timing (each task ends on 1 day so timeline overlapping functionality works good and if delay, following task are also postponed)
On the second screenshot: However after using the template and setting up another date, some of the tasks are moved to avoid ending up on weekend (which is what I expect) but because of this, 3 tasks ended up on Monday instead of considering the time necessary between of assignments (1 day each time)
I think I understand what Asana is doing as a computer: Task “Freigabe der Brand…” falls on Saturday, so it pushes to Monday. Following tasks “Erstellung…” end up on Sunday and are pushed to Monday as well. And last task “Interne Brand…” was expected on a Monday so it doesn’t move.
This is however really problematic as after initial setup, my teams would have to spend again time to make sure timeline is alright when we worked on templates exactly to avoid this kind of manual work. Moreover, if they don’t verify that, if any delay in the timeline, the task with a “red-link” are not considered to move according (they are not dependent in a way)
How can we make sure that the timing is respected between tasks after an overlapping weekend?
How to make sure the workflow is respected (leaving 1 day between each assignment as in my first screenshot?
Any help would be highly valuable. Cheers and thanks.
Template:
Test:
Hi @anon870591, thanks for reaching out! I investigated this further and I confirm this is currently working as expected. This was our way of making sure auto-shifting only incorporates business days.
- If the dependent task falls on a weekend as a result of auto-shifting, we update the duration so the end date is on a business day. When the task date no longer falls on the weekend, we revert to the original duration
- If the precedent task lands on a weekend day that would cause the dependent task to shift again, we keep the extended duration of the dependent task. This is meant to account for the fact that the precedent task duration will likely spill over and in this case, you would need to manually update the duration.
Although we don’t have immediate plans to change this behaviour, our team is aware of your feedback and will consider it in future updates.
Let me know if you have any questions!
Hi @Emily_Roman and thank you for the quick reply.
The fact that tasks are dependent is not advising the program that a conflict is existing in this case? Dependencies aren’t fully part of the workflow for now it seems as they don’t appear in the CSV files and only work in Timeline view for now. Any idea if the “avoid conflict” functionality could be integrated in the list view in the future?
Once you will have such feature in Asana, it will be really handful to automatize all project setup from A to Z.
Looking forward to such integration in the future!
Hi @anon870591,
FYI you might want to check out our Flowsana integration. It has two types of workflow automations (Dynamic Duration and Auto-Adjust) - they each provide a different way to automate your projects and dependencies, but both of them will maintain the dependency spacing when they shift tasks to avoid weekends, as you’re asking for.
1 Like
Hi @Phil_Seeman
Thanks for the information, I’ll investigate what this integration can do to support us.
This topic was automatically closed after 4 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
