Zapier udpate action does not seem to be working when updating the Assignee Status

[Dan_Lewis]

Hey team,

Ok so I actualy have never got into using the My Tasks feature in the last 4 years since my business standardised on Asana as our PM/Task management tool.

However I have always felt the pain that meant I wanted to. ie every day I need to work out what I am actually going to do that day. I am typically working across 5-7 projects in a week and every day I need to adjust what I am actually doing and prioritise it.

So obviously My Tasks would be perfect. Everything I am assigned all in one place.

However, I generally find it overwhelming when I open it.

So in an effort to make this better I decided I just wanted to get rid of recently assigned. Stuff can just go streight into Later.

Secondly I want to get rid of stuff where the due date has past and it is incomplete.

So the two zaps I was going to make were:

1. Everytime a task is added to My Tasks set the assignee status to Later
2. At the end of each day anything incomplete in Today should be moved back into Upcoming AND if the due date has passed it should be removed

However I have run into 2 issues:

1. For the first zap when I do get the zap firing, the Update Task Action is running successfully and updating the Assignee Status to Later. But this is not updating the My Tasks Sections/Colums. My read of the situation is that the Sections are no longer driven by this and are now a different data structure. Which is a property not yet in the Zap. I see there is a tag for my-tasks-v2, which I guess is the reason why this may be the case.
2. I cannot run a scheduled zap that gets a list of tasks in the Today column. ie get all tasks within a section. I could make some sort of google sheet to externally track these, but it would have been good to have something work out the box in the Asana zap app.

Here is a picture of my Zap

Any help/direction would be deeply apreciated.

I really want to start using My Tasks to organise my dailey work priorities. But it just needs to be updated so that Today is starts each day empty and Recentyl assigned just doesn’t exist.

[Bastien_Siebman]

Hi,

Can we challenge your decisions around the way your are using My Tasks, or you just need help with Zapier ?

[Dan_Lewis]

I mean you can try, but honestly I have given it a crack a couple of times and find the need to constantly manually manage items to be on top of it just to hard. Its a bit like my email box. There is just too much stuff coming through, so some stuff is quickly dealt with, other stuff goes is starred for later and anything lower priority than that is deleted/ignored.

I have actually just hooked up PomoDoneApp as it is very close to my ideal workflow once hooked up to Asana for designating tasks for “today”.

AND I can now see very cleary that our Asana workspace still has the old “Assignee Status” sections in there. Which I think are what I am seeing in Zapier.

This tells me two things:

1. An Asana Dev needs to go and finish the migration onto My Tasks V2 for our workspace. ie delete these old sections
2. Asana need to update the zapier app to work with the My Tasks V2 Assignee Status so it supports the new sections.

Regardless of getting these things fixed, I’d be curious what your ideal workflow proposal is?

Heres an image of my current My Tasks

• The workflow goes right to left as thats more efficient on smaller screens/when i put it in a small window off to the side of my screen.
• Done I would hide if I could. Its just somewhere to put everything that is “done” via an asana automation.
• There are 2 automations for moving items out of later into upcoming and today.
• Without the Zap ill be manually moving everything into later from recently assigned.
• Unfortunately the My Tasks view does not have filters, else I’d have used that with Tags to find prioritised stuff in later from different projects.

[Dan_Lewis]

@Bastien_Siebman is this forum the best place to get support for this?

Or should I escalate on a different channel.

[Bastien_Siebman]

According to me the migration to V2 was complete. So I am not sure what is happening. @lpb @Phil_Seeman any idea?

[Bastien_Siebman]

I personally deal with a lot of tasks as well and I do move things into sections manually. Works for me. I wouldn’t want things going into Later automatically as I am constantly evaluating whether or not a task due date is justified.
I found a system that works for me.

Also I have a couple of strategies to reduce the number of tasks assigned to me. For example I am the web developer of the team but I don’t assign myself on all the web tickets. I am only assignee on the next ticket + a recurring one saying « do web stuff » basically. And I apply this system to many topics.

[lpb]

@Bastien_Siebman

So I am not sure what is happening. @lpb @Phil_Seeman any idea?

From the Asana API docs:

assignee_status string Deprecated

It may well still be present but it’s been deprecated. I didn’t see enough detail here to support the comment that Asana needs to update something in the Zapier app.

The sections in My Tasks are up to the user to remove/rename; it doesn’t mean the migration wasn’t finished.

Thanks,

Larry

[Dan_Lewis]

Hey Larry,

Ok can you confirm/clarify 2 points:

1. assignee_status is no longer what determines which column in My Tasks’ a task appears?
2. How do I remove these old assignee_status sections from My Tasks? As I don’t want to see them through any integration any longer. Eye PomoDoneApp

At least from my perspective what I am seeing is:

1. No way to edit the section in the zapier update action - there is no field for it, you can only edit the deprecated asssignee_status. I know this because the single select options it gives in zapier do not include the new sections I created in my tasks. Eg “blocked”
2. I don’t see anyway of removing or tunening off the old assignee_status columns/sections in Asana. The net result is that there are old tasks in our workspace still with an assignee_status for these essentially hidden sections. This data is flowing through integrations Eg PomoDoneApp.

If you haven’t tried creating a zap to confirm the 1st problem, I’d suggest you do. The story is simple:

Given a zap is triggered
And the Asana Zap app is authenticated
And I am editing a zap
And I have added an Asana Update Action task
And I have selected the My Tasks project to write to using the “project ID” in the custom input
When mapping fields in the Asana Update
Then I should be able to set the section of a task

Thanks for your help

[Dan_Lewis]

Hey Bastien,

That sounds very similar to my workflow.

Maybe with this new board view of my tasks I’ll find using “recently assigned” more manageable.

I’ll give it a go again. As I type in DVORAK the keyboard shortcuts have always felt odd and Without them the old list view was just to inefficient.

[lpb]

@Dan_Lewis,

@Dan_Lewis

assignee_status is no longer what determines which column in My Tasks’ a task appears?

Right, assignee_status is deprecated and has no effect.

@Dan_Lewis

How do I remove these old assignee_status

That’s not possible, I’m afraid.

@Dan_Lewis

No way to edit the section in the zapier update action - there is no field for it

I don’t have time to try it but I think you want this action in Zapier:

In the underlying Asana API, I believe it’s https://developers.asana.com/docs/add-a-project-to-a-task It may not sound like the right endpoint but it does a lot including what’s asked for here.

@Dan_Lewis

This data is flowing through integrations Eg PomoDoneApp.

If PomoDoneApp integrates with Asana it should have long ago deprecated assignee_status.

Larry

[Dan_Lewis]

Hi Larry,

Thanks for the detailed reply, that was super helpful.

Ok so I now have a zap working with the “Add Task to Section of Project” action.

However, my Asana Task update trigger does not seem to fire when a section is changed in the ‘My Tasks’ project. Is this expected behaviour?

ATM the assingning and un-assigning myself from the task trigger the zap.

Thanks
D

[lpb]

This was a known Zapier problem a year ago so maybe it’s not been addressed yet. See @Phil_Seeman’s replies and perhaps his flowsana.net:

Section Update doesn't trigger Zapier - Looking for workarounds!

I am trying to use Zapier to push updates from Asana to a CRM (Insightly) when a Task in Asana is moved to a new section. However, Zapier does not currently recognize section changes as “updates” to Asana tasks, so the Zap doesn’t trigger. Zapier informed me that this is a known bug that has been reported to Asana but was unable to give a time frame for resolution. In the meantime, I’d like to find a workaround, if possible, but have run into a dead end. I’d appreciate any input!

Larry

[Dan_Lewis]

Hey Larry,

Ok thanks for the link, I used flowsana ages ago, but got frustrated with the ui and billing management. So stopped.

Ok based on reading around I think I am just going to spin up my own webhook serverless function that will listen to asana events and push them to a zapier webhook trigger from which I can then just use zapier for basic quick edit rules.

I’ll probably set it up on vercel and opensource the repo and put a video on up in the readme on how to do this - because this kind of thing should be easy.

So the thing that is now unclear to me and what I would love some direction on is the filter criteria of the webhook. Specifacally for the My Tasks project I am trying to understand if I setup the webook to watch the project for task changes or if I somehow have to get a dailey list of tasks and then setup a webhook per task?

Watching the project obviously feels a lot easier.

eg

{
  "data": {
    "filters": [
      {
        "action": "changed",
        "fields": [
          "memberships"
        ],
        "resource_subtype": "task",
        "resource_type": "project" // Is this how type and subtype work?
      }
    ],
    "resource": "12345", // Would this be the id of the My Tasks project?
    "target": "https://example.com/receive-webhook/7654?app_specific_param=app_specific_value"
  }
}

Essentially I would ideally like to be able to scop the webhook in to filter for section changes in the My Tasks project.

Thanks again for all the help. An upside of this question is that I had not dived into Asanas dev docs before. Its quite impressive.

[lpb]

Ok, best wishes! I’ll have to drop out at this point because I’m not well-versed in webhooks.

[Dan_Lewis]

@Bastien_Siebman whos the best peep to chat to about webhooks?

[Bastien_Siebman]

@Phil_Seeman is the best unless you meant “at Asana”?

[Dan_Lewis]

Hey there, no no I don’t mind if its a forum power user or someone @Asana.

In a funny way a user would be better as they will have had to deal with the limitations on the platform in the same way I do.

I am now confused about what “Partner - Forum Leader” means - honestly I assumed you all worked for Asana and that was just the title you had on the Forum. ie a bit like “Community Champion”

Regardless I am super appreciative for the help!

[Bastien_Siebman]

“Forum Leader” is a badge for Asana users, not employee, being identified as active and leader on the forum.
“Partner” is because I am a Solutions Partner, Asana trusts my company to help clients.

Asana employees on the forum have a special badge, don’t remember how it looks.

[Phil_Seeman]

@Dan_Lewis

I am trying to understand if I setup the webook to watch the project for task changes or if I somehow have to get a dailey list of tasks and then setup a webhook per task?

You would set up one webhook for your My Tasks so that it would be monitoring all of the tasks in that project for changes.

@Dan_Lewis

Is this how type and subtype work?

Nope. Set resource_type to task and leave out resource_subtype completely.

Otherwise your filter looks right. I’m not 100% sure memberships is a valid field for a webhook filter, but it sure seems like it should be , so try it for sure.