Use case: Tasks that correspond to external content, such as help articles in Intercom, are constantly cycling through editing, approval, and publishing processes. Rules that add basic subtasks during different phases of the process are great because they help remind writers and editors to complete crucial steps along the way. However, because the tasks cycle through this process many times, Rules that automatically add Subtasks will keep adding new ones to the task. We have to manually delete the old subtasks for each task so the case doesnât fill up with them.
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Hi @Daniel_Murphey, welcome to the Asana Community Forum and thanks for providing this feedback!
While this feature isnât available right now, hopefully itâs something our Product team can implement in the future.
Iâll keep you posted and let you know if we have any updates 
Hey @Rebecca_McGrath,
As per Danielâs request, I would love to be able to wipe clean everything on a task. I also use the same tasks on a recurring basis and would like to remove any subtasks but also comments from the tasks when they are moved in the âdoneâ column. Also, is there a way I can set a rule like â1 month after task is complete, move to xx columnâ? I would love that to keep my recently done updates in one column and then switching them to the backlog column later. Thanks!
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Hi Rebecca.
I would love to know if that feature has been added, Iâm creating rules to automate my workflow. At some point, Iâm creating subtasks in one of the sections, and when the task is moved to another section, the subtasks move with the task.
Is it possible to clear that subtasks?
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This is a major pain point currently with recurring tasks that would clean up a lot! Being able to move newly created recurring tasks to a section that could remove all previous subtasks (from the old completed task) and then move this new occurrence into a section that could add updated subtasks per any changes and updated due dates relevant to the new task creation is crucial to the success of a recurring task work flow! Please Please Please add this feature!
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I would also like to know this. It would help immensely with workflows.
Hi @Daniel_Murphey @Sarah_Laporta @Mara7 @Rose_Marie_Rugosa @Samantha_Stichberry,
I found a way to do it, is not the best way, but it worksâŠ
When All subtasks completion status are changed Check if Section is 'your specific section name' Do this Create a task Task name And Remove task from the project
By doing this you know âmoveâ the task from a section to an other by removing existing sub-tasks.
Basically you are saying, once the task in finish in a section, delete it and create a new task with the same name in the next section, you need to select âview all fieldsâ to select the section where you want to create the new task.
In addition you need to select under task name, âTaskâ, âName Display as textâ.
Now you just need to assign a rule saying, once a task is add to âyour specific sectionâ add sub-tasks.
Badly need this toooooo. We have a lot of recurring tasks and subtasks list is no joke now. 
Yes, please! This would make Rules so much more useful for us.
Iâm recently got the idea to use Rules as an alternative to Task Templates, that would allow someone to create a task in a new âPlanningâ section, specify the due dates of each subtask as Custom Date fields, then drag the task to the next âRequestsâ section to have a standard set of subtasks created based on some field values, assigned to the right people (either trigger task owner or specific person, depending on the task), assigned to additional Projects determined by custom field value, and have the due dates filled in based on other custom field values. This would be a lot easier to work with than having to go down the list of subtasks and add due dates to each one manually as the task creator wouldnât have to unfurl the list of subtasks for every task theyâre creating, they could just add all the relevant due dates to the parent task on a single line.
The problem that I ran into when testing out the rules Iâd created before rolling the template out to my team, is that automating all this subtask creation quickly creates a mess if someone moves a task to the wrong section accidentally, or realizes they input a wrong field value that caused subtasks to be created with bad information, and then have to manually delete every subtask that was created automatically. Iâd love to be able to set up a Rule that would cleanly undo the subtask creation for any task moved back to the âPlanningâ section so that dates could be adjusted and then when the task is moved back to âRequestsâ the tasks are recreated with the corrected/updated values.
We keep all relevant information and discussion in the parent task instead of in subtasks, so thereâd be no risk of losing anything important by deleting the subtasks, but we would not want to lose any field values, description, comments, or attachments on the parent task, and since none of those can be dynamically copied from the trigger task to a new task created by a rule, that means creating a new task and removing the original one, as cleverly suggested by a previous commenter, would sadly not work.
1 Like
I would love to find that feature in Asana.
It would be perfect to use a rule for it. The same way the rule Remove task from the project works.
Thank for putting it on your road map Asana