I use project templates to manage creation of different types of projects. I’d like to trigger some rules to run as tasks populate in a project created from template, but it seems that those tasks are not considered “added to the project” since they just sort of appear as the project is building. What sort of clever workarounds do you use to trigger rules to act on tasks as they are populating a project created from template?
One use case I’d like to solve for: AI studio to populate task titles according to the name of the Project. This seems like the sort of thing I should be able to complete using the “Fill by AI” action to set the task title according to my guidance. I’m not certain it will be able to read the project title since I cannot identify it before it is created, but it’s this sort of manual double-work I’m looking to automate.
I have been testing something similar recently and I don’t have any solutions for you but wanted to share what I have found:
When the tasks are being created in the project template they are considered as being “added to the project” however the challenge is that they are ‘added’ to an invisible section or the first section in the project. The task creation moves pretty fast so when I tried to write rules to re-name the tasks it often tripped up the system and I’d end up with duplicates or triplicates of every task (what happens is the task with the updated name is also viewed as a trigger and kicks off the rule again. If the system is fast, you’ll end up with 2 tasks. If the system is slow you may end up with more… once, I ended up with 16 duplicates of every task)
A potential work-around IF you don’t need date dependencies is to have the AI create the tasks on project launch. Essentially, your template would be empty except for the AI Studio rules. Then you could build AI commands that would look like ‘when a project is created, create the following tasks’ and then give instructions on the tasks and sections that you need. You can add the dates to those tasks, but they won’t be date-dependent in the same way that you can create them in a template (i.e., if the project end date is December 31, 2025 then build task 1 to be due 6 months before the due date and task 2 to be due 3 months before the due date, etc and retain the date dependency so that if any date is changed, all other due dates are automatically shifted)
If you want a really cheap work-around, you can manually add a single task that can be the ‘trigger’ for the rest of the rules. Maybe give it a very specific task title so that the AI can repeat the rule in every new project. Example: you can have a task called “Launch this project” and assign it to yourself. Then give the AI the prompt that “when the task called ‘Launch this project’ has been completed, update the placeholders in all task names that look like ‘[project name]’ to fill in with the value of the name of this project”. And then in the titles of your tasks you’d use the placeholder as an exact match like “Update the artwork for [project name]”
I set rules to trigger once a user is assigned and it’s in a particular section of my project. That way when it’s generated from the template, the rule still triggers when the template or I assign a user to said task.
SO you’re saying that using the trigger “when a task is added to the project” is too soon, but users are assigned to tasks later in the template-building process? This is also a useful new angle to try!
(what happens is the task with the updated name is also viewed as a trigger and kicks off the rule again. If the system is fast, you’ll end up with 2 tasks. If the system is slow you may end up with more… once, I ended up with 16 duplicates of every task)