Working with Templates in Asana: Create - Edit - Use

Create a Template

  1. Asana > Home
    a. To create a project to be used as a Template:
    Click “Create” at far upper left, select “Project”> [create what you want] > Click down arrow
    next to project name > “Save as Template” > Give the Template a name, team if needed,
    Privacy if needed > Create Template.
    b. To create a Template from a pre-existing Project:
    Open the Project
    Click the down arrow next to the project name
    “Save as Template”
    Give the Template a name; fill in Team and Privacy fields if needed
    Click Create Template

Edit a Template [This is klunky but the only way I’ve found to get to pre-existing templates]

  1. Asana > Home > Click “Create” at far upper-left > Click Project > Click “Use a Template”
  2. Now you can see the list of templates on the left.
  3. Click the template
  4. Click “Edit” in the upper-right
  5. Do your editing
  6. Click “Done” at the far upper-right.

Use a Template to create a new Project
DO NOT use a Project to create a new Project, use a Template. This is because if you use the functionality of sharing tasks between multiple projects, when you copy that Project to a new project and then another, things get really messy. The Template is designed to clear inter-project relationships of copied Tasks and allow a fresh start even though you have standard tasks with the same Task Name.

  1. Asana > Home > Click “Create” at far upper-left > Click Project > Click “Use a Template”
  2. Now you can see the list of templates on the left.
  3. Click the template
  4. Click “Use Template” at far upper-right
  5. Fill in Project Name; if needed, fill in “Select a Team” and “Privacy”
  6. Click “Create Project”

If somebody has a better way to get to the list of projects for editing, would love to hear it.

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Thanks for sharing! Short & sweet. :slight_smile:
(I myself can’t stop typing when the topic is templates :face_with_peeking_eye: )

I do agree with the sentiment, but there are limitations why one would choose copying a project over using a template. If the project relies heavily on customised tabs for instance, which can’t be inserted into a template, but can be copied when copying a project. I’m hoping Asana is going to work to bridge those gaps.

Creating and editing projects via Team pages is more streamlined. Navigate to a Team page by either autocompleting the Team name in the search bar and then choosing it, or clicking the Team name in the left sidebar. The right column shows the Teams’ templates, and a there’s a New template button there. Your listed approaches never actually create a new template from scratch, they always convert a project to a template.

Also, when you want or need to Duplicate a project (instead of using a template), you can avoid the multi-homing issue because the default is not to persist that in the duplicated project because the checkbox for Associated projects is unchecked by default:

Thanks,

Larry

@lpb thanks. I still think the access to Templates needs to be more straightforward. As to the project “homing” thanks for the insight.

1 Like