Trigger an Asana Rule when a Custom Field is Updated

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I’d like to trigger an action when a custom field is changed from one piece of data to the next. For example, we have a custom ‘Status’ field, and we’d like to trigger an action to email someone when it changes only from ‘Pending’ to ‘Confirmed.’

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Hi @Alaynah_Penalosa - welcome to the forum! I’ve recategorized your post since it covers usage of existing features.

To accomplish this, you’ll want to make sure that your custom field is either a single- or multi-select field (for status, single- makes more sense). Then, in your project’s customize menu (click the button near the top right), you can create a custom rule (automation) that:

  1. Triggers on change of that field
  2. (Optional) conditions on the specific value of the change
  3. Performs one or more actions if the trigger and condition are met.

In your example, it might be:

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Hi Stephen,

Thank you for the reply! What if I only wanted to trigger an action for a specific change? For example, I only want to trigger the email action when changing the Status from ‘Pending’ to ‘Confirmed’ but not from ‘Incoming’ to Confirmed. There are more than 2 choices in the custom field, but I only want to trigger the rule between 2 specific choices, if that makes sense.

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@Alaynah_Penalosa - ah ok, gotcha. AFAIK, that is not natively supported. You could maybe get a little creative with secondary fields (used in the background, so you would hide them in the project UI) to tag a project’s current/previous status). E.g., have a field that mirrors your status that is never touched by a user. Use rules to mirror the status field’s value. When a user changes the status, add a check for the previous status field and then action as appropriate.

It’s not the most elegant solution, but I think it would work. If your org allows you to use 3rd-party add-ons, perhaps @Phil_Seeman’s Flowsana has some functionality for this (my org doesn’t permit 3rd-party apps, but Flowsana basically seems to extend Asana in all the ways people need!)

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@Alaynah_Penalosa,

You can do this if you are using a combination of statuses AND sections.

For example, if you put all of your pending tasks in one section and create the rule “When Status is Changed to Confirmed” and “Task is in Section X” trigger X action.

ETA: You can also do this by combining information from multiple custom fields. Ex (If “Status is changed to Confirmed” & “X custom field is set to Y” trigger Z action.

Christine

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