Would you be ok with my merging this topic into that one?
Until/if that’s implemented, two workarounds:
The simplest, which I recognize doesn’t solve the problem in the way you are asking, is to consider toggling on the display of the “Project” field in List view projects. Then, in any project’s list view where someone is looking at “Create G-Suite Account” they’ll also see next to it “David Onboarding.”
To achieve what you want, you could accomplish it without a task template but instead with a rule in the project template utilizing a variable to change all task titles. Add Onboardee as a text custom field in the project template but which you set only in the project after creation with one multi-select of all tasks to the Onboardee’s name. The project template rule would be: When Onboardee is changed, Do this Set task title to [task name] - [Onboardee].
@lpb Actually, the custom field option for fill in the blank custom field, isn’t showing up under my rules section. I wonder if for a rule, it needs to be where you set in selections?
So sorry about that; you’re right! “When” in the rule trigger can’t be a text custom field (you can see I was conjuring this up without actually testing it).
Rather than your suggested workaround, which would work, I think it will be easier to make a different workaround:
In the project template, and one more custom field: A single-select called “Action” with a single value “Add onboardee name” and leave it unset for every task in the template.
Change the rule as follows:
When Action is changed; Check if Action is set to Add onboardee name
In Do this: add another action: Unset Action [just to clean up]
In the project, multi-select and first set the Onboardee name for all tasks. Then still multi-selected with all tasks, set the Action. That should do it.
Hello, I would love to be able to make use of the variables in a template project. Specifically I would like to be able to add [PROJECT NAME] to the task name.
I just created a project board (RESOURCE MANAGEMENT) for a team and was able to use variables through rules, and loved it. I was hoping to do something similar with a template project (X-DEPT PROJECT TEMPLATE) but it seems they only work with rules. My use cases are below:
RESOURCE MANAGEMENT Rule
When due date is approaching (30 days), check custom field for (Reviewer type=Sales); create a task “Sales Reviewer for [Task Name]” (with description @Task). The task name and task url/@mention are added using variables and refer back to the task that triggered the creation of the new task, for example “Sales Team SOP”
This creates a new task called “Sales Reviewer for [Sales Team SOP]” with the “Sales Team SOP” task linked in the description of this new task.
This has a couple of benefits for us. First, one person might be assigned to several of these auto-populated tasks. Let’s say I am assigned
“Sales Reviewer for [Sales Team SOP]”
“Sales Reviewer for [January Meeting Deck]”
“Sales Reviewer for [2025 Strategic Plan]”
Including the relevant name helps visually track what is what. Secondly, these tasks are assigned to many different teams and those teams have various boards where they like to see what colleagues are working on. So “Sales Reviewer for [Sales Team SOP]” can be in RESOURCE MANAGEMENT as well as SALES TEAM WORK. Again, indicating what specifically the work is makes it easy to understand with a quick glance vs seeing 3 tasks that all say “Sales Reviewer”. Beautiful, works perfectly, I love it!
X-DEPT PROJECT TEMPLATE
We have a template that we use for all x-departmental projects. The template includes tasks for each team member along the lines of
“Sales team member” - assigned to Sales team rep
“Program team member” - assigned to Program team rep
“Operations team member” = assigned to Operations team rep
(As an aside, I know there are other Asana functionalities that may be better suited to indicating who is working on what but at present this is the company’s preference for organizing this information)
I was hoping that I could edit the project template to have each of those tasks include the project name for the same reasons I listed above. For example,
“Sales team member [Toolkit Workgroup]”
“Program team member [Partner Approach Workgroup]”
“Operations team member [Design Learning Project]”
But for the moment we have to do that manually once the board is created, which is not a huge deal but feels like something that could be automated. Very open to any other suggestions or workarounds people might have!
Thanks
Hi @Jackie_Matuza, I have merged your post with an existing thread on this topic. Please be sure to scroll to the top and click the purple vote button!
I would love this feature. For example, I have a project template for grant reports so that we follow the same workflow each time we write a report. In the tasks throughout the project, I’ve put “DONOR” to identify the donor this report belongs to, and after we use the template someone has to manually go through and update the name of the donor throughout the project. It feels needless when this is something that could be automated.
I voted… then I thought, I’m SURE there’s a workaround. And I did it , thinking to myself the whole time, “rabbit hole alert” – and figured out a workaround!!
Whew, it was not a rabbit hole but a treasure trove.
The best part? You can do so much more than insert project title in the task title with this solution. Here goes…
Set up a manual rule in project template
Whenever duplicating the template, go into the project and manually run the rule
How you manually run the rule depends on your business rules / setup. Screenshots below demonstrates the flexibility you have with this workaround.
CAVEAT – I have not tested this with an actual project template yet – I tested it with a live project and successfuly set up the same rule in the template - no bandwith right now to test, iterate, then delete. It SHOULD work!!
Manually run the rule in the new project after duplicating the project template - you can opt to manually select and run the rule, OR have it automatically run based on section / other criteria. Lots of ways to structure this bespoke according to your org’s business rules.
